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Best way to distribute file compression with FCP6/Comp3
Hello all,
I’m part of a small 3-member team that records vidcasts for distribution within our company. Currently our setup is this:
1.) An HD camcorder hooked to a 8-core Mac Pro is used to record video and push out as a 640×380 .mov file.
2.) I or another team member downloads that .mov file and performs post-processing in FCP on our MacBook Pros.
3.) We then export using compressor to a specified format, and that file is converted to FLV and pushed to the web.The problem with this workflow is that the actual compression is happening on our laptops, and not only is that a bottleneck for us it’s certainly an under-utilization of the power we have available on the Mac Pro.
I have looked into distributed processing with QMaster, and neither virtual nor distributed models seem ideal since the Mac Pro is only one node on the network (and it would have to download the file from our laptops). My question is, how can we change our workflow so that the FCP compression is handled by the big Mac Pro?
In an ideal world, we’d like to do our editing on our laptops, export to the Mac Pro which would then automatically compress the file with our default settings, but we can’t figure out how to set this up (or if it’s possible). Does anyone have any insight on this?
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3 Replies
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Qmaster is your friend.
Set up the Mac Pro as a managed cluster controller, and don’t include any of the laptops as cluster nodes. Make sure you set up 8 instances of the Compressor service in the Qmaster preference pane. Also set up shared cluster storage on the Mac Pro.
You can then submit job batches to the Mac Pro cluster in Compressor from the laptops, choosing the Mac Pro cluster.
Alternately, export finished media to a shared drive/folder on the Mac Pro and then submit job batches in Compressor on the Mac Pro and choose the Mac Pro Cluster when you submit the batch.
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Alan, thanks for your hopeful contribution to this thread. You sound like you have successfully established a Qmaster net. If so, I bow, buddy. This software still looks like a cruel joke to me but I know it must be able to work. I’ve just never been able to get it to do anything except crash my systems.
There is a complete Qmaster manual and setup documentation in the FCS documentation. You might want to print it. There is also a Qmaster forum on applecom but the traffic is light and most of us only complain, which doesn’t help anyone. There are precious few success stories but they do exist.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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