Apple QMaster, Redline and Render Farm

[Angus Wallace]

I've been trawling through posts all day trying to find out how you actually get Redline to work with the QMaster cluster, and although I've got snippets of information I can't find a definitive ABC of how to do it.

So far I think I've figured out once you have RedAlert/Rushes installed you can export from RedRushes, using the "Export Script" function, a .txt file which is a batch file of the Red files to be converted. You can get this to work with QMaster...

But can anyone throw any clues on how you get it into QMaster? A Step by step run through would be tremendous.

Many thanks in advance.
Gus

 

[Agustin Goya]

have you checked : http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=18259 ?

 

[Angus Wallace]

I have seen that thread before.

It still doesn't give a step by step run through of how it can be done.

I'm sure I can't be the only person wrestling with how best to do this.

Many thanks,
Gus

 

[simonpeterarnold]

I have seen that thread before.

It still doesn't give a step by step run through of how it can be done.

I'm sure I can't be the only person wrestling with how best to do this.

Many thanks,
Gus

Ok Angus here you go.


1. Make sure all the computers are on the same subnet as each other on your netwoek including the machine you use for ingest.

2. All network drives, local drives or portable drives that are used for ingest and export material must be mounted on each node in exactly the same way.

3. Install and setup Qmaster on all computers in your setup including the ingest machine. It comes bundled with FCP so you can copy the package on to each node. It does not require a license so you can use it as many times as you like.

4. Install Redline and Quicktime codecs on all computers in your farm.

5. Install Redrushes on your ingest machine.


Setting Up Qmaster

After installing Qmaster on each machinen click on system preferences and choose the Qmaster icon to configure.

a) First you need to configure the machine you use for ingest this will become the cluster controller for Qmaster. You need to select Services and Cluster Controller in the Share this Computer as section.

b) In services make sure that rendering is switched on and that both share and and managed is ticked.

c) Select how many cores you want to assign for rendering in Options for Selected Services.

d) Name your Quickcluster so node 1 is node 1 etc and make sure that Include unmanaged servies from other computers is ticked.

e) Click on Start Sharing.

f) Repeat for each computer in your setup, although for all the rest you only need to select Services Only in the Share this Computer as section.

g) From Applications choose Apple Qadministrator. This allows you to set up all the computers in one big cluster.

h) Click on + under Cluster and rename your cluster to what you want.

i) In the Qmaster Service Browser you should see all of the nodes you previously setup.

j) Drag these in to the controller window to add them to your cluster.

k) Select the computer you use for ingest as the controller.

l) Make sure Make use of Unmanaged Services is ticked.

m) Click on Apply to finish the setup.


That should be it for Qmaster. If not all of your computers do not show up I would consult the manual on QMaster setup.

I have a script that is running all the time watching a folder on my desktop. I then use Redrushes to set up all the parameters for the Redline conversions. Then a script is exprted from Redrushes. This is copied into the watched folder on my desktop. The script then parses all the information from the RedRushes script into Qmaster and off it all goes. You can monitor it from the batch monitor that is part of the OS.

The scripts.

Put the script on your ingest station/Qmaster Cluster Contorller machine. It can go in any folder but for ease of use we have created a folder in Applications for it called redline.

Here is the script we have called it redline.sh

#!/bin/bash
cd /Applications/redline
timestamp=`date +"%d_%m_%y.%H.%M"`
for file in *.txt
do
# create script from input file
for line in `cat $file| tr -s " " ":"`
do
echo "#"
echo -n "/Applications/Apple\ Qmaster.app/Contents/MacOS/Apple\ Qmaster -clustername pfl_xserve -command \"Shell\" -options "
echo -n "\<command\>"
echo -n $line | tr ':' ' ' | sed -e "s/[^a-zA-Z0-9._]/\\\&/g" | tr -d "\n"
echo "\<\/command\> &"
done > run.sh

# run the script
sh run.sh
mv $file completed/$file.$timestamp
done


Then to run in the background you need to edit crontab to run it at regular intervals.

* * * * * /Applications/redline/redline.sh > /dev/null 2&>1

 

[Angus Wallace]

Fantastic!

Many, many thanks for that, its just what the doctor ordered.

Gus

 

[simonpeterarnold]

Fantastic!

Many, many thanks for that, its just what the doctor ordered.

Gus

No problem Angus. Just an ammendment. Were I have pfl_xserve in the script replace that for the name of your own cluster.

 

[Dominique Grenier]

Any way of using an old G4 in this system? Maybe as the controller?