Parallel Task Optimizations - settings missing in 2021.3?

[Richard901]

For comparison - here's how efficiently HandBrake uses all the CPU threads.

[Richard901]

I've found that Elastic Audio's X-Form uses all the cores if the audio file is divided into more clips.

Pro Tools Session
1 stereo audio track - 4:00 - 16bit - 44.1kHz - Interleaved
No other programs running apart from UAD console and Activity Monitor.

Mac CPU Usage: PT idle


Mac CPU Usage: X-Form rendering after changing tempo (1 clip)


Mac CPU Usage: X-Form rendering after changing tempo (Audio split into 8 clips)


Time to process 1 clip 1:30
Time to process 8 clips 0:12


I chose to split the audio into 8 clips because my CPU has 8 cores. The clips were not consolidated into separate audio files.
Processing time would probably be about 6 seconds if all the CPU threads could be used. I tried 16 clips, but still only 8 threads were used.

PROBLEM
Sometimes there are minor playback "glitches" at the clip boundaries. This doesn't happen when the tempo is changed back to the original 100% bpm.

[JingleDjango]

Intuitively this makes sense to me. How would you parallelize DSP on a contiguous stream of audio without breaking it into chunks first? And if X-Form is an implementation of a a third party's algorithm (iZotope) then I'm not sure what Avid could do to improve that.

Richard901: I'm curious. If you split the audio into 16 clips do you see all 16 cores active during render?

Where I'd like to see improvement is with clip-by-clip Audiosuite processing. I think this was mentioned up-thread.

[Richard901]

Originally Posted by JingleDjango

Intuitively this makes sense to me. How would you parallelize DSP on a contiguous stream of audio without breaking it into chunks first? And if X-Form is an implementation of a a third party's algorithm (iZotope) then I'm not sure what Avid could do to improve that.

JingleDjango - Thanks for your reply.
HandBrake uses all cores and threads when processing one video file (see post #11), but perhaps a video file is technically different to audio, as far as multi-threaded processing is concerned.
. . . third party's algorithm (iZotope) - Yes, that would make it more difficult.

Originally Posted by JingleDjango

Richard901: I'm curious. If you split the audio into 16 clips do you see all 16 cores active during render?

I was hoping I would see all 16 threads active, but the other 8 threads were idle.

Originally Posted by JingleDjango

Where I'd like to see improvement is with clip-by-clip Audiosuite processing. I think this was mentioned up-thread.

+1 Definitely!!!
I suppose a lot of PT's code was written many years ago when multi-core processors were rare.

[JingleDjango]

Thanks for the reply. And I should have specified 16 threads in my above comment, not cores. I think you caught my meaning.

[jeffro]

This has been fixed in 2021.3.1.

avid.secure.force.com/pkb/articles/readme/Pro-Tools-2021-3-Release-Notes

[Richard901]

Originally Posted by Richard901

2021.3 release notes:
Parallel Task Optimizations
The Parallel Task Optimizations is now available in Pro Tools Software. It was previously only available in Pro Tools Ultimate. The default value of the preference has also been changed from ‘Off’ to ‘High.’ This preference speeds up certain actions by allowing Pro Tools to multi-thread certain tasks that appear in the Task Manager, such as Workspace indexing, waveform calculation, and Elastic Audio rendering. See the Pro Tools Reference Guide for more details.

Page 127 in the 2021.3 Reference Guide describes the new Parallel Task Optimizations settings in Preferences/Processing/Miscellaneous.
They are not in my preferences.
Also, X-Form rendering in Elastic Audio seems to take the same time as before.

It was previously only available in Pro Tools Ultimate - Should everyone have this now?

SOLVED - The settings is available is Pro tools 2021.3.1

Thanks for the update.