Using several computers to encode video

[eerola]

I have 4 Macs in my home LAN, 3 MacBooks and 1 Mini. I am using the Mini as a HTPC/ DVR. Because of this, the Mini produces quite a lot of content, I want to encode (=compress) it to a Plex compatible format. Unfortunately encoding on the Mini can take quite long...

To speed this up, I decided to set up a system to distribute the encoding to the computers in my home network. I did this using the middleware from Techila, which was good because I got the project completed in one night (which is nice if you have family).

In my setup, the DVR content is on a shared drive. When I start FFMPEG encoding, the original large video will be split into suitable size smaller files. The Techila layer will automatically configure the computers in my LAN for the project and the encoded clips will be returned to the share. Finally the encoded clips will be merged together.

Yes, I know I am a geek, but now I have "private media encoding cloud"!

 

[eerola]

I decided to do a video about my distributed media encoding system since people have been asking how it really works. In my opinion, a pretty good everyday application of HPC middleware.

http://youtu.be/u0xwMJAwEI8

 

[lordonuthin]

Sounds interesting! I will have to watch the video when I get home from work...

 

[OrganMusic]

Yes, forgive if this is a stupid question, but I usually edit video in FCE on my iMac and would love a quick and easy way to offload the encoding, like when making DVDs in Toast.

I have 2 minis and a MBP all C2D, as well as a PowerBook and Powermac MDD on the home network.

 

[eerola]

Yes, forgive if this is a stupid question, but I usually edit video in FCE on my iMac and would love a quick and easy way to offload the encoding, like when making DVDs in Toast.

I have 2 minis and a MBP all C2D, as well as a PowerBook and Powermac MDD on the home network.

I have been thinking this too. I am also a Final Cut user. If FCE had the ability to use external encoders, that would be simple. It would probably go pretty much same way as archiving content from my HTPC (above). Unfortunately, Final Cut seems to be a monolith black box, which makes this difficult/ impossible.

In above FFMPEG/ HTPC case I followed the Black Box Integration approach, which is described in this Guide. Because Final Cut does not have a plug-in interface, I guess the only option with FCE would be the Seamless Integration, which is not possible for us end-users/ hobby developers.