Can I connect 3 Macs together to encode 1 M2V?

[wheezy]

So this is just a thought, but I have my sig PB, my brother in law has a 1.5ghz 15" PB, and my sister is bringing home her 17" G5 iMac. I have several hours of DV that I need to convert to M2V so I can burn a DVD. I plan to do the encoding on her G5 cause it'll be a lot faster, but, I'm wondering if I could link all 3 together so all 3 processors are working towards this? I know this is how supercomputers are built, I'm just curious as to how you do it, and if I could? I don't really need to, but, I'm just wondering if I could, cause, ya know, that would be hecka'cool for sure.

 

[eva01]

if the program is xGrid compliant i believe it would work.

Good luck finding an xGrid program ^_^

 

[wheezy]

I'll do it via Final Cut 4.5 QT Converstion export to M2V, or I could use Compressor.

Is xGrid the software that controls the processors to work together?

 

[eva01]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/xgrid/

reading is believing

and i am going to say it is highly highly unlikely that this will work at all for what you are doing.

 

[jsw]

I'll do it via Final Cut 4.5 QT Converstion export to M2V, or I could use Compressor.

Is xGrid the software that controls the processors to work together?

Yes - if you go to System Preferences...->Sharing->Services, at the bottom you'll see an Xgrid option, which you need to set up and enable. If you do this on all your Macs, they'll share the load when using Xgrid-aware apps.

Sadly, I don't have FCP, so I don't know if it's Xgrid-aware.

 

[pepeleuepe]

Found this MR thread it has some good links in it. From what I quickly read, it looks like Compressor can be used with XGrid, but FCP can't. Might be old info though, check it out.

 

[wheezy]

Awesome guys, thanks, I'll take a look into this and see what I can do.

 

[wheezy]

How do I know what apps are X Grid aware?

 

[wheezy]

Well, I've connected my powerbook and an iMac G5 together via xGrid, but, now I'm lost.

 

[regre7]

I know that with professional apps like Sony Vegas (probably Premiere Pro, too) you can install a render client on the others and it will share the load. I've got no idea about FCP, though.

 

[dailo]

I think you need to use Qmaster with FCP.

 

[ppc_michael]

You should be able to do this, assuming your computers are networked together. If you have Compressor, you should also have Apple Qmaster installed. On all your computers, go in to System Preferences and in the "Other" row there should be Apple Qmaster. Go in there and click the "Start Sharing" button on all your computers.

Then in Compressor, at the bottom of the Batch window there's a "Cluster:" drop=down menu. I'm guessing that's where you'd choose the cluster of computers to render. I've never done this and I'm mostly guessing, but hopefully that should give you enough information to play around with.

 

[4God]

Actually, use Qmaster with Compressor to distribute encoding.
Link: http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/compressor/

 

[disconap]

That is friggin amazing. I just decided to upgrade to Tiger.

 

[zim]

Great discussion.. added question: I have a PowerMac G4 sitting in my closet, would there be a benefit to using Qmaster and Compressor with just two computers? I do a lot of video rendering over night and typically everything is complete when I awake but if adding a second computer to the process would help then I might dust the thing off and power it up.

 

[wheezy]

That is awesome that it's all built in, I'm only running compressor that was available with FCP 4/4.5, so I'll have to see if that works, I hope so cause that would just be, ya know, awesome. I don't do too much encoding right now, but ya never know if I just might need to someday! Thanks for your input and links and help on this, really! I'll let you know where I end up.

 

[wheezy]

Well, FCP 4.5 and Compressor have QMaster, but I don't think it does the same thing as QMaster 2 so I never fully got it to work. However, I'm glad we all kinda learned how possible this is. Good luck ya'll's!

 

[SC68Cal]

This is really interesting to me as well, since i have a powermac G4 with duals and a tiBook, and possibly will upgrade to a iMac in the future, it'd be pretty interesting to spread some java compiling across multiple computers, since it takes a bit of time on PowerPC architecture already.

Plus, it'd be a neat bragging right for all those Peeecee types.