Cinelight Encoding Slow

[TENETT]

I use a 27" iMac with 32 gig RAM and a 4 Ghz , i7 quad core CPU...
Fast video editing of 4K is the norm for me.

BUT

I have recently started using a DJI X5R drone camera and CineLight, with some very odd results...?

Encoding Raw from the X5R to Prores 422HQ…..The CPU activity monitor shows CPU usage
between 7% and 14 % ….. ?
Idle about 95 % of the time…very strange..?

I would have thought that quad core would be close to max and glowing gently at this point…?

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions / ideas / explanations.
Thanks

 

[InterMurph]

That 4-core CPU most likely supports 8 concurrent threads.

If Cinelight uses only one of those threads, and was 100% busy, that would result in a 12.5% overall CPU load.

I don't know if Cinelight is a single-threaded app, but these numbers hint that it might be. Is it possible to have Cinelight transcode two clips at once? If so, and if your overall CPU load goes up to about 25%, then there's your answer.

 

[TENETT]

That 4-core CPU most likely supports 8 concurrent threads.

If Cinelight uses only one of those threads, and was 100% busy, that would result in a 12.5% overall CPU load.

I don't know if Cinelight is a single-threaded app, but these numbers hint that it might be. Is it possible to have Cinelight transcode two clips at once? If so, and if your overall CPU load goes up to about 25%, then there's your answer.

Using FCPX and importing 4k video the CPU usage goes to 65-70 % which is what I would expect...so why, if it is single thread would that be so, with software that is going to deal with some very heavy data processing...

Nothing under my control I guess...?

 

[InterMurph]

Again, I don't know if Cinelight is single-threaded or not.

But if it is, it's because writing software that takes advantage of multiple cores is difficult. So maybe whoever wrote Cinelight decided to simplify it by making it single-threaded. Or maybe they tried and failed.

Or maybe it *is* multi-threaded, but written so poorly that it gains no advantage.

I've been a software engineer for 29 years now, and I can tell you that the world is full of shitty software.

 

[TENETT]

I greatly appreciate your response..Thanks

CineLight works fine for me and does what is says it does and I can drop the end result into a FCPX timeline without a problem..

It just takes so long and even allowing for the amount of data involved...I was surprised about the CPU work rate...

I'll just have to learn to be patient....not one of my strong points I regret.

Thanks again.