Compressor – gggrrrrr …

[Walter Biscardi]

[Rich Rubasch] “BitVice 2.3 can batch, but is Intel and Leopard only. fast clean MPEG2 encodes. And, hey, it’s written in Sweden!”

And BitVice produces a MUCH cleaner image than Compressor for DVDs. Supposedly an HD version is coming and I’ll be very interested in that when it arrives.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Jeremy Garchow]

[walter biscardi] “compressor fails for us on all manner of formats. Working along just fine and then quits working on one or all the machines we have.”

Bummer. That is not my experience at all with Compressor. I really like it.

For those of you for which Compressor doesn’t work, how much RAM do you have?

Jeremy

PS For what it’s worth, I cannot get Motion to do anything I want it to do without crashing.

[Randy Lee]

It sounds like it isn’t a question of being able to make Compressor work or not… it is more of a statement that it is clunky, it doesn’t always act the same way as what you would expect it to, and it doesn’t give you the kind of wonderful compression that some other programs do.

The interface looks like they were trying to make a professional app useable for every idiot that can figure out how to open it. And they failed, miserably, making life harder for everyone that still uses Compressor. Come on, Apple. Take care of the pros, and let the rest of the world use Imovie and IDVD. Don’t put us all in the same boat.

[Ted Griffis]

Ahh, looks like I’m not the only one having trouble.

I just did a complete re-install from scratch of OSX 10.5.5 and Final Cut Studio, Qmaster installed, all updates done, and Compressor simply does not send a batch with Qmaster enabled. I get the spinball of death and eventually it crashes. With Qmaster disabled I can render but not at the exceedingly fast speed that I’ve grown quite accustom to (as have my clients).

This is ridiculous, any ideas on how to get Qmaster back up and working short of a reinstall (as I’ve just done that). I can tolerate the other shortcomings of compressor as long as I get the speed that I’m used to….it help accommodate for all the troubleshooting needed.

Walter, have you just stopped using it completely lately? because of various kinks, or complete un-usability? Is your Qmaster working on your Octocore?

Thanks,
Ted

OSX 10.5.5, FCS 2, MacPro Early 2008 8core, 8gigs RAM
QT 7.5.5
Compressor 3.0.4
QMaster 3.0.4

Ted Griffis
GriffisART
https://www.griffisart.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Randy Lee] “Take care of the pros, and let the rest of the world use Imovie and IDVD. Don’t put us all in the same boat.”

Ha you think an iMovie user could figure out compressor?

You must be kidding.

I will admit the interface could be a bit better. Even the older version of Compressor has a weird interface. It is certainly not easy to use, but once you figure it out, Compressor has done some very amazing things for me.

BitVice does do a much better job of encoding to Mpeg2, but the buck stops there. Compressor can handle frame rate conversions, up and down conversions, no fuss batch rev telecines, very fast and high quality H264 encodes (when using a Virtual cluster) and any other QT compatible conversion.

I guess I sound like what some may call a FanBoy, but it has really done well for me, you just have to know how to use it.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Ted Griffis] ” With Qmaster disabled I can render but not at the exceedingly fast speed that I’ve grown quite accustom to (as have my clients). “

Now when you say QMaster, do you mean a Virtual Cluster or are you using Qmaster across your whole network?

Jeremy

[Ted Griffis]

Hi Jeremy,

With QMaster preferences set at “Quickcluster with services” Compressor hangs up and eventually gives me the ContentAgent server not found notice. With Qmaster set to “Services and Cluster Controller” Compressor just sits there and never starts rendering and the Qmaster remains idle.

Any ideas? Thanks so much,
Ted

Ted Griffis
GriffisART
https://www.griffisart.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

First stop your sharing in the Qmaster sys prefs.

In the setup tab of my Apple QMaster sys prefs are set to Quickcluster with services.

Share is checked and Managed UNchecked for “Distubuted processing for Compressor”
Both Share and manged is Checked for “Shake and other shell command processing”

Click the options for selected services and choose 4 instances (if you have an 8Core).

My Quickcluster is name JG’s MacPro Cluster F*ck

Start the sharing.

I set up my stuff in Compressor and when I hit submit, I change the cluster output from This Computer to JG’s MacPro Cluster F*ck.

From there, it just works.

Now if you had a few bad crashes or botched jobs quit Compressor and batch monitor and go to the Finder and then hit shift-command-g.

When the little dialog box pops up, type /var/spool/qmaster and delete any folder out of there and empty the trash (the folders will have long weird names).

Open Compressor and then clear your history by hitting the clear history button.

Now, some encodes don’t do well with Compressors multithreaded approach. Flip4Mac is one of them, and basic profile h264 are another (like encoing for iphone). But high profile h264 and mpegs2 do just great with Virutal Clusters.

No offense, to Randy Lee (or anyone for that matter) I’d like to see an iMovie user figure that out.

Jeremy

[Ted Griffis]

Thanks Jeremy, I did as suggested. I was once set up this way before on a previous system and it worked fine, now however I’m getting ContentAgent not responding error.

I know this particular issue has been discussed at length on the cow, but if you have any quick ideas that’s be appreciated, thanks

Ted Griffis
GriffisART
https://www.griffisart.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

I would uninstall and reinstall Compressor.

https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1888