Member-only story
Is It Worth An Upgrade?
When new tech doesn’t do much after all
Among other things, I am a filmmaker. That means my computers get put through the wringer. My last editing workstation was an HP Z800 that I kept for about ten years. Among other reasons I replaced it was that it took forever to process video files.
When I would try to ingest video or render video or export video, it would just take an age. Hours. Now I have a brand new Z4 with the most powerful 18 core processor available. It has the most powerful AMD video card rated for Avid Media Composer. It has 64 gb of RAM, which I will eventually double despite not having come close to using half of it so far.
It still takes forever to ingest and export video files. Let that sink in. Why? It’s hard to say for sure, but here are my best guesses.
For a start, when encoding video files, one uses a set software to do this. If that software wasn’t designed to take advantage of increased CPU cores, video cards, or a faster data bottleneck speed, then the software will still run the same speed regardless of processor power.
On the other hand, maybe it’s because the editing software will only use a set amount of system resources rather than a percentage of system resources, meaning that there could be a ceiling of say, 10 gb for encoding.
