Distributed Encoding?

Anyone try this out yet? I am wondering what the benefits are of having two machines hooked over Gbit ethernet would be.

I would think people with multiple computers would be all over this. I have not seen many topics on the subject though. Am I missing something? Is something else needed to make this work like xgrid, or something expensive?



Post Edited (05-24-05 11:44)

"two machines hooked over Gbit ethernet would be."
Marginal. You'd need to buy 2 separate suite licenses or the net check on program run will kill FCP on both machines.

Gig ethernet adds just enough overhead to bog down older machines, and it isn't fast enough to work with media cross machines (pure data rate is high enough - disk overhead at both ends is the bottle neck) in real time.

I believe Motion 2 and other elements of the suite in FCP 5 can take advantage of disributed rendering - handy if you need to render a timeline overnight or get out a DVD ASAP, but not revolutionary.

Ian

Actually, that came up here.

We don't care a whit about processing speed, we need to get forty uncompressed commercials from one G5 to another.

How? We have GigE cables from a PC install in the building. Just connect the machines?

Koz

Yep. Just connect. In that case - a network is a good thing. But I'd pull the network temporarily from any machine doing capture or playout to tape. No extra net overhead on those times is a better thing.

Ian

I can just picture the two machines trying to negotiate direction.

"Which direction do you want to send?"

"I don't care, it's up to you."

"Really, whatever you want."

"No, no. After you."

Koz

Ian,
Are you sure I would need a licence for every machine I own? It says "Share your encoding workload over multiple computers, offload encoding tasks to another machine and add encoding nodes at no extra cost" on the apple site. The "no extra cost" part of that should mean I don't need to spend any more money to use other machines to encode.

I don't think any other program in the suite offers any kind of distributed rendering out of the box. You must have something confused. I am talking about DVD Studio Pro including Apple Qmaster2 for distributed encoding.

Has anyone used Apple QMaster2? I guess when my copy of the Studio gets here I will have to test it out. It sounds interesting.

You could also put a firewire cable between the macs and use that as a network - it's as fast as GigE.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Hi Graeme,

actually I read a review of the distributed processing in Logic Pro 7 and it commented that empirical experience was that firewire networking didn't work as well as g'bit ethernet in that application.

of course that may not be comparable with FCS, but it's an interesting point.

They DID say that Firewire networking was better than 100Mbps e'net if that's all you had.

Dave

P.S. I doubt that my B&W G3 350 is going to be much use as a distributed renderer!!

DRC

That's good info to know. Thanks. I find the FW networking is great for linking two machines together to copy files, especially as a lot of older machines didn't have gigE.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Greg,

If you're moving files between two G5's, your best bet is to use FW800, but NOT in FW networking mode. Yes, FW can be used to carry ethernet, but instead, and for better file transfer speed, just use 'Target Disk Mode', as follows:

1) Connect the two G5's with a FW800 cable
2) Power down one of the two (I'd suggest leaving the 'receiving' machine up and running, power down the 'sending' machine)
3) Now, power up the 'sending' machine - Hold down the 'T' key as soon as you press the power button. Hold the 'T' key until you see a blue screen with a FW logo floating around on the screen
4) In just a moment, the internal HD of the 'sending' machine will mount on the desktop of the 'receiving' machine -- essentially, it is now an external drive, mounted via FW800
5) Drag and drop the files you want to transfer!

This assumes the two G5's are in proximity to one another. If not, you'll have to set up some sort of ethernet connection.....

Target Disk Mode is extremely useful and can be done between any two Macs with FW ports and OS 8.6 (I think) or better.

-- jeff
ESVN - Eastern Soccer Video Network
sokkerjeff@yahoo.com

in my experience,
target disk mode doesnt give you access to any internal drives other than the system drive.
and most people wont have their media there.

nick