Late-Breaking News About Qmaster 2.3.1
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Late-Breaking News About Apple Qmaster 2 This document provides updated information about Apple Qmaster 2 and covers these topics:  Late-Breaking News About Apple Qmaster 2.3.1 (p. 2)  Previous Release Information About Apple Qmaster 2.3 (p. 2)  Previous Release Information About Apple Qmaster 2.1 (p. 2)  Previous Release Information About Apple Qmaster 2.0.1 (p. 4)  Previous Release Information About Apple Qmaster 2.0 (p. 5) This document may be updated as versions of Apple Qmaster are released or new information becomes available. You can check for updated information by choosing Help > Late-Breaking News when Apple Qmaster is open. For the latest information about product updates, tips and techniques, and qualified third-party devices, visit the Shake website at http://www.apple.com/shake. For the latest support information from AppleCare, choose Apple Qmaster Support from the Apple Qmaster Help menu or visit the Apple Qmaster support site at http://www.apple.com/support/qmaster. To receive automatic notification about new support issues, use Safari to bookmark the AppleCare RSS page at http://docs.info.apple.com/rss/qmaster.rss. See Safari Help for more information about configuring RSS feeds. There is no late-breaking information about Apple Qmaster 2.2, which was not released to the public. 1 Late-Breaking News About Apple Qmaster 2.3.1 Apple Qmaster 2.3.1 addresses compatibility issues. This update is recommended for all Apple Qmaster 2.3 users. Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard Support Apple Qmaster 2.3.1 addresses Mac OS X v10.5 compatibility issues for customers using Apple Qmaster 2.3. Using Compressor Distributed Processing with Mac OS X Server v10.5 To use the Compressor distributed processing feature with Mac OS X Server v10.5 Leopard, you must manually enable NFS. To enable NFS for Mac OS X Server, do one of the following: m Use the Server Admin application to enable NFS. For additional information, see Mac OS X Server Help. m In the command line, enter the following: qmaster$ sudo nfsd enable Previous Release Information About Apple Qmaster 2.3 Apple Qmaster 2.3 addresses performance issues and improves stability. This update is recommended for all Apple Qmaster 2.1 users. Xsan Compatibility Xsan 1.3 is not compatible with Compressor’s Apple Qmaster distributed processing system when Xsan media drives are used for cluster (scratch) storage. To use Xsan with Apple Qmaster 2.3, update to Xsan 1.4. To download and install Xsan 1.4, go to:  http://www.apple.com/support/xsan Previous Release Information About Apple Qmaster 2.1 This version of Apple Qmaster is designed to run natively on both PowerPC-based and Intel-based Macintosh computers. The following information is additional late-breaking news about Apple Qmaster 2.1. Distributed Processing and QuickTime Versions If you are using the Apple Qmaster distributed processing system with Compressor or Shake, all nodes (computers) in a cluster must have the same version of QuickTime installed. To download the most recent version of QuickTime, go to:  http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/mac.html 2 QuickTime Movie Output from Shake and Mac OS X Dependencies If you are using Apple Qmaster to render Shake jobs as QuickTime movie output, every service node in the Apple Qmaster cluster must be running Mac OS X v10.4or higher. Using Apple Qmaster 2 with an NFS Server By default, Apple Qmaster uses /etc/exports to define its Cluster Storage export. This can cause a conflict if you defined an NFS export in your local Netinfo database. When you enable a controller using Apple Qmaster 2 or later, Apple Qmaster will use /etc/exports, not entries defined in your Netinfo database. To work around this issue, either move the exports to /etc/exports, or move the controller to a computer that doesn’t export anything. Apple Qmaster and After Effects If you use the Apple Qmaster distributed processing system with Adobe After Effects, please review the following guidelines:  In order to use After Effects with Apple Qmaster, the After Effects application and all of its plug-ins must be installed on each node (computer) in an Apple Qmaster cluster.  The following template is a good starting point for using the Generic Render plug-in to render After Effects projects: [EXECUTABLE] -project [INPUT] -comp "Comp 1" -RStemplate "Multi-Machine Settings" -OMtemplate "Multi-Machine Sequence" -s [START FRAME] -e [END FRAME] -output [ITEM]/strategies[####].psd Where: [EXECUTABLE] = /Applications/Adobe\ After\ Effects\ 6.5/aerender [INPUT] = /SHARED_VOLUME/Projects/AEProjs/Wine_Country/QMproject.aep [START FRAME] = 0 [END FRAME] = 544 [STEPS] = Not Used [ITEM] = /SHARED_VOLUME/Projects/AEProjs/Wine_Country/output In the example above, “Comp 1” is the name of the composition in your After Effects project and “strategies[####].psd” is the output file name. Since you cannot select an output filename in the template’s Item field before it has been rendered, first select the output directory, then add the filename to the Item field. Note: In the example, /SHARED_VOLUME/Projects/ is the shared volume. If you created the project on a computer that is not using the shared volume, copy the project to the shared volume, open After Effects, and re-link any missing media.  After Effects makes good use of multiprocessor systems, but on projects that are not CPU-bound, two rendering services per node gives you better results.  After Effects custom template information is stored in Users/username/Library/ Preferences/Adobe After Effects 6.5 Prefs/. If you would like to use custom Render Setting and Output Module templates in an Apple Qmaster cluster, copy this file to the same location on each node in the cluster. Then you can specify your templates when using the -RStemplate or -OMtemplate options. 3 Installing the Apple Intermediate Codec The Apple Intermediate Codec is not currently installed with Apple Qmaster. To download and install the Apple Intermediate Codec, go to:  http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/appleintermediatecodec101.html Note: Shake and several other Apple software packages also install the Apple Intermediate Codec. Cluster Settings for Extended Transcoding Sessions If you are using Compressor 2.0 or later for distributed processing, and you anticipate a transcoding session that will last up to seven days or longer, you must make an adjustment in the Advanced section of the Apple Qmaster Preferences Pane. By default, temporary process files may remain on a cluster’s scratch location for seven days before they are automatically deleted. You can increase this value (the number of days) in the Apple Qmaster pane in System Preferences. To extend the time process files remain on a cluster’s scratch location: 1 On the cluster controller, open the Apple Qmaster pane in System Preferences. 2 If any Apple Qmaster services are enabled on this computer, click Stop Sharing to temporarily turn them off. 3 Click Advanced to open the Advanced pane. 4 In the Delete Files Older Than __ Days field, enter the number of days you expect the session to take, plus a day or two extra, just in case. 5 Click Setup to return to the Setup pane. 6 Click Start Sharing. Previous Release Information About Apple Qmaster 2.0.1 Apple Qmaster 2.0.1 is a maintenance release of Apple Qmaster that provides improved reliability. Shake Jobs and Non-Zero Exit Status Using Apple Qmaster, you can quickly create and submit a batch of Shake jobs for distributed processing. The new “Ignore script failures” checkbox allows you to determine whether Apple Qmaster should continue rendering all the frames of the script in the event that Shake returns a non-zero UNIX command result. (In Apple Qmaster 2 and previous versions, a job would always fail if any segment returned non-zero.) By default, this checkbox is not selected. Select the checkbox if Apple Qmaster should ignore non-zero UNIX command results. 4 Generic Render Command and Non-Zero Exit Status You can use the Generic Render command in Apple Qmaster for the distributed processing of projects from other frame-based rendering applications (such as After Effects and LightWave). The Generic Render dialog allows you to adjust parameters and to add more command-line options to each job. The new “Treat non-zero exit status as failure” checkbox in the Generic Render dialog allows you to use Apple Qmaster with rendering applications that return non-zero results that are not intended to indicate failure. By default, this checkbox is selected. If your rendering application issues non-zero results that are not intended to indicate failure, deselect the checkbox. Proxy Name Mismatch in Apple Qmaster and Shake With the Proxies feature in Apple Qmaster, you can quickly choose a proxy setting for a Shake script. While the four default proxy settings are identical in both Shake and Apple Qmaster, they have slightly different names in each application. The table below indicates the corresponding names. Apple Qmaster name Shake name P1 Base P2 P1 P3 P2 P4 P3 Previous Release Information About Apple Qmaster 2.0 The following information is late-breaking news that was included with Apple Qmaster 2.0. Apple Qmaster Shake Plug-in Motion Blur Pop-Up Menu The Motion Blur checkbox in the Shake dialog has been changed to a pop-up menu containing the following options:  Default for script  Off  On The new “Default for script” option provides greater control by allowing you to retain custom motion blur settings from the original Shake script. 5 Service Node Status Indicator in the Menu Bar By default, once a service node is enabled, an Apple Qmaster icon appears in the computer’s menu bar.