So, I had to do a simple capture and convert for a friend, no editing neccessary, so I decided to monitor the Windows task manager while the encoding was taking place.  I set a 45 minute DV (StandardDefinition) capture to convert to QuickTime MOV DV Format, and the same sequence to also export to a MPEG3 DVD-Standard 8mbps MPG file as well.  Now, you would think that rendering SD on 8-cores would be done in a blink, but even the 5 minutes it estimates to encode one of the tasks to me, seems long.  Now I know that 8 cores does not neccesarily mean 4 times as fast a a dual core computer, and I noticed that the reason why could be that the application is not utilizing my cores to their full potential.  If you look at the screenshot you will notice that all of the cores are performing at below 50% of their portential, and only one of them is higher than the average of all the others…I wonder why.  I am running Windows Vista 64-bit and encoding using all the latest updates to Adobe’s CS4 Production Suite.  Is this a limitation of Windows?  I think not, since I can run stress-test programs such as Prime95 and 3DMarkPro and see it maxing out all CPUs at 100%.  Is there a setting I can change within Premiere Pro?  I know you could tell CS3 to render for “Performance” or for “Memory”.  I am not sure which was faster, but I do know that the “Memory” option never gave me any crashes.  I never compared the rendering speeds.

(click to enlarge)

Anyway, if any of you readers out there have any insight on how to get Premiere to max out its given affinity, then I am all ears, and please post a comment! Thanks!