iMovie slow rendering

[vinodh]

My hackintosh is updated to 10.13.3 with the latest Nvidia web drivers and CUDA drivers. However, when I export to file from iMovie, my 2012 Mac mini does it in half the time for the exact same project.

My system runs a GTX 1080 with 16GB RAM and a 4690K CPU. I assumed that it would be a huge amount faster than the Mac mini but for some strange reason, it isn't. Not even close.

Any ideas?

 

[fadis96]

have you tested it on any other software?

you need to monitor the CPU cores, seems like you are rendering with a single core.

rendering is CPU only, as far as I know

does your cpu have native power management?

 

[vinodh]

No. I haven't tried any other software for comparison. My main reason for setting up this hackintosh was to save time on iMovie renders.

I'm not sure about the native power management. I used Multibeast with the standard settings and didn't add any extra kexts/options etc. I only installed the Nvidia drivers and did a kext edit to get my TP-Link wifi card to work. System runs fine besides the iMovie issue.

How do I check if iMovie is rendering with one or more cores?

 

[fadis96]

can I ask you what the cpu on your Mac mini?
I just realised that you have an I5

 

[vinodh]

Dual-core Intel Core i5 (i5-3210M)

 

[vinodh]

I used activity monitor to confirm that all 4 cores are being used and the Intel power gadget to show that the CPU boosts to 3,75GHz during the iMovie export. CPU utilisation is just over 80%. No idea why then that iMovie file exports are so slow.

 

[vinodh]

Seems like this issue is a combination of Intel Quick not being enable and Nvidia cards not being supported like AMD cards in Final Cut Pro X and iMovie. Pity.

 

[zipb]

Yes. Make sure hardware encoder acceleration for your codec of choice is enabled. I have a 6700k & AMD480, it was not trivial to get this working(h264 encoding in my case) properly.

 

[vinodh]

The plan with installing macOS on my GTX 1080 based system was to have a more powerful video editing system than the current 2012 Mac mini that I use. After realising that my hackintosh wasn't going to do the job because of the issues I experienced trying to get it to perform the way it should, I gave up and bought a new 2017 iMac 27". I upgraded the ram to 16GB and it's awesome.

Thanks to the people that tried to give me advice with fixing the issues with my hackintosh. I appreciated it.

It seems like with certain things, a real Mac is the best way to get things done.