Choose Compressor > Preferences (or press Command-comma) and click Advanced. Place a checkmark next to “Enable additional Compressor instances.” Then, choose a number of instances from the pop-up menu.

Compressor changes the number of additional instances available in the pop-up based on the capabilities of your computer to optimize performance. In some cases the “Enable additional Compressor instances” checkbox may be grayed out. This is expected if Compressor will not allow for additional instances of Compressor to be enabled.

Compressor checks the number of cores and the amount of memory you have and allows you to create one additional instance for every four cores and 2GB of memory (above the 2 GB minimum requirement). The following table shows the number of additional instances you can configure for different numbers of cores and available memory.  

Note: These are additional instances of Compressor. There is always one instance running when “Allow other computers to process batches on my computer” is turned on, even if Compressor is not open.

For more information, refer to Enable one or more instances of Compressor in Compressor Help.