Major Compressor Issues

[Jeremy Garchow]

What format are you compressing to and how did you setup the virutal cluster?

[Tom Wolsky]

This may be the cause. It seems to be a known issue.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1060020

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Scott Bush]

I am compressing to Prores (tried ‘normal’, HQ, and 4444) from HDV 1080i (going 1080i to 720p).
I have Frame Controls on, all set to ‘Better’ for my resize and de-interlace.

For the cluster, I set it up with the following settings:

Share this computer as: QuickCluster with Services
Services: Share and Managed checked for “Distributed Processing from Compressor” – nothing else checked here
Options for Slected Service: Selected Service ON (4 instances)
QuickCluster: name is “MacProCluster”; include unmanaged services is checked.

After my complete fresh system install, I ran the file (a 90 second HDV clip) through and it went perfectly – took about 5 minutes to do the encode. When I tried it again, I got a beach ball and had to force a restart… can’t seem to find a pattern at all, which is all the more frustrating. Haven’t tried on new install with only 1 core, but before the fresh install I got the same results (beach ball).

thanks

[Scott Bush]

Thanks, Tom, but I am not sending from Final Cut – I am using compressor directly.

Should add that there has been no processing on these files, either – I captured them via firewire in Final Cut and am using the original captured files in compressor.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Try changing your cluster settings to just checking ‘Share’ for distributed processing for Compressor

and check the other two for Shake and shell command.

Jeremy

[Scott Bush]

Very odd… in Activity Monitor, even though I just rebooted and actually turned off the cluster, I have two items in RED as not responding:

“CompressorJobController”
“CompressorTranscoder”

[Jeremy Garchow]

I do to, that’s normal (I think).

To really get rid of stuff go to the Finder and hit command-shift-g.

then type /var/spool/qmaster

Delete any of the files out of there.

Open Compressor, then clear your history.

You should be free of any cache files then.

Jeremy

[Chris Borjis]

Just an fyi on the octocore with multi-threading (16 virtual cores)
you can run up to 6 instances.

don’t know if that will help you though.

[Scott Bush]

Thanks Chris, I actually had it set for 6 for a while but set it back to four after reading some tips – either way you’re right, it didn’t make a difference…

Thanks all for your input. I’ve left the computer to run hardware tests for the night – the issue could very well be some bad ram based on the way it is behaving. Guess I’ll know in the AM…

Any other idea out there, though I’d love to hear them. Really gotta get this sorted!

[Scott Bush]

Ok. All hardware tests passed (including a 120minute RAM stress test). No issues reported.

Took home the files last night to my home system (very similar to work station except for slightly lower clock speed on processors – 2.8ghz). It converted the very same files in a batch with no problems, quite quickly. Same version of OS, compressor etc.

The fact that this is a fresh install of the OS and Final Cut is what makes this so strange… I’m pretty much baffled at this point.