Apple QMASTER 2.3.1 Late-Breaking News

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.

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:

Use the Server Admin application to enable NFS. For additional information, see Mac OS X Server Help.

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

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/ 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.

username

/Library/

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