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Compressor is slower when using Qmaster
Hello
Specs of machine I’m using:
Mac Pro 8 Core 2.8GHz
2GB Ram
OSX 10.5.6
FCS2I’ve read several threads on how to set up a cluster for Compressor using Qmaster. I set up a cluster and did a short test compression and it was flying. Activity monitor showed all 8 cores almost maxed out.
So, after running that test yesterday, I go to do some actual compressions today (same settings), and its running SLOW! Activity Monitor shows very minimal use of the processors. I ran a few more tests comparing the cluster’s speed to running the compression on “this computer” and the Qmaster cluster took twice as long.
I tried running the cluster on 8 processors and on 4 processors…same results.
So, I can get compressor to see the cluster, but how can I get compressor to actually USE it to its full potential?
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6 Replies
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Update: it seems that I had “use unmanaged services” checked when I submitted the compression to “this computer”. This opens 8 instances of compressor to use the 8 processors, but in activity monitor those instances are peaking at about 22%! Heck, half the time they’re using less CPU power than Firefox is. =P I’m I interpreting this correctly? Can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong?
Here’s what activity monitor looks like:
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I’m presuming you are talking about a virtual cluster here (on your Mac alone) and not distributed processing (using multiple computers on a network).
When working on a virtual cluster, you need to balance your system RAM against your processors. For better performance, each processor in your cluster should have at least 1Gb of RAM available to it.
From our experience and testing, don’t assign more than 50% of your processors to the cluster, unless you only have a dual core procesor (in which case, assign both!). Remember, however, the 1Gb per processor RAM requirement!
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well for one, you need 16gb of Ram minimum.
thats 2gb per core.
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I have managed to set up compressor-clusters on single computers to use all the cores in the past.
But now I´m failing to set up a cluster with different Macs in a network.
I want to use a cluster for compressor with a G5 Dual a Mac Pro Quad and an iMac (intel dual core) together.
They are all connected via gigabit ethernet with an airport.
How should the settings be?
Is there a tutorial on the cow? -
Ahhh, thanks Colin, that makes sense. Yes, I was attempting to set up a virtual cluster on my machine. I spent all my time looking up how to setup Qmaster and I never looked into the RAM requirements.
Eric – this link may help you:
https://fcproducer.com/2008/09/how-to-encode-faster-in-compressor-with-apple-qmaster/ -
clustering over networks is still buggy.
you can have random glitch frames.
it should be avoided.
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