Setting up transcoding farm

[bsti]

I'm trying to get distributed encoding working with the latest release 0.4b2, but I have some trouble setting things up.

My setup consists of 3 machines:

PC1:
FFAStrans 0.4.0beta2
Workflow 1: Custom FFMPEG
Work media cache set to a mapped network drive v:\cache\, Shared is checked
Core usage: 1

PC2:
FFAStrans 0.4.0beta2
Workflow 1:
Work media cache set to a mapped network drive v:\cache\, Shared is checked
Core usage: 1

Server:
FreeNAS
I set up three folders on this machine: v:\input, v:\output, v:\cache

PC1 and PC2 both use the excact same workflow. No other workflow exists. When using just PC1 for encoding, it works fine. As soon as I run the workflow on PC2, PC2 starts to encode files that are already processed by PC1 and I get the error message "Folder@PC2: File already exists!". It seems that each PC doesn't know what the other PC is doing.

Could you post a short guide for setting up a transcoding farm?

[admin]

From what you are describing it seems you are running two independent instances using two sets of same configuration. Put your FFAStrans program folder on f.ex. something like \\FreeNAS\FFAStrans or v:\FFAStrans or what ever kind of share you like and run the .exe on both computers from the same share. If this does not fix you problem please let me know.

-steipal

[bsti]

Thanks, now it's working!

After doing some encodes and playing with the program, I have some "dead" files showing up in the monitor. They aren't encoding, but they keep appearing and are blocking the encoder threads. I also tried rebooting and cleaning/rebuilding the history.
Can you give me a hint how to get rid of them?

[admin]

Hi bsti.

I have seen this happening from time to time, and this is one of the reasons 0.4.0 is still beta. I'm still investigating the issue and until I've found the root cause try this:

1. Make shure there is no real encoding going on.
2. Delete all files here: ...\FFAStrans\Processors\.cache\monitor\jobs
3. And here: ...\FFAStrans\Processors\.cache\tickets

-steipal

[bsti]

Thanks! That solved it!