helmutnn
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Q: How to activate distributed rendering?

Hi,

 

as importing many/bigger clips and rendering them in Final Cut Pro X takes some time i wanted to use the distributed rendering for that to use all the macs in the network. Starting Final Cut Pro X on all these machines did not seem to have any effect out of the box, and Final Cut does not contain no obvious settings to enable distributed rendering in the preferences. But some day i noticed the litte arrow at the background actions window at the last line "sharing". I clicked on it and share monitor opened up, but it just showed the local machine. As there was still nothing to configure here i became curious and searched a little and found out, that i would need something called "QMaster". As there was no obvious way to get this i purchased compressor, which seems to contain this. After installing qmaster i was able to setup each mach so that they are listed in the share monitor and are visible from each other. But: There is still no distributed rendering happing, and i am getting out of clues now on how to activate this feature for importing and rendering clips. Can anyone help me on getting the distributed rendering to work?

 

When creating a film i now have the option to send it to compressor. When i do so it opens compressor (btw. this program has a terrible user interface) and when i click on "send" it opens a selection, where i can select a cluster and it only presents one entry to select, my computer. So how has this to be set up to wark flawlessly? Or is this feature not working yet?

 

Thanks for your help in advance...

Posted on Jun 10, 2012 5:34 AM

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helmutnn

Q: How to activate distributed rendering?

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  • by spicemix,

    spicemix spicemix Jul 12, 2013 3:25 PM in response to helmutnn
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    Jul 12, 2013 3:25 PM in response to helmutnn

    I know, late response, but since this comes up on search I thought I'd post a hard-won answer.

     

    The way to work with clusters today is via Compressor only. And Compressor can't work on a grid with something that's not entirely inside a QuickTime container. That's what it uses to slice and distribute the processing.

     

    So the first thing you must do is Share the default Master File for your FCPX project. Set it to open in Compressor to save you a step. That will render the project into a ProRes file on the computer you share it from (so pick a fast one), which you may then transcode into any of your preferred delivery formats in Compressor across your cluster. Just drag up the preferred formats, click submit, and then pick your cluster to do the transcoding on.

     

    This works out OK in practice; it's a lot easier for Apple to handle on their end because they just have to slice up a ProRes file for the different CPU's and then stitch it back together for delivery. They gave up on Compressor or Qmaster working directly with an unrendered FCPX project; I imagine there were too many bugs with various plugins and contingencies etc.

     

    Pity they don't explain this more clearly though right in the program. They could have "Transcode on Cluster..." as a default Share destination, which would then tell you what you need to do, even though it would be exactly what I just described. But I guess that would violate Apple Minimalism.