I've Got CPU Cores to Spare...Why Won't Somebody Use 'Em Smarter?

[Jason Dunn]

<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//dht/auto/1224280703.usr1.png" /></p><p>I was synchronizing music over to my SanDisk Sansa Clip today, and I configured Windows Media Player 11 to transcode the music to 128 kbps WMA files from the original 256 to 320 kbps music files. 128 kbps WMA files still sound pretty good for rock/pop music, and at the gym sound fidelity isn't quite as critical as is it at home. What surprised me was how poorly the Windows Media Encoder used my multiple cores. It did better than some programs because it was using two cores to transcode a single MP3 file, but what it should have been doing is multi-threaded encoding, where one core is assigned the task of transcoding one file, and have all four CPU cores transcoding the audio. Just like using FTP to download a bunch of files, even if you have restricted bandwidth or CPU cycles, efficiencies can be gained by processing multiple files in parallel.</p>

[jadesse]

That is one of the many features the folks at Microsoft keep programming into Windows.

[tuxplorer]

Try using the Microsoft Expression Encoder Trial. It has a free "Expression Encoder Express" portion that remains free and does fast encoding.

[Jason Dunn]

That is one of the many features the folks at Microsoft keep programming into Windows.

I'm not so sure about that...the version of Windows Media Encoder that nearly every piece of software out there uses hasn't been updated in several years. :(

[Jason Dunn]

Try using the Microsoft Expression Encoder Trial. It has a free "Expression Encoder Express" portion that remains free and does fast encoding.

I've seen that software, but there's no way to make WMP11 use it for transcoding, is there? I don't think there is, so it wouldn't really address my complaint. :)

[jeffd]

maybe you are mis understanding how ftp, and what ever software you are using works, but a single ftp session is actually unable to do anything when you have an ftp transfer going. Activating more transfers requires multiple logons (something some ftp servers have an option for, but disable for security reasons). http on the other hand nativly supports multiple transfers.

Back to the original problem, yea, I cant say ive seen one program use all 4 of my cores fully. I belive 2 of my video encode programs use 3-4 cores, but they only sit at like %70 or lower.

[Jason Dunn]

maybe you are mis understanding how ftp, and what ever software you are using works, but a single ftp session is actually unable to do anything when you have an ftp transfer going. Activating more transfers requires multiple logons (something some ftp servers have an option for, but disable for security reasons).

I can assure you that on the dedicated server running this site, I do 8-way threaded file transfers, up and down, and I can do much more, much faster, than with a single-threaded transfer.

[Timothy Huber]

I'm not so sure about that...the version of Windows Media Encoder that nearly every piece of software out there uses hasn't been updated in several years. :(

One of the pitfalls of legacy code... it often makes it difficult to rethink architecture. What needs to happen is a complete code rewrite.