[Scott Bush]

Already cleaned caches, ran compressor repair, onyx, etc before my clean installation (all of that failing is what led me to do the clean install). But a fresh os install (with no archive and install) would be even cleaner, no?

[Scott Bush]

Yes I did… and then I completely reinstalled the OS and everything else, too; just for good measure… There’s something wacky going on here that doesn’t report in diagnostics.

[Scott Bush]

16GB Ram, 8x2GB sticks

[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.

[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]

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”

[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.

[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, again.

This all makes sense to me, but of course I can’t tell my client to “just type in the proper aspect ratio” it just needs to work for them, distortion free. I never send them DV footage anyway so I’ll be making sure the pixels are correct in what I send them – but this helps me understand it better. Many thanks.

[Scott Bush]

Thanks, Brian. That was what I thought but the documentation was a little confusing – mostly just because they mention specifically anamorphic MPEG-2 but nothing else. I was trusting my eye but wanted make sure I was technically correct.

Could someone also explain formats that have a “display” aspect ratio? Like for example, if I have an MPEG-2 file at 720×480 for DVD – so non-square pixels – when play it in Quicktime player it shows up at the proper computer display of 640×480. Is this a function of quicktime being smart and knowing that 720×480 almost always means 640×480 for a computer display, or is it built in to the file somewhere as a “display” aspect ratio for use on computer?

Thx,
Scott