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Cluster rendering failure
Maybe the answer for this can be up for an Ubergeek award:
This is rather odd and popped up yesterday. I can’t really be sure because I’m setting up the MacPro at the office remotely from home. But my first set of cluster renders went just fine and now I’m getting errors and lockup.
MacPro, 8 core, 8 gigs, Qmaster setup for a cluster of 4 on this machine. Trying to do a Send to Compressor and then render to the cluster.
Send to Compressor is fine. Setup to render a standard DVD m2v and ac3 (note that the h264 file for a Blue ray worked just fine). Get it all setup and submit/send it to the cluster. It starts and the audio renders ok and then the video fails. History just says failure. Batch Monitor shows 8 segments, 3 of which consistently fail. Others are often “successful” or “canceling.” Canceling shows undoubtably because this usually makes Compressor get stuck and I’m trying to cancel to get out.
Now opening Activity Monitor, both before and after this process, gets interesting. Generally before I start there are 8 processes for transcoding, all ok, and then some items that relate to project data transferring, presumably between FCP and Compressor. Once I submit the batch all these go red and are hung. Ok, so there’s obviously something dramatic going on.
Remedies: I’ve reset background rendering in Compressor, I’ve rebooted the machine, usually have to force quit both Compressor and FCP. I’ve cleared out all the previous render lists. I’ve run Compressor Repair, I’ve trashed preferences. I’ve reset Qmaster back and forth and set it to original defaults and reset it again. I’ve ended bad processes in Activity Monitor. Tried different presets for DVD. Turned segmenting off and on. — No Joy.
Ideas? Remove Compressor and reinstall? Don’t bother to go to the studio on Monday, choosing instead to stay in bed? What?Crossposted at the Apple Compressor forum
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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10 Replies
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Using your virtual cluster will always result in a failure when you Send To Compressor from FCP. You will have to export and self contained or reference file from FCP and then bring that into Compressor if you want to sue your virtual cluster.
https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1099
Robert J. Grauert, Jr.
http://www.robgrauert.com
command-r.tumblr.com -
wow, really?
I just read the linked item. It’s over a year old. Does this still hold true because I also exported a h.264 for blue ray without issue. You think this has been updated at all for FCS3? Weird. I’ll try it the other way and see what happens. Thanks.Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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I dunno if it’s been fixed for FCS3, I’m still using FCS2.
I personally don’t think exporting a self-contained or reference file is a big hassle though. I prefer to do it that way anyway.
Robert J. Grauert, Jr.
http://www.robgrauert.com
command-r.tumblr.com -
no, it’s not a big deal, just a little extra time up front, about an hour on this project.
I’m testing now, and indeed it doesn’t look changed. I don’t know how I must have done the h.264 blue ray file. I had to reboot. FCP and Compressor start fighting with each other when the cluster fails. I’ll try the reference file next.Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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well the first test with the reference file was fine. I only did a few seconds of the show, but the cluster broke it into 6 segments and rendered them all and put them together.
Now I’m running a test to see how long it will take to do the entire 18 min HD show. Batch monitor says that it’s copying 30 gigs worth of material. Funny. I went through the compressor 3 manual to set all this up and none of this was mentioned.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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ah, ok, now that worked. Render time dropped to 34 minutes. I walked away to show someone else how to do something. I came back and it was done. I thought it must have failed. And it’s a fraction of the time it took the other night.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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nice. I’m glad it worked out. Technology is nice when it works, isn’t it?
Robert J. Grauert, Jr.
http://www.robgrauert.com
command-r.tumblr.com -
even nicer when it has proper documentation!
Hey, thanks for the help. It’s much appreciated. I’ll be sure to keep passing it on.
RobbNon-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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Hi Robb,
Did you try changing your “cluster options” in the compressor prefs to “never copy source to cluster”?
That will ensure that Compressor doesn’t try to copy your source files to your “virtual cluster storage,” and you shouldn’t get that message. (Not to mention it’ll be faster).
Matt Lyon
Editor
Toronto -
No, I haven’t see that anywhere, and yes, it would help. It did that yesterday. I ran another set of tests last night. It worked fine. But it did copy one set of reference data and that took a while. The M2v render dropped to just over 5 hours. The Blue-Ray render was only an hour and a half. The BR was set to only a 14mps rate with a max of 17. M2v was cranked up on everything. Interestingly, the M2v was broken into segments, about 16 of them. The BR, on the other hand, was not. It went as a single file.
Non-linear: all the time and nothing but.
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