Rendering Linux and Apple?

[Imran Farouk]

I've checked the web for the last month looking for ways to do this, checked through the forum for various programs from past stuff...

Basically I don't want to shift totally to linux but its definetly easier to cluster it seems and I'm building an i7 cluster, its either that or go Hackintosh which I'm not exactly too over the moon about to say the least.

Is there anyway to say, do Final Cut Sequence rendering of the final edits in Linux, so a file type and program that'll easily work between the two? Similarly for AE...

Working the cluster off of what one of the users here did, the Helmer cluster which was Linux based. Though pushing it a bit further with i7s and eventually put a Nivida or ATI card in each one. All still planning but still don't want to shoot myself in the foot...

 

[Stephen Gentle]

I know Shake and Nuke have a Linux render clients, but Final Cut and After Effects don't (as far as I'm aware).

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

No, your best bet would be to migrate the project to a platform that runs on Linux if this is your hardware/OS prerogative.

Just wondering out loud here... the only thing I could imagine that might work like this would be to use a Linux bridge client that could talk to QMaster, then you could send your sequences to compressor and network render them via QMaster over your Linux render farm. However, I'm pretty sure this doesn't exists nor would be very feasible to do.

Also wondering out loud about CS5, and it's ability to run on Linux... wouldn't that be cool.

 

[Derek Marcinyshyn]

Smedge is a cross platform render farm management tool.
http://www.uberware.net/smedge3/index.php

Frantic Films changed their site around but they have a cross platform render farm management tool which looked very promising. Its called Deadline. I'm sure they will update their site soon.
http://www.franticfilms.com

I've only ever used Blender on Linux. One day I'll set up a render farm but for now I'm fine just rendering overnight.

Yes it would be nice if CS5 was available on Linux.

 

[Stephen Gentle]

Yes it would be nice if CS5 was available on Linux.

That would be incredibly awesome, but I don't think Adobe would do that... The guy in charge of the Flash Player for Linux seems to spend most of his time complaining about it having more than one API to support...

And he's very melodramatic about it - I mean, so what if there's three different major audio APIs on Linux? Instead of whining about it, they could just use libraries like OpenAL or libcanberra which give you a unified interface and handle the different APIs for you...

 

[Ivaylo Getov]

Is there anyway to say, do Final Cut Sequence rendering of the final edits in Linux, so a file type and program that'll easily work between the two? Similarly for AE...

I know this is an old thread, but I just discovered this and thought I'd share. I havent tried this myself yet, but I was also thinking of putting together a small linux cluster and trying it out.

Basically, if you have one mac to dedicate as an "Intermediary Node" running Qmaster, that computer can then distribute to an "Extended Cluster" of Unix or Linux machines through SSH.

http://documentation.apple.com/en/appleqmaster/usermanual/index.html#chapter=1%26section=6%26tasks=true

Hope this helps. Post back here if you end up trying this...

 

[Charles Angus]

Basically, if you have one mac to dedicate as an "Intermediary Node" running Qmaster, that computer can then distribute to an "Extended Cluster" of Unix or Linux machines through SSH.

Those nodes still need the software to do the rendering on them. QMaster and other render managers only oversee rendering done by external processes - they don't actually do the render.

So, the intermediary node method would work for distributing a Shake script out to a bunch of Linux nodes, but it's not going to help with Compressor or FCP.