Serato Video General Discussion

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Converting Videos/ Using render farm of g5s/g4s with visual hubs network xgrid
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Converting Videos/ Using render farm of g5s/g4s with visual hubs network xgrid

Freedom 12:24 AM - 25 February, 2008
So here in hawaii people seem to give away old g5s like old haloween candy.
Still working too.
I have setup about 5 computers (about 24 ghz in all) in a network (all etherneted togheter to Main Computer) These computers do nothing but remian on.

Now this is where its fun....
If you have a mac Visual Hub supports Xgrid....
Xgrid- Simply is the ability to take multiple process and distrubute them over mutliple computers lessing the load on each computer and speeding up processing time.

As for conversion times Ive gotten this info from
www.isquint.org

"The benchmark is performed with VisualHub 1.20b5 with the following settings: MP4 and standard quality. The video files are xvid copies of the first 4 episodes of hak5 weighting in at around 350mb each."

Machine 1 No xgrid enabled
Start: 19:53
End: 21:04
Total: 1 hour 11 minutes

Machine 1 | Xgridified :
Start: 22:26
End: 23:26
Total: 1 hour (on the nose)

Machine 1 & machine 2 | Xgridified :
Start: 21:42
End: 22:18
Total: 36 minutes
-----------------------------------------------

As for my Personal tests I ran mp4 h264 and had 4 60mb file music videos on g5 dual 2 gig

Machine 1
44 min total conversion - 4 videos

Machine 1 xgrid enabled
About 37 min

Machine 1 xgrid machine 2 xgrid machine 3 xgrid machine 4 xgrid (Didnt have all 5 hooked up at time)
12 minutes. - 4 videos


No Here are the Pros and Cons from what Ive done
---------------------------------
PROS
- Xgrid set-up and working you'll simply be able to click one extra button in the visualhub interface to have it distribute the work across the Mac's on your network
- You can cut your Encoding time in half or better
- You can enable xgrid on just your main dual and use the other processor.
- You DO NOT NEED VISUAL HUB On the Network COmputers Only Main COmputer.
COns-
The two pass option is ignored (This is a sad one)
Can't Convert direct from DVD Disc

From what I read it only takes a file and sends it to a computer not pieces of files.
So if your using slower computers it wont speed things up considerably.
Example G5-11 min usually conversion time
g4-24 min to 30min
So then your network of 4 g4s would take 30 min for 4 videos
instead of 11 minutes for 4 g5s on a network.
And probally 4 min for 4 videos in a 4 macbook network.
etc

------------------------------------------------------------

If you wanna setup your network here are some helpful links.

Chapter-12 will guide you about xgrid
www.techspansion.com

Download This Program to Automatically Open Ports For Xgrid
www.geekmeetsgirl.net

An In depth Guide Setting Up Xgrid/Has a nice graph of benchmark Conversion Times
www.isquint.org
--------------------------------------------------------------

All in all Its a good Backup plan for those days you need to convert alot of videos in a little bit of time.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Me Im still Converting alot on macbook pro, but every week I build up videos to convert and jus tload them into farm. ones i want better qaulity I send to macbook pro.
---------
Hope this helps sorry for long rant had to help another person set up one so thought i might just write it here too.
Freedom 12:26 AM - 25 February, 2008
Dont know why i had g4s in main title I just was using them as example.
Use g5s or macpros if availble. :)
nik39 12:30 AM - 25 February, 2008
Nice post. :)
nik39 12:36 AM - 25 February, 2008
(minor) CON:
Quote:

Number of files
Xgrid jobs are granular to the file-level. Meaning, each file to be converted becomes its own job. If you only convert one
video at a time, only one processor of one agent will be working on the video - potentially negating the entire reasoning
behind batch processing. Xgrid Encoding is best left for when you are converting multiple videos at a time.
Freedom 12:44 AM - 25 February, 2008
Thanks nik39 had a nice sunday to spare.

Thought I would Show some more usefull Visual Hub plugins

oimo.geekmeetsgirl.net

this link is for a plugin for a taking advantage of applescripting in VisualHUB
It allows you to take one file and convert it to many different Files at once.
take your Vob and convert it to Mp4 h264 and Mov h264 Maybe AVI and MPEG all at once, if you wanted to see which one looked the best a good way.


then this site had this too.

www.geekmeetsgirl.net

* let you view a list of the current logs
* Will now let you open a selected file by double-clicking
* let you trim the fat from that list, at the moment it keeps the last 7 days worth of logs
* let you prepare a log for posting in the support forums
Basically its the log shredder and Log maker smaller-er rolled into one package with a GUI to help you out.

(If your into logs) Like a few of us around here
Freedom 12:47 AM - 25 February, 2008
Yea thats what I tried to say in the above statement that Using it on one file
Doesnt do diddly.
But Mutltiple files it will distrbute each file to its own computer or processor.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Hence my Constant Conversion on the Macbook Pro and sometimes my friends Qaud Core macpro for single files nothing beats it :)
sixxx 2:29 AM - 25 February, 2008
Quote:

Machine 1
44 min total conversion - 4 videos

Machine 1 xgrid enabled
About 37 min

Machine 1 xgrid machine 2 xgrid machine 3 xgrid machine 4 xgrid (Didnt have all 5 hooked up at time)
12 minutes. - 4 videos



Man. I can convert 4 videos in 20 minutes using my $500 macbook pro core 2 duo without all this hassle.
D-Twizzle 2:43 AM - 25 February, 2008
different codecs will have different encode times. converting to h.264 can take twice as long as divx, and obviously double pass will double that again..
djpuma_gemini 4:47 AM - 25 February, 2008
Yeah I use my MBP with double pass and it takes about 6 minutes per file. I could xgid my to MPB's together, but why bother. I like two pass better.

Thanks for the tips though.
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