Cluster Encoding?

[siwel_is]

Hello all, my names Lewis, New to the forums here but have read a large portion of posts and a considerable amount of information regarding the use of Linux for video encoding.

Ill cut straight to the chase. I work for a large multimedia company which out puts a considerable amount of media, which we encode straight from the Vob files *which are already made from rips, split into scenes so all there is is each scene of a movie in vob format*. We have over 16Tb of just vobs and climbing continually. We use Autodesk's Cleaner XL to encode these into our required formats, Mpg, FLV, MP4 and WMV *encoded into 3 different bitrates (Video 8, Audio 9.2). Cleaner seems to do the job at a reasonable level but using Windows naturally, crashes and has problems all over the place continually slowing down our process.

I have been investigating the option of setting up our encoding machines *currently all on windows* into a Linux Cluster using most likely Clusterknoppix or ParallelKnoppix. From the vast majority of information i have read this shouldnt be overly to hard. All the PC's *12 machines so far* are high spec, all on Dual Cores, large harddrive space and 1Gb network. But from what i have read, i currently havn't come across any software of even much information that will allow me to set this cluster up for encoding videos. I know that DVD::RIP has the cluster option but only to xvid and mpg, not as useful as i need. Providing we have unlimited space capacity and hardware, could anyone please give some advice on setting this up or what software i can use to batch encode using a cluster / beowolf setup, especialy with a monitoring tool for this would be great?

If not, even a good way to set this encoding process up on Linux, preferably ubuntu as i am more familiar with it.

Mostly needing all this encoding to be done with the Batch encoding options, need to have a watermark and be able to input vob files.

Purchasing software or licenses is not a problem for the company i work for in order for this to be accomplished if need be.

I request linux as i admire the community, the stability of it, and its not programmed with closed doors.

Thanks in advance for any input or replies.

[Soopafresh]

I suppose you could use a combination of ffmpeg or Mjpeg tools and a Perl or Python Script to distribute the job around:

You could probably modify this script to output to your various formats

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/496982

In the Windows realm, you've got more options, such as creating a script and submitting it to a render farm such as Deadline: http://www.franticfilms.com/software/products/deadline/overview/


The overall procedure is determining the number of frames the source file has with an command line app such as MediaInfo http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en , then splitting it evenly among the number of machines you have (eg, telling Machine1 to do frames 1-1000, Machine2 frames 1001-2000, etc)

This guy has a render farm for h264 video with source code available and even ports for linux and OSX. You might even be able to contract him to set up a custom config for your site which could incorporate the other file formats you need.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=117889

[siwel_is]

Thank you muchly for your help and advice. I will be looking into the links you have provided and will see if i can come up with something. I have read up on the guy who has developed a rendering farm for the H264 and seen it as been a great tool for the job, minus the formats i need, I will try and contact him if i can't resolve this issue otherwise, and or using something currently available.

Thanks again. If you come across anything else that might help that would be greatly appreciated.

[GMaq]

Hello,
Cinelerra is a NLE Video Editor for Linux, it's real strength is working with DV AVI video, but it will export to various formats, but of more interest to you is that it can export to a render farm, I personally haven't used it in this capacity however the manual at it's website goes into in detail. here is the link for the documentation:
http://cv.cinelerra.org/docs.php

[Vid-Kid]

Transcode for Linux provides Cluster Encoding support, although I have never tried it.

[framebuster]

Media Encoding Cluster
this is the first Open Source, Plattform Independent Video Encoding Cluster
currently for Linux and Windows (Mac currently in planning).
please Visit our Webpage

http://www.codergrid.de/

any suggestions are Welcome,
have a look to

http://codergrid.de/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

Thanks for any input or replies.