Apple Compressor 3 - Manual (Page 132)

However, you may have a source media file with an uneven distribution of complex
scenes. For example, suppose you have a 2-hour sports program in which the first hour
is the pregame show with relatively static talking heads, and the second hour is high-action
sports footage. If this source media were evenly split into two segments, the bit-rate
allocation plan for the first segment would not be able to “donate” some of its bits to the
second segment because the segments would be processed on separate computers. The
quality of the more complex action footage in the second segment would suffer. In this
case, if your goal were ensuring the highest possible quality over the entire 2-hour
program, it would make sense to not allow job segmenting by deselecting the checkbox
at the top of the Encoder pane. This forces the job (and, therefore, the bit-rate allocation)
to be processed on a single computer.
Note: The Allow Job Segmenting checkbox affects only the segmenting of individual
jobs (source files). If you are submitting batches with multiple jobs, the distributed
processing system will continue to speed up processing by distributing (unsegmented)
jobs, even with job segmenting turned off.
For more information on variable bit-rate encoding (VBR), see Quality Tab . For more
information on the Apple Qmaster distributed processing system, see the
Distributed Processing Setup Guide, available in Compressor Help.
About AutoCluster and Unmanaged Services
Compressor includes an AutoCluster feature that makes it easy to take advantage of the
distributed processing capabilities offered by Apple Qmaster, without requiring a lot of
knowledge about how clusters are configured, setting up file sharing, and so on.
Using AutoCluster is a two-step process:
• Automatically creating Apple Qmaster service nodes as you install Final Cut Studio or
Apple Qmaster
• Selecting the “Include unmanaged services on other computers” checkbox when you
submit a Compressor batch for processing
These two steps let you harness the processing power of any number of computers on
your network without any additional effort or knowledge on your part.
See the Distributed Processing Setup Guide, available in Compressor Help, for additional
information.
132 Chapter 8 Finalizing Jobs and Submitting Batches