Ripbot264 Distributed Encoding Question

[mikehbkwm]

Good evening, I'm going to apologize up front because I know enough to be dangerous but that's about it. I LOVE Ripbot264 and can completely use it on my main machine (Desktop - HP AMD Ryzen 7, 16GB RAM) with no issues. With that said, I also have another HP desktop, HP laptop, and ASUS laptop and if memory serves, all are Intel Core i5's with 8GB of RAM for each.

When using distributed encoding all of my servers seem to be encoding except my main machine/client (newer HP). Since the main machine is the client, does it not encode files at all? Again, sorry if that's STUPID question. I seem to be able to encode files quicker with my main machine on it's own then using distributed encoding. Call me crazy, but I would think it should speed up the process if all machines are encoding at the same time. Please tell me if I'm missing something.

Side note: I've done some additional digging and it looks like you can use the client to encode as well. Is the client encoding along with the servers, or do you have to add the client to the list of servers (IP address)? I noticed my client IP is grayed out, I'm confused if that means the client is encoding or not. When I entered the client IP into the server IP list during distributed encoding, it does nothing and never connects. Very confused on what the client is doing during this process other then distributing chunks to the other servers.

Thank you for any assistance.