Not OT: No coffee breaks any more ...

Who doesn't know the situation: FCP is rendering or exporting - you're waiting and no second Mac with a second license of FCP available to work with.
Here the solution. Double click this little app and a second instance of your Final Cut Pro will be opened.
Both you and your Mac must be powerful enough to handle that.

Regards
Andreas

P.S. I don't see any license issues with that as you do not work with a copy nor on another machine.

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

But how is it going to work given that you'd be attempting to open two copies of the same project file? If you were performing edits on the "FCP clone" and saving them (bearing in mind most of us save at least every few minutes), how would that be reflected in the project that's being rendered? Has it been tested thoroughly to make sure no corruptions and loss of data will occur?


www.derekmok.com

Hi Derek,

I think it's pretty obvious that you should be careful when opening a project two times.
The question answers itself, or do you open the same project on two machines and expect they update each other?

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

> or do you open the same project on two machines and expect they update each other?

No, I don't...I'm just wondering how this application works. Or maybe it's more intended for rendering one project while working on another. I tend to work on one project at a time (long form), and when I do have to juggle multiple ones, the renders tend to be short.


www.derekmok.com

Derek there is no magic with this little script and it finally does nothing. It just performs a UNIX shell script which does launch the executable bundle inside the FCP "app package" with another instance.

Andreas

Hi,

I've been doing that since some time ago, but only with Mac Pro's with enough power to handle bouth tasks , Render in the 1º FCP and, Cutting only in 2º FCP with no problems at all.

By going to the FCP icon in the Apps Folder, Control-Click the icon and select "Show Package Contents> Contents Folder> MacOS Folder> Final Cut Pro

Click the Unix icon and voila a 2 FCP will be running in your Mac.

The only problem is the coffee machine complaining.

Viel Danke Andreas, Weissbier is besser als Caffe

Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

Wow I remember when Cwan Stark showed how to do this at a LAFCPUG meeting and Randy Umbilos was there and he wasn't too happy about it mostly because the way as he said "it's stomping all over your preferences.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

I did this in the old times with AE (and other apps) on multi processor systems very often.

And it doesn't stomp the preferences - though you can change them, but that may confuse yourself more than FCP.
It's less worse than changing the Audio/Video Settings with 1 instance of the app when you got multiple projects open.

Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
[www.spherico.com]

Hi,

There is no problem in FCP#2 if you are only cutting the shots with a single Timeline

It won't mess your preferences

Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

Yeah. Randy said it was like crossing your light sabors or something. But it works.

Michael Horton
-------------------

I just launched it on my Quad G5. It is pretty cool when you combine it with Spaces. You can jump back and forth between instances. I have one rendering now, and was able to play and do simple edit tasks in the other, all using ProRes 1080i. Of course my CPU's are perspiring and breathing hard, but everything seems to work.

If this works when I am actually working on something I am gonna be REALLY happy.

-Vance

This reminders me of a wish of mine that can now can be a future system option built in FCP:

Background Rendering

The Mac Pro's power is a beast and i do believe that this small feature wound't be so hard for the Apple's FCP team to built.

Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

Better still would be ablt to export via Compressor and then using compressor distribute the render across multiple xServes. Why can't we do that?

We can. Just export a Quicktime in your timeline format, then send that Quicktime to the Compressor cluster of your choice for conversion to whatever delivery format you want.

Rendering your timeline for real-time playback is different. Apple's philosophy since Final Cut 5 seems to have been to reduce the amount of rendering needed, by adding features like unlimited RT and the open-format timeline.

To my knowledge it is not possible to export directly, or via compressor for that matter, using qmaster for multi processor rendering. Which in my opinion is stupid.

Why can't I choose to export via Compressor and then get the dialog to submit the job choose the qmaster I want to use to distribute the render. Its the FCP rendering time I'd like to reduce.

Because of how Qmaster works. When you process on a cluster, all the media for that job has to be copied to cluster storage before the job can begin. Obviously, 'cause all nodes need access to that media. If you were trying to cluster-compute your Final Cut Pro rendering job, all your media for your whole timeline would have to be copied to cluster storage. Which might work fine, if you were on a shared storage network like Xsan, but even then it'd be iffy, since there's nothing forcing you to put your media on the SAN.

Not to mention the fact that no part of Compressor can actually do Final Cut rendering at this time.

So it'd be a whole hell of a lot of work for Apple to add a feature that would only be useful in very specific environments.

What he said...but in addition to fast shared storage you have to have unique licenses for each of the machines in that cluster or no dice.

And again, this only works for exporting, not rendering, as Compressor doesn't touch render files, only the source media.

Actual rendering inside a timeline is tied to your machine, only programs that require massively complex renders like Shake and Maya have the ability to spread out rendering. Which brings up the question, what are you editing that requires so much rendering? Quite honestly, since getting my Octo and a solid video card last year, I almost never render, only for spot quality checks. The Real Time Dynamic preview is good enough for everything except my motion graphic work...granted im all web and dvd nowadays.

Amusingly, Compressor does not require a license for each system in the cluster. You need a license to run the front-end application, but the "Qmaster Node" software that turns a computer into a Qmaster compute node is unlicensed.

Also amusingly, in some experiments earlier this year I determined that a cluster of one 8-proc Xserve and two dual-proc G5s is slower at processing big jobs than the Xserve alone. The Xserve is twice as fast, proc for proc, as the G5s, so it's actually faster for the Xserve to do everything itself than it is to send segments to the G5s and wait for them to finish.

Cluster-building is a dark art.

Hmm i think if you have multiple sequences you want to export from inside of one project, then you need unique FCP licenses. I remember reading into this a while back and finding that, i know QMaster is open but i think something about coming out of FCP required licenses somewhere

But yes building a cluster is def a dark art, and surprisingly not all that effective, i think due to the stitching process. A good Octo with a virtual cluster is really all you need. I built a 4 node cluster with 3 Octos and 1 G5 all on a SAN and it only saved me maybe 2 minutes, compared to the Virtual on a single machine? And now with the hyper-threaded cores on the new chips? Jesus that's gonna be fun...

Oh, I didn't realize that's what you meant. I've literally never used the "export using Compressor" option. Not even sure why it exists.