[ This article was first published in the October, 2009, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]
Mohamed Selim, in Cairo, writes:
Let me just start off by saying that without your help, i would not be the Editor i am today. Thank you for everything.
I have a problem in my work flow and i figured you would know how to solve it.
I setup a cluster between two 8 core MacPros, I’m trying to convert a 5 min (6 GB) file with the “DVD-Best quality 90 minute” preset, but i customized it to de-interlace the file. When i submit it process the file on one core on the “B” machine, not the “A” machine (service controller)…
I tried many times and always it does the same. In addition, when i change the preset to WEB-High, its acts as expected..it splits the file into 20 segments and process on all cores of both machines.
Larry replies: Mohamed, if you are using Final Cut Studio 2, QMaster is notoriously unreliable. To the point that I no longer recommend using it.
Instead, you are far better off using System Preferences > Qmaster to enable multi-processor compressing on a single multi-core MacPro. To do this, click the Options for selected service and set the number of processors you want to use for compression. The more you select, the slower other active applications will run.
The other gating factor to using QMaster to render between multiple computers successfully is that your host system needs to send your video files to the other compression system, which can often take longer than just compressing the files on a single system.
I have been told this problem has been much improved in Final Cut Studio (3), but I have not yet had time to test it.
