RBFarm output too small?

[Blue Side Up]

I've been using DVD RB for a while, and it is absolutely awesome.

Since I want to backup a large number of discs I'm trying to farm it out to my other PC. (3200+ A64/1GB).

I have it set up correctly and it encodes fine with CCE, but the output is ridiculously small and as a result it encodes quite fast.

The .m2v files that (I assume it's the other PC) is outputting are all around 100KB in size, while my PC is outputting in the several hundred of megs.


Any ideas on what could be wrong with my setup? I have all the logs etc if that helps.

[danpos]

@Blue Side UP

Have you noted if some error occurred at 'farm client' ? I say this because of my firsts attempt in using RB-Farm I got a AVISynth error on 'farm client' machine and this screwed up all process. I'm quite sure that similar something has happened. I could suggest to you to back up your AVISynth plugins folder to another one, emptying it. After that, try it out.

Good luck,

[Blue Side Up]

I have not noticed any errors popping up on the client machine. I have a feeling it may be a problem with Avisynth.

Would it work to just copy my entire Avisnyth folder from the server PC that I know works and replace the Avisynth on the client? Do I need to change the paths anywhere?

[danpos]

@Blue Side Up

Regards on AVISynth, if you don't see any error, so it isn't the problem. BTW, I've remembered that some chunks are really small and if the farm client machine catches then before the farm server, it will encode them quickly and on sequence, whereas the farm server will be attained the long chunk until it to be finished.

Have you let the process to go ahead and after ended up verified if all chunks were processed or you simply abort the process ?

[Blue Side Up]

Does AVISynth automatically startup? Since I don't see it when encoding.

The latest one came out at 3.13GB, and it seemed like almost every second .m2v was only 100KB ish.

I did rebuild it, finished the entire process. On the segments where there is no video, sound is still present.

[danpos]

@Blue Side

Yes, of course. It's a frameserver, so it's transparent for encoder.

I'm getting started to think that perhaps the problem relays be the set up of server/client farmer (which is a little trick as I could to note).

How do you set up the server/client farme ?

[Blue Side Up]

Okay, I replaced the Avisynth with a version I know works and will try that with a one pass CCE so I can see the results quickly.

The setup is as follows:

Server:

Drive W (actually another drive but mapped with subst) has the source.
Drive H has the working folder

All are shared and writeable (if not I'd have problems before this)

DVD-RB, and farm are on there. I run the prepare phase on there then startup up RBFarmto encode.

Client:

CCE (just copied over from other PC so I know it works) installed.

Source drive mapped as W, and work folder is under a mapped drive H, so they match up with the server.

Start RBFarm after the server begins encoding.

[danpos]

@Blue Side Up

OK, I also did it the same way as you and this is the correct way (ah, you just need to set work folder up as writeable as the encoder - client farm side - must to have rights to writing into this folder).

On my machines, both have the same AVISynth version and at client farm I just emptied my AVISynth plugins folder in order to avoid some AVISynth crash in using RB-Farm (some filters are incompatible with RB-Farm, but I don't know which are them).

Cya!

[Blue Side Up]

Yes, it is definitely writeable as before I didn't realize that it was non-writeable and I got an error. So it can write.

I will try again with the correct AVISynth version now.

[Blue Side Up]

Just tried again, and that one PC is still outputting 100KB m2v files, while mine is over 100MB. As a result it is also encoding about twice as fast.

Any other ideas? I have all the logs/rebuilder.ini files if that helps.

[danpos]

@Blue Side Up

OK, I think so that nothing is going wrong, because like I already said, the chunks are of different sizes, thus one machine can to catch a smal chunk, process it quickly and then continuing to process other small chunks, remaining for the other machine the job on large chunks. Below, take a look at following image:

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/5569/imagem2dc.png

This is a snapshot from my RB working folder located on server machine (from a recent DVD backup where I used RB-Farm on ENCODE PHASE). See the flags files, which are 293 and represents 293 chunks. After them, you can see the .m2v files, representing each chunks which were processed for both client and server machines using RB-Farm. You can see .m2v files relative to chunks of very small size and others biggers. The important stuff is that after finished the encode phase, I got ALL of 293 chunks, so the REBUILD phase worked without any problem.

I hope have clarifying the things up.

Cya!

[Blue Side Up]

Well, I gave it a shot last night again, and it still came out at 3.1GB! Here's some screens of my working folder:

http://img46.imageshack.us/my.php?image=otherfiles1ti.jpg

And the farm_status folder

http://img46.imageshack.us/my.php?image=farmstatus2pc.jpg

I'm really not sure what to do. My server machine output 4.36GB perfectly every single time.

[jdog9898]

Well, I gave it a shot last night again, and it still came out at 3.1GB! Here's some screens of my working folder:

http://img46.imageshack.us/my.php?image=otherfiles1ti.jpg

And the farm_status folder

http://img46.imageshack.us/my.php?image=farmstatus2pc.jpg

I'm really not sure what to do. My server machine output 4.36GB perfectly every single time.
ok, i'm not an expert in this field, but i just had a similar problem today.

I believe when setting up rbfarm and the shared folders you may have done something wrong.
Of course, CCE on the 'other' computer (read: the computer that starts encoding 2nd) needs to be able to access the original folder with the VOBs, IFOs, BUPs, etc. Here is what I did wrong:
I had created an ISO image of the DVD I wanted to encode. I mounted that image and guided rebuilder to its video_ts folder in the virtual drive. What I should have done was copy the video_ts folder to one of my "shared" folders I had set up earlier in the process.
For example, I have a working directory in D:/farm.
I then set that up like I should by mapping that as Z:
So I copy the contents of the source video_ts folder to the new Z: drive, which happens to be D:/farm.
Then I fire up rebuilder again and direct the source folder to Z: and the working directory to Z:
It worked just fine.
So, long story short, I just made the source and working folder the same. When you prep, of course, it creates a D2VAVS folder inside the Z: drive, so it doesn't screw with your source files.
Anyway, give that a try if you want. I haven't actually tried sharing 2 mapped drives where one is the working and the other is the source. My problem was obviously that the client farm didn't have access to my virtual drive. I don't think that's the exact same problem that you are having, since you say both working and source drives have been shared, but hey, may as well give it a shot.

[jptheripper]

hopefully not repeating, but was this an ilvu disk? rb farm doesnt work with ilvu