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Two MacBook Pros for blu-ray encoding

I've been trying to use two MacBook Pros together with Qmaster to speed up rendering a Blu-ray disc in Compressor.

I've followed the directions, was able to network the computers and set up Qmaster on both respectively but Qmaster does not employ the second computer when I submit.

I recently read that clusters cannot be used for encoding H264 - Is that right?

Macbook Pro 2.4, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jan 29, 2011 6:39 AM

Reply
6 replies

Jan 31, 2011 4:23 PM in response to John F. Whitehead

Hi john,
Thanks for the response.
I'm using the blu-ray template.
I explored the "allow job segmenting" feature and it's grey'd out for h264 for Blu-ray (264 extension) but it's enabled if I change it to h264 for DVD Studio Pro ( mov extension)

weird.

This is interesting though. If export to my hard disc does this mean I can author HD 1080 content using DVDSP to author the disc by creating a disc image? Then make a disc image and burn in toast.
I'm getting a little off topic with that. I have to learn more about these two flavors of h264.

So to recap: when I start with the BD template and it's set to encode h264 for BD the Job segmenting is deactivated.

Thanks for your help.

g

Feb 1, 2011 8:27 PM in response to Goldfish

Yes, the Apple preset has job segmenting turned off.

The reason is that with job segmenting, you can't do multi-pass encoding that looks at the entire video. If the video has consistent encoding needs for its entire duration, this may be no big deal and job segmenting might have no noticeable quality loss, so you can create your own version of the preset as suggested above.

But not knowing your content or requirements, Apple uses the default that provides higher quality at the expense of speed.

For a more detailed explanation with examples of when you'd want to use job segmenting or not, see this section in the Compressor manual:
http://documentation.apple.com/en/compressor/usermanual/index.html#chapter=8%26s ection=6

Feb 2, 2011 8:14 AM in response to Studio X

Studio X wrote:
Try duplicating the Pre Set then selecting job segmenting in the copy.


X,
The preset called "h264 for blu-ray" was not in any of the preset folders. Admittedly, I'm still not clear on the nomenclature for settings in Compressor. But there seems to be a difference between "template" and "presets"

So I duplicated the Quicktime h264 preset and used that - when I changed the File Format in the inspector to "h264 for blu-ray" job segmenting was again defeated.
Where is the actual preset for "h264 for blu-ray" located?

John F. Whitehead wrote:
The reason is that with job segmenting, you can't do multi-pass encoding that looks at the entire video... For a more detailed explanation with examples of when you'd want to use job segmenting or not, see this section in the Compressor manual...


John,
Thanks - I did read that. But when I open the BD template multi pass is disabled by default. So I didn't think that would be the reason for Job segmenting to be defeated.

But just to test the theory I created my own custom presets based on the BD template and the same symptoms persist:
As long as File format is set to "h264 for Blu-ray" job segmenting is defeated. Even if multi-pass is not selected.

If I change the file format to h264 for DVDSP (or anything else) the job segmenting is now active and automatically checked on.

Thanks for the input.
g

Feb 2, 2011 9:49 AM in response to Goldfish

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if this is caused by a licensing issue.

Final Cut Studio is required for Blu-ray encoding. This is documented a ridiculous number of times in the Compressor manual with statements like

+Note: Blu-ray output options are available only on computers that have Final Cut Studio installed.+

and

+The distributed processing feature is limited to computers that have Final Cut Studio installed.+

Since Qmaster nodes don't necessarily (don't usually?) have Final Cut Studio installed, just the default Compressor libraries, perhaps Compressor is making it so you can't accidentally send the job to a node that can't handle it.

Unfortunately it seems to not allow you to override this setting, even if you do have Final Cut Studio installed on all your rendering nodes.

Or perhaps there's something about Blu-ray encoding (like encryption) that would preclude you from segmenting the job.

Also, interestingly, Telestream's Episode doesn't have presets to encode Blu-ray H.264 at all.

Two MacBook Pros for blu-ray encoding

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