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OSX video Optimization
  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    I have an early 2009 13' Macbook. 2.25Ghz C2D 4GB RAM 250 GB 5400rpm Hard Drive

    As you can imagine it would be slow trying work with HD video files, especially huge AIC and ProRes files.

    I got a 16GB Patriot Supersonic Boost XT USB 3.0 Flash Drive and dump all the AIC and ProRes files on there instead on the Hard drive.

    I hit a bottle neck of around 100Mbps while playing in QT and of course any kind of editing just bogged down.

    But after some tweaks I can smoothly play a 1080 60p AIC/ProRes file at 200Mbps, the file is 1.16GB and 50 seconds in length.

  • 16 Replies sorted by
  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    Oh, Glad you asked...

    First. I went to work on my OSX install. I trashed as many applications not needed for essential task and video work.

    I got my OSX install down to about 30GB.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    Then I deleted all the caches for installed and previous installed apps.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    And then I went here http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html

    and got a Cocktail

    http://www.maintain.se/cocktail

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    After deleting a whole bunch of caches and logs I am now at 224GB free space on a 250GB HD.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    MBbench shows a sustained read on my HD as 25MB/s and over 30MB/s on the Patriot USB drive.

  • ahblezaahbleza

    What do you think was the key change for optimization of editing speed? Did you also try FCPX?

  • bmorgan83bmorgan83

    My thought would be that your system's graphics processor is going to be the limitation… its uses 256mb shared ram. Even my 2007 MacBook pro which has a dedicated 256mb graphics card gets bogged down with anything more than the stock firmware video from the GH2. Also, your USB 3.0 drive is going to work at USB 2.0 speeds since your system doesn't have USB 3.0 on it.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    Of course it's much too early to form a conclusion... however

    USB drives seems to be good for quick reads(under 1GB) and small writes (under 100mb)

    Anything with an 'i' (iMovie,iTunes,iWork etc.) or anything adobe is evil and will suck resources.

    Turn off Journaling and indexing.

    Clean log files and caches frequently.

    Clean up your Hard Drive to the point of Howard Hughes Paranoia.

    Will a fast SSD drive make it all moot? Maybe.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    First I must clarify. I have Motion 5, Quicktime Pro 7, Pavtube mts Mac converter.

    I ditched FCP7 and After Effects CS6.

    I typically only make 10-30 second clips either in QT Photo-JPEG(95%) or ProRes 422.

    So for long renders I have no idea is these kinda tweaks work.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    USB 3.0 is meaningless. My fast Patriot stick only get a sustained 90read/30write.

    However I would like to find a way to measure USB bus saturation, that is will there be a benefit with more than one USB drive.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    Key change for all of it was clearing caches and log files and going totally Spartan on my HD.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    AS far as I know your video card/chip will have little impact on converting/rendering video unless there's a special effect involved or a CUDA process.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    By the way, my WIN7 Quad-core 3.2GHz desktop with 8GB ram and 7200rpm sata3-HD bogs down just playing a 1GB 200Mbps QT file.

    This 2009 Macbook is faster right now.

  • htinlahtinla

    7200rpm hard drives are considered the minimum spec for any video editing, preferably an external (not your system drive) using Firewire. You said you ditched FCP7, so what NLE are you using?

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    I'm only producing small clips so I don't use an NLE, just Motion 5 for time-lapse or optical flow.

    I'm looking for a RAM drive program and will see if that helps, but I only have 4GB.

  • QuinEtiamQuinEtiam

    http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html#SettingUpYourMac

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