Compressor Create additional instances of Compressor
You can increase the processing power of a single computer, and thus reduce the time it takes to process batches, by enabling one or more additional instances of the Compressor application. Enabling additional instances of Compressor does not install multiple copies; instead, it creates additional services that can be accessed by Compressor.
The number of available Compressor instances is determined by your computer’s cores and memory. After meeting the minimum system requirement (four cores and 2 GB of memory), you can add one additional instance for every additional four cores and 2 GB of memory. The table below shows the cores and memory required to add additional Compressor instances.
2 GB RAM | 4 GB RAM | 6 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM | 12 GB RAM | 16 GB RAM | 32 GB RAM | 64 GB RAM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4 Cores | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
8 Cores | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
12 Cores | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
16 Cores | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
24 Cores | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
Important: If you don’t have enough cores or memory, the “Enable additional Compressor instances” checkbox in the Advanced preferences pane is dimmed.
Enable instances of Compressor
Choose Compressor > Preferences (or press Command-Comma).
Click Advanced.
Select the “Enable additional Compressor instances” checkbox, then choose a number of instances from the pop-up menu.
It’s recommended that you first enable all the additional instances, transcode several test batches, then, if performance is slow, decrease the number of instances to use fewer of your computer’s resources. You can use the Activity Monitor application in OS X to determine the percentage of CPU resources Compressor is using.
Note: If the computer has a hardware encoder, and if you enable multiple instances of Compressor, the time it takes to process a batch can potentially increase, because the hardware encoder can only be used with single-pass, nonsegmented jobs. If you find that processing time has increased significantly, turn off additional Compressor instances by deselecting the “Enable additional Compressor instances” checkbox.