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MillimeterApple Snow Leopard for Video Producers, Part 2
Oct 6, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Table 4. Streaming encoding comparisons on a Mac Pro (2.93GHz quad-core Intel Nehalem Xeon CPU with 18GB of 1067MHz DDR3 RAM).
Streaming encoder tests
As you can see in tables 4 and 5, I also tested performance with Sorenson Squeeze (MPEG-2/H.264) and Flix Pro (VP6) on the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro. On the Mac Pro, the performance difference was very modest with the exception of H.264 encoding, which dropped by 10 percent.
Table 5. Streaming encoding comparisons on a MacBook Pro (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 8GB of 1067MHz DDR3 RAM).
On the MacBook Pro, Snow Leopard rocked, with an average 15 percent reduction in encoding time in 64-bit mode and 13 percent in 32-bit mode.
Given the disparity of these results, it's tough to generalize them. For example, if you're producing H.264 video files with Squeeze on a Core 2 Duo computer, you should run, not walk, to buy the upgrade. But whether you'd see the same performance boost with Telestream Episode Pro or Episode Engine is anyone's guess.
In eight of 10 groups of tests, Snow Leopard was faster than Leopard, but in one of the two instances where Snow Leopard was slower, the difference was dramatic. Overall, I would guess that most producers can install the update and expect to see very modest speed increases, but you definitely shouldn't expect significant, across-the-board performance boosts. You should also experiment with 32-bit and 64-bit modes to see which delivers optimum performance with your typical projects.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.