Compressor and QMaster -- Huh?

Just got FCPX and Compressor and want to use two systems to share the transcoding. It all seems to be "working" but I've noticed the following and wish confirmation:

1. If you go directly from FCPX to Compressor you can't select a QMaster cluster. If you export from FCPX and then run Compressor on that file then you can select a QMaster cluster.

2. The cluster controller must be the computer on which you submit the job (otherwise I get errors).

3. Even with all of this, with other computers offering Compressor services, if you submit to "This Computer" QMaster seems to run anyway as tasks get distributed among the systems.

This all seems baffling and certainly isn't reflected in the (meager) documentation!

More issues

Hmm, so nobody is using Compressor and Qmaster?

Anyway I found another "flaw" -- If TimeMachine is being used it appears to attempt to backup the temporary (video) files Qmaster creates in (it appears to be) "~/Library/Application Support/Apple Qmaster". This folder needs to be added to TimeMachine's ignore list.

Unami said:

that's it, afaik. time for another fcpx feature-request...

Click to expand...

I'd expect it would be more a Compressor feature request. However Compressor works better and faster when I export from FCP and compress that file rather than running Compressor from FCPX. Needs much more disk space, but that exported file is just temporary.

It seems to come and go.

I produced two hours of video separated into three parts Tuesday night with no problems.

Doing everything exactly the same last night (with another 2 hours of video split into four parts), exported Master Files and then dropped them into Compressor. Compressor only gave me the option to submit to the cluster controller on my iMac (I'm running Compressor on my MBP) and did not offer either the cluster controller on the MBP nor Local Machine (not using QMaster at all). It worked even though previously I could never successfully submit to a cluster controller other than on the machine running Compressor.

I'm ready to put down my experience with FCPX as being in the same category as "Professsional Tools" I've used for many years in my field, Electrical Engineering. They are rediculously expensive yet full of bugs. I put it down to low sales volume and a captive market. (FYI, FCPX+Compressor+Motion is a bargain compared to the cost of EE CAD tools. I've used some that approach $100k/year/seat.)