RB Farm v1.7 - server farm for faster DVD Rebuilder encodes [Archive] - Page 2

Miras

8th April 2005, 00:50

Originally posted by geffroman
I ran about 30 movies using RB Farm 1.7... It was wonderful...

But now my remote computers all run at a faster than normal speed and I end up with a seriously undersized movie. If I run RBFarm from the main computer only it works fine.

Me too :/ Always...

quantum

10th April 2005, 01:28

As I promised in another thread, I'll update RBFarm when jdobbs adds closed caption support. I'll go even farther by saying I'll add HC Encoder support (if I can figure it out).

Considering how little time I have lately, I hope JD doesn't get around to it too quickly :)

EpicOfTimeWasted

10th April 2005, 02:12

Originally posted by quantum
As I promised in another thread, I'll update RBFarm when jdobbs adds closed caption support. I'll go even farther by saying I'll add HC Encoder support (if I can figure it out).

Considering how little time I have lately, I hope JD doesn't get around to it too quickly :)

Ahh, I could have sworn I read another thread where you said that you have lost interest in maintaining RBFarm... so over the past few days I've been working on my own version. Time permitting, it should be useable in a couple of days. Hopefully it'll at least keep people happy until you can find a spare minute.

quantum

11th April 2005, 15:55

Good news, now I don't have to update it at all :-)

So is it ready yet?
Does it have HC support?
Does it automatically rebuild at the end of the process?

;)

EpicOfTimeWasted

11th April 2005, 20:57

Well, it's ready in the sense that it's been encoding movies over night without problems, but that's just internal testing at the moment. On the plus side though, I haven't found any major problems that need fixing, so all that leaves are minor little GUI tweaks to get a working version out.

I glanced at how RB handles HC, and was pleasantly surprised to see it uses the same ECL format as CCE, so in theory (famous last words) it shouldn't be TOO hard.

If rebuilder accepts command line arguements like "--project=..." I wouldn't mind having it auto rebuild upon completion. If it doesn't though, it just seems like too much hassle on big batch jobs. It's on the to-do list, just not very high priority at the moment.

EpicOfTimeWasted

13th April 2005, 02:37

Ok, version 0.01 of my implementation of RBFarm is up at http://www.epicoftimewasted.com/files/RBFarm.v0.01.zip

I'm interested in any and all feedback, but what I'm most interested in at the moment are people that can test it with CCE Basic, and test it on different versions of Windows. CCE Basic Trial doesn't seem to support ECL files, so I wasn't able to test with it, and all my Windows computers are running XP.

For the most part, the setup is similar to what was required for quantum's RBFarm. I'd still recommend reading over the readme and changelog though. I tried to make things as clear as possible, but explaining things step by step has never been my best feature.

So, let me know what isn't working, what should be done differently, any gripes you have, and I'll see what I can do with it.

tijgert

13th April 2005, 03:05

A couple of Q's:

* I assume your RBfarm is now the official continuation of Quantum's RBfarm and Quantum's RBfarm developement has ceased?

* Will your RBfarm accurately find the Rebuild button on the different RB skins and layouts? (Quantum's didn't always do that, afaik).

* What is HC?

* Is it possible to use Quantum's RBfarm on 1 pc and your's on the other? Meaning, do they use the exact same temp files?

One note I missed all throughout my learning curve of RBfarm:
No one ever mentioned that RBfarm is also great if you have limited time to encode and wish to do only a few passes before shutting down again for a later time.
I managed to encode a whole movie on my laptop while being on the road by encoding a pass now and then.

EpicOfTimeWasted

13th April 2005, 05:36

I wouldn't really consider mine the official RBFarm, just a more recent development. We'll give it a few releases, see how well it works, and go from there.

Actually, mine doesn't auto rebuild. I'd like to avoid having to hijack rebuilder and send it button clicks if at all possible.

HC is... I don't know much more than that it's a free encoder that seems to be earning a good reputation.

No, you can't mix the two. We use two different methods for determining which chunk has been processed and which hasn't.

EpicOfTimeWasted

16th April 2005, 19:16

For those of you that are interested, I've updated my RBFarm to v0.02. The most notable change is support for the HC encoder.

You can get v0.02 here (http://www.epicoftimewasted.com/files/RBFarm.v0.02.zip)

The only thing to be aware of for HC is that the quality profile isn't stored in the rebuilder.ecl or rebuilder.inf files, so you have to select which profile to use in RBFarm. Other than that, everything should be smooth sailing.

As always, questions/comments/suggestions are more than welcomed.

fumantsu

17th April 2005, 23:21

Me I want to ask, how it works the batch processing in rbfarm?

tijgert

21st April 2005, 12:18

RBfarm 0.02 works like a charm... so far.
But I'm missing something that I cannot live without.

Simple information like RBfarm 1.17 gave is invalluable to me.

Please make your RBfarm show info like: the number of chunks in total, how many chunks completed on this PC and what chunk it is working on.
Maybe let RBfarm talk to other RBfarms and show how many chunks are completed on other PC's too.
Some time estimate, even just a small elapsed time counter, would be great too.

And for my super feature request: optional chunk caching.

When CCE'ing over a network the network 'may' go down for any reason.
The chunk that a remote PC is working on is ruined and possibly the whole encode.
How about making an option that caches the to be CCE'd chunk to the remote PC and let it work on it from there. It will send it back and get new chunk data when and if the network is up and running.
This might slow the process down a bit, but as an option it might save the day.

EpicOfTimeWasted

28th April 2005, 18:43

Ok, sorry for the late reply. I've been ungodly busy lately, and haven't even had time to think about RBFarm, much less update it.

Total number of chunks is do-able, as is chunks completed on the current PC. Chunk that it is working on at the moment is already displayed in the makeshift log window though ("Currently encoding ..." or whatever it actually says). The reason I don't have any of these stats displayed in the GUI though, are because you can open explorer and browse to the working directory \farm_status directory, and see what's going on from there.

*.ecl = not encoded, and not being encoded yet
*.ecl.processing = RBFarm (somewhere) is working on it
*.ecl.processed = encoding complete

Time estimate I'm not even going to try to add any time soon, since it would be too much of a pain to try to account for each computer's processing speed. Time elapsed can be determined by looking at when the encoding started, and when it completed, both of which should be displayed in the log window.

I suppose I could throw that info in the GUI though without much hassle, so I'll add it to the to-do list.

Chunk caching is a good idea. I have actually had my network die for no apparent reason while running a batch encode over night. Cleanly implementing it will be a bit tricky, but it shouldn't be impossible.

tijgert

28th April 2005, 20:01

Hey there busy guy :)

The reason I don't have any of these stats displayed in the GUI though, are because you can open explorer and browse to the working directory \farm_status directory, and see what's going on from there.

In this world of everything getting easier, looking it up yourself every time is a nuisance. It's just too darn conveniant to see at a single glance where the whole job stands, without having to access programs and look into directories.
It'd be cool if you could see in that same window (perhaps different tab or so) the same stats from other pc's.
Yeah yeah yeash, I'm lazy :D

With Chunk that it is working on at the moment is already displayed in the makeshift log window though ("Currently encoding ..." or whatever it actually says). I meant to just have a number, as in 'working on: 14 out of 25'. Not so much the whole line of (excuse my words) garbage information.

The timing thingy does seem a bit over the top, but I was on a roll there :cool:

Thanks for the great app though! (running encoder minimized automatically saved me lots of aggravation already!)

melsom

3rd November 2005, 01:57

Where can i find the latest version of rbfarm? All mirrors in this thread seems to me down (or file removed).

Rippraff

3rd November 2005, 17:59

Here. (http://dvd-rb.dvd2go.org/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=24) ;)

Cu Rippraff

hallway

2nd January 2006, 18:48

I've got (3) PCs here at home:
AMD Athlon XP 2500, 1.5gb RAM (mine)
PIII-866, 512mb RAM
PII-600, 256 or 384mb RAM (can't recall)

My typical DVD-RB job is taking just over 200 minutes... Are my other machines too slow to bother setting up rbfarm on ?? I mean, at close to 3-1/2 hours currently, if I could cut an hour off, I'd probably do it. Anything less though, and I doubt I'd try it.

hallway

2nd January 2006, 21:32

Okay, looking at the readme.txt for rbfarm, this part confuses me:
The drive letters and folder names must match on each PC. For example, if the DVD Rebuilder working path on the main PC is M:\movie\ then it must also be M:\movie\ on PC#2 and PC#3, etc. Obviously I can map drives on my other PCs to "M:" but how do I do this on my PC ?? Is there a way in XP to give a folder a "logical drive letter" ?? That's what I would need to do. I sure am not going to re-partition my drive.

SpazzHH

2nd January 2006, 22:16

Is there a way in XP to give a folder a "logical drive letter" ?? That's what I would need to do. I sure am not going to re-partition my drive.
My Computer, from the toolbar choose TOOLS, then select MAP NETWOK DRIVE

hallway

2nd January 2006, 22:31

D'oh !!!! Mapping a drive on your own computer ! Never knew you could do that ! Then again, 99.999% of the time one would never need to do this.

hallway

3rd January 2006, 04:47

Okay, I've searched this thread and found multiple references to CCE launching but people having to click the "Encode" button and then later that was "fixed".

When I run with "auto encode" not checked, the 1st CCE window opens (this one lists what file is going to be processed), but does nothing. It's waiting for me to click the "Encode" button. Doing so, I get CCE's processing window that shows all of the various stats and information.

Just tried it, and running with "auto encode" checked behaves the same. CCE does not start processing.

What's the trick ??

I'm using CCE SP 2.70, by the way. In RB Farm's window, instead of simply pointing to the directory that CCE is installed, I have the full path, including 'cctsp.exe', as others have pointed out in this thread.

Rockas

3rd January 2006, 13:50

Do you have "Run Encoder(s) Minimized" checked (activated) on Rebuilder's Setup dialog?

hallway

3rd January 2006, 18:11

Will have to check.... To clarify, you're referring to the setting in DVD-RB, not in RB Farm ?? RB Farm has a similar setting that I haven't tried yet.

Rockas

3rd January 2006, 21:36

well... check both :D

hallway

4th January 2006, 01:02

It was already checked in DVD-RB (I believe it is by default). I've checked it in RB Farm and launched it.... and that did it !!

PnoT

24th January 2006, 02:23

I'm having an issue with RB1.00 rc5.1 and rbfarm 1.7.

I've set everything up properly from what i can tell and once DVDRB gets past the prepare phase rbfarm and my 3 computers kick in and encode 28-40 portions (depending on the movie) in a few mins. Rb farm then complains about not being able to find the window for dvdrb. I've tried manually hitting the encode button but nothing happens. I eventually have to hit encode in DVDrb to get it to encode the thing but my other 2 computers that have rbfarm do nothing during this whole time.

Any help would be appreciated.

Rippraff

24th January 2006, 02:29

My first recommendation is to update to the current version 1.06.

Cu Rippraff

hallway

24th January 2006, 03:51

I've set everything up properly from what i can tell and once DVDRB gets past the prepare phase rbfarm and my 3 computers kick in and encode 28-40 portions (depending on the movie) in a few mins. It did that to me just about everytime I tried using it and I eventually gave up in frustration..... I mean, I expect to re-encode movies faster, but not that fast !! :D

PnoT

24th January 2006, 06:16

I've upgraded to the latest version and it still happens on all 3 machines as well. "Could not find DVD Rebuilder window" and "More than one instance of DVD rebuilder cannot be open at the same time" ... something close to that.

It works perfect when i do one click or without db farm.