... but Apple Qmaster doesn't love me

After setting everything up, I had 5 computers (MacBook Pro, Quad G5 and 3x latest gen iMacs) ready to go and all the video files in the queue. I hit submit and... only 2 computers started processing, the MBP and one of the iMacs. Initially I thought it must be copying the source media to one machine at a time, or maybe the iMac was sent a really short clip, but the Batch Monitor showed otherwise. So what had happened? Had Apple Qmaster lied to me? Did I need each machine to have Final Cut Pro?

After much hair pulling, I discovered that in this case it did - the program was shot on XDCAM, and edited in the native MPEG IMX format, whose codec is installed along with Final Cut Pro. So to take advantage of all the machines, I would have to re-render the clips into a format that FCP-less Quicktime can open, and without compromising on quality it would be Animation or Uncompressed, which would not only require a significant amount of storage but would strain the network (which had a 10/100 router).

Not everything was explained by the codec complication, though. It was strange that the Quad G5, which had been used to edit the program, would not accept the render request from Apple Qmaster. Strange, that is, until you compare the versions: the Quad G5 ran FCS which has Compressor 2 whereas the MBP and iMac had FCS2 which has Compressor 3.

In the end, I decided to keep it simple and dump Qmaster in favour of rendering all the clips on the MBP. Still, lessons learned:

- If you're going to use distributed rendering on machines without Final Cut Pro, don't use proprietary and FCP-only codecs to output to Compressor/Qmaster.
- Ensure all machines are running the same version of Qmaster.
- Unless you have a fast network, or have very compressed source footage, or have an unsecure network, avoid having Qmaster copy the source footage to each node. Instead, allow the Cluster manager to set up a shared directory which the other nodes can access.