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worker node installation question
We are CatDV newbies and responsible for installation along with a new Small Tree NAS shared storage system for eight FCP systems. CatDV Enterprise Server/MySQL is running on the NAS server. All CatDV Pro clients are running and connected to the server via house LAN, thus not interfering with private NAS LAN dedicated to media transport.
Our next step is installing Worker Node. The workflow is not well defined yet, however Worker Node is loosely intended to work with watch folders looking for video files to compress for web broadcast. We want the compression to occur on the clients CPUs, not the server, as to not steal CPU/memory from NAS operations. Therefore, can we and is it advisable to install Worker Node(s) on each client? If so, will resultant actions be confined to client CPU(s)? Is there a limit to the number or Worker Nodes we can install and to the number of Worker Node instances running simultaneously?
Thanks!
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6 Replies
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Worker Node is a single instance license. If you bought one, it’s one copy. If you want to run it on all your machines, you need copies for them all. But I’ve never seen anyone do that.
It is really meant to automate CatDV and Server processes more than a raw transcode machine so you may want to actually set up some other form of transcoding if you don’t want to overload your server/worker machine.
It’s demo’d showing transcodes because it can do them and is awesome at it, but in most large shops you will either want to have several Workers or off load the big jobs to allow the Worker to handle more jobs.
It’s serial in nature meaning that if you have a “job” in progress like a 1 hour transcode, you will not have another job fire off until that one is done. So that’s another good reason to get the heavy lifting off to an outside process like Compressor, Episode, Sorenson etc.
Whoever is designing your system should be able to help you lay out your automated workflows to maximize your software. Distributed processing is most likely your best bet if you’re doing tons of transcodes. Planning Worker Node usage is an often overlooked thing due to the lack of understanding of what Worker does. It does a ton of things, but like your assistant editor, it can get overloaded, it’s only one man. 😉
bryson
bryson “at” hidefcowboy.com
hidefcowboy.com
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Bryson summed this up nicely I call it the “CatDV automation client”
The CatDV Client does transcoding as well so there is little need for a Worker On a CatDV client machine!
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Hi Bryson –
Wondering how you set up the worker node to trigger a compressor session. I’ve got it rendering proxies, but am not sure how to trigger the 3rd party apps. Any videos or links you know of? I’m coming up empty after searching.
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Page 17 of the Worker Read Me covers this for Worker and page 67 of the old Qmaster3_Compressor3_Distributed Processing manual covers it for Compressor. (I’m sure it’s also in the newer v 4 manual as well.)
As a policy of my company, while we want to offer as much public info as we can, we don’t publish “tutorials” on running command line actions through the Worker. This is mainly because so many CatDV users are not familiar with the command line and that opens up so many possible huge mistakes and potential data loss. (Hey! I just overwrote all of my proxy!)
If you’re savvy, and have the time, you’ll get it rolling with those manual pages. If you don’t wanna mess with it, I’d hit your reseller up as the first point of contact or SquareBox if you’re in the UK, Kevin Duggan was the first guy to get this rolling that I saw. They should be able to get this running. Or NSA offers the Compressor setup as a service item fully documented and supported to clients through our dealers. This is usually the best way to learn about the Worker, see it done once for you in the field.
But the command, as published in Apple’s manual runs fine in Worker if you wanna try it on your own. As always, be careful out there.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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Thanks Bryson for pointing me in the right direction.
I’ll test my savvy on some non-essential media and build it into the workflow once I’ve got it nailed down.
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Ah, if only more folks were like you. 😉
Test, test, test… deploy.
bryson
bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com
northshoreautomation.com
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