Using Xgrid to speed up render
I have been doing a lot of video editing on my Power Mac lately, and have noticed that some of the render times are pretty lengthy. Usually, they are about 20 minutes or so, but I have seen it stretch to several hours in length before. However, what's odd is that these aren't any major renders or anything, just a quick render every hour or so to update all of my unrendered files and applied effects. This is a waste of time that I believe I could be cut down by using an Xgrid. I don't have Mac OS X Server, but I was able to install the Server Admin Tools and create an Xgrid from there. Due to issues with the Leopard Server Admin Tools, I have installed Tiger on an external drive for my Power Mac, and am using 10.4.11 right now.
Concerning the state of my Xgrid.... it is fully functional right now, but I can only give it tasks through the terminal. Unfortunately, a simple test with the Xgrid functionality in VisualHub failed as VisualHub's converting jobs were constantly being cancelled for an unknown reason. Anyway, I have 3 computers in my Xgrid: My Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0Ghz), an iMac G5 (single 2.0Ghz), and an iBook G4 (single 1.064Ghz).
So what I really want is some way for FCE to send it's rendering tasks to the Xgrid controller (my Power Mac), but I don't know how to do that. Thanks in advance,
-Trevor
PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0Ghz 4GB RAM; iMac G5 17 inch Rev. B: 2.0 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 20GB 4th Gen. iPod; 16GB iPod Touch; 320GB WD My Book; 500GB Maxtor OneTouch