Shared jobs distribution in Compressor 4.1

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Shared jobs distribution in Compressor 4.1

Hi Guys,

Nice and simple, just couldn't think of a title.
We've been using Compressor 3.5, but have now upgraded to mavericks and so want to move to Compressor 4.1.

Doing some testing with Compressor 4.1, I've activated distributed processing through the my computer/shared computers settings panes, and have successfully distributed the batch to 3 computers.

The two issues I'm facing are:

1) Even though the number of 'additional instances' on all computers are '1', I can see an instance of "CompressorTranscoder" and "CompressorTranscoderX", but only one instance actually has any load on it and the compression isn't any faster.

2) When using a group to distribute the batch, if the batch consists of a single file, only one of the 3 computers will actually work on it. Instead of splitting the file into chunks for each computer to help out, it leaves the entire batch to be done by one of the service nodes. If I create a batch that consists of 3 files, each computer will compress one file each.

Any help on these matters would be amazing!

Specs of the MacBooks (All three are identical):

MacBook Pro Retina

Mavericks 10.9.1

Compressor 4.1.1
Intel Core i7 @ 2.6GHz

16GB DDR3 RAM

1TB SSD

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Mar 27, 2014 5:16 PM

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Answer 1

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AnonimaKontonWTF

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100 points

Mar 27, 2014 5:35 PM in response to eid0rb

1. If you have a MBP, you will only be able to enable 1 additional instance. Distributed encoding is determined by the setting. Does you setting have allow segmenting enabled checked?

2. Same as point one. Apple Devices settings by default dont have segmenting enabled, as well as any variation of single pass H.264.

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Answer 2

eid0rb Author

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Mar 27, 2014 5:49 PM in response to AnonimaKontonWTF

Thanks for the reply!

I can't see settings anywhere in Compressor to enable segmenting.
Could you please guide me?

EDIT: Nevermind, I found it! For some reason it's greyed out, though?

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Answer 3

Mar 27, 2014 5:59 PM in response to eid0rb

Yeah, if you are using the built in Apple Devices settings, these cant be edited. What you want to do is duplicate it, then you can click on the Video tab and check multi pass, and then you can turn on segmenting. BUT, I wouldnt do it. Using the default setting and single pass will enable the hardware encoder, which will be faster than using two instances and doing multi pass.

A better setting to look at is one of the Video Sharing Services settings, where its on by default. But again, anything that uses H.264 I would use single pass to use the hardware encoder. There is almost no difference in the quality, and its much faster. But quality is subjective, so try it for yourself.

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Answer 4

eid0rb Author

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Mar 27, 2014 6:01 PM in response to AnonimaKontonWTF

Beautiful - thanks for the help mate!

I'll test it out and see what results I get 🙂

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