Compressor & Dual Core

Hi!

I have a question about Compressor 3.5. I'm working on a Macbook Pro 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 2 GB 1067 MHz and unfortunately it takes forever to compress videos that I edited in Final Cut Pro. I know this is a common problem, since I've been looking for a solution in other forums. However, I'm still hoping there is a way to increase the speed.
When I open the Activity Monitor, I can see that only one core is used, and I would like to know whether it's possible to use both cores of my Macbook Pro, or if this is a no-go because you're not supposed to use all your cores? I wouldn't mind not being able to work on other things during compression.

I read that you can activate the cores via Apple Qmaster, but I'm not sure if compressor only lets you do that if you have at least 4 cores? The thing is, when I open Qmaster in the system preferences and under services I click on "Compressor" and activate "Share", the button "Options for selected devices" is gray, so I can't click on it to add instances. I tried to access Qmaster directly in Compressor as well, but I couldn't find anything. Here's a screenshot:



Any help would be appreciated!

Thank you very much for the reply. It didn't work with Quickcluster with Services before, BUT I downloaded an application called Compressor Repair and it immediately saved the problem. It lead to another one though... even though I activated both instances, compression seems as slow as before, and it seems strange to me that when I look at the Activity Monitor, the CPU barely goes over 70-75%. Why is that? I included a screenshot of my Activity monitor.
When I submitted the video in Compressor, I chose the cluster that I set to "2 Instances" in Apple Qmaster before, so that should be fine. Is there anything else I need to change in the Compressor preferences? I don't understand why this isn't working. Thanks again!

Well I just read that you can only use virtual clusters if you export a reference movie from FCP first and open that in Compressor. Is that really true? I just tried it and it boosted the CPU up to 150%, which should be a good sign. I'm just wondering because I usually choose "Send to Compressor" in FCP, because my test exports so far showed a decrease in quality that way - I could especially see it during fade ins and outs of titles. However, I just re-rendered the sequence changing the Quicktime Video Settings from H.264 compression to Prores422 in FCP, and it looks much better now. Could that be the solution after all?! :D

Yeah I usually do that too, but this project contains footage from a lot of different cameras and the dissolves etc. look terrible when I try to export it with current settings. Well, hopefully it will work with Prores, I'll give it a try tomorrow. Thanks a lot for your advice, I appreciate it!

Okay got it. When I started having exporting issues, I realized I should have converted everything into the same format in the first place, before importing the videos into FCP, but it's too late now - I'm working with 80GB of material and I would have to convert almost everything, which would take forever. Oh well, next time I'll know better! :D