Render Farm for Premiere Pro

[Vince Becquiot]

No one has created software to allow network rendering in Premiere as far as I know. Network renders are also usually based on Tiff/ targa sequences, etc., so no audio, not something many Premiere users make use of.

The only way I can think of this working is if you imported the Premiere timelines into After Effects and use the After Effects Net renderer.

But given the usually short render times in Premiere, it would be hardly worth the time to make it work.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area

[Brian Louis]

[mikkell khan] “if there is more that needs to be done to another project on that same drive?”
If you are going to use two machines and try to alternate, have enough swappable drives where you can keep projects separated so they are not on the same drive at the same time.

[Ht Davis]

Does anybody here know what a disk image is? You can make one and have it on a shared location (network drive), and actually just copy necessary files to it. I have 2 situations to expound on this methodology.

MACS
Mac users have access to Compressor (for a price of course), and can even have it leverage across several machines for any operation. That said, this question is about adobe software, lets get to that. Since you cannot go from PPRO to compressor directly, let’s talk about how adobe software handles the files, so you can utilize AE for this operation.
Lets say you have your source video in full format on one drive with a NAME (lets call it “SOURCE”). You can create a Disk Image with the same volume name, that will show up with that same name on OTHER MACS as long as they have access to where the disk image is stored (the image file needs to be in a shared location). The reason for giving the disk the same name is that you want to copy the necessary files over to the image, so that they can be accessed from another machine, but use the same volume (disk) name when finding the files. Now lets make an image with the same name as the disk with your project files\cache files, previews. You’ll need a disk image for every separate disk you span your files across (note that this “disk” term refers to PARTITIONS not physical hard drives unless each drive has only 1 partition; raid setups use several physical disks for one big partition), and you’ll need to use the same names for the image volume (partition on the image) as the actual drive you are trying to copy data from. Copy your files onto the images, and store the images in a shared location. Open the images from the alternate location, and share the volumes to any other computers you wish to farm out to, render it out from AE. Now the data is not on the drive you’re working on, but is still being rendered without needing to relink, re-conform, or recreate any information.
Now back to Compressor: With Compressor and the queue program it attaches with, there is an automatic sharing function that will work if the files are on the main drive. Turning this off does not prevent sharing. You just need to make sure you share the drives. By using an image in a shared location, your network speed will be your main limitation, and it is best to use wired net. However, I’ve done compression farming with wireless. I render out using adobe software for a full format, but afterward, I use compressor. It doubles and triples your power in a mac environment.

WINDOWS:
Granted mac has an advantage with the compression and sharing that last task, but that task is easier, more accurate, and better quality after the initial rendering to a full format, no matter what system you are on.
You can farm in windows the same as mac with adobe after effects. You just create a disk image using your favorite utility, or the command line. You will have to take your work machine out of the farm or relink your files to the new disk images, but only once on that work machine; the rest will access the same files and folders the same way.
Windows uses drive letters as volume names. It saves on memory space in the OS, although the recent GFX of the interface have made that moot… …Sorry for the social commentary. Nothing against Windows. –getting back to the topic– You’ll need to mount (connect) the disk images to the same drive LETTER across all your machines. In a WinServer environment, this gets even easier, as you can add the location at the server level, and have it propagate to every computer connected, while you only need to attach the images to the server. In some of the newer Server setups, you can use ISCSI to access the images as if they were actual drives, and provide even faster access, as it allows every computer to bypass the authentication and flagging of the server, even while not logged in. Just make sure the drive letter is the same, and you’ll have an easy time of setting the farm from one machine and running it out to the others, without overtaxing your working drives.
Once the primary file is rendered, you can compress the file using any compression program you like. You can send it to AME for compression; or, if you have access to a few macs, you can send it to compressor and qmaster it out.

In order to render farm from either case, you’ll need to install after effects on more than one machine, and you may need to install premiere or any other apps so that their XML engines are installed. Rendering out from AE in a farm may also require any third party plugins. A test of each of them in a single short clip both farmed and single computer rendered should provide a proper comparison that will tell you right away.

Render farming is the standard for longer projects, higher resolution, and\or lower cost machines. There are many linux editing environments that are now being enabled for farming over third party server-based applications that use endpoint connections to leverage all machines connected, or a subset of those from a profile created at the server app level, to actively process sections of a project, and automatically re-utilizing machines that finish faster for more sections. These are provided with Freeware basic licensing for small renders, but require licensing for larger farms. The more awesome part of this is that, with the right plugins, you can mark your cuts, edits, effects etc, and then move all of that to a new environment, and redo any incompatibles quickly, moving to the render step shortly after. Some of these third party Linux based farms even have plugins for adobe software that link them and allow them to utilize all adobe’s power of editing, but all the power of every processor linked to the farm to quickly and efficiently render out any project. I only wish I had the funding to put one of these together… A guy can dream can’t he?