Networked Rendering

starixiom wrote on 12/16/2002, 8:55 PM
I read all of the time how production houses use networked computers to render movies and on those computers they have some from of Unix on them SGI--> Maybe Linux. I have always wondered if i could replicate this on a smaller scale using VV3 on my Dual P3 800mhz setup and some smaller computers? I was looking at the new P4/ Athalon Shuttle solutions from various vendors. They look very efficient and self serving for this purpose. The Dual P3 would have WINDOWS XP on it and serve as the main production tool ( i know your thinking why dont you just use the faster shuttle computer, well, i need a full tower for all its pci slots and bays) and the smaller Shuttle would have linux on it doing all/ or majority of the rendering probably at P4 speeds.

1) Is it possible to have VV to render on a different computer/ different operating system (lets say a debian/ or freebsd setup)?

2) I would probably have to format the Shuttle on a NTFS file system, What other type of file formatting would i have to do in order for the Windows Xp System recognize the other system and the final output?

3) Aside from the shuttle questions, How can i use the both processors on my Windows Xp (the Dual P3 machine) effeciently when doing rendering? VV seems to use half the speed for both processors instead of 100% for each.

4) Would there be inherent problems transferring large files over my home network? Dropped frames, Audio sync problems, DIfferent OSs trying to convert the file, etc?/

Recap: Dual P3 would have Windows Xp/ Smaller Shuttle P4 would have Debian/ Freebsd

Thanks in advance for any input. Im willing to do research on this, so if you have any keywords that i need to search for, please throw them out. I am not very fluent in the art of networking computers for something like this. I just want to know if it is even worth pursuing.
I would like to add that this is my first post on this forum and i think you people are great in your responses. I normally dont post on internet forums but after reading for a couple weeks i figured i would get a very mature reply.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/16/2002, 10:10 PM
Vegas doesn't support network rendering of any sort. Probably the only thing you could do along these lines would be to have multiple computers all running Vegas (with their own license, of course), place a copy of all the media files and the project file on each computer, select specific loop regions on each computer (touching, but not overlapping), and render to a DV AVI file selecting "render loop region only". After this is done, collect all the partial output files, copy them all to one computer, drop them all sequentially on the timeline, and render one final composite of all the partial files. Doesn't really seem worth the effort.

As far as question 4 is concerned, if Vegas could do network rendering, there wouldn't be any sync or lost frame problems. Each instance of Vegas would simply wait until it has all the necessary data before rendering each frame.