Network enhanced video converter

[lpsarsam]

Hi guys!
I was wondering if there is any software that allows me to use multiple computers simultaneously to convert video files into other formats (like network rendering).
So I install the server on 1 computer and a helper on the other computer, connect them to a wired or wireless network and hit convert and the two computers work together on converting the file, say from .avi to .mp4 .
Thanks

[lordrt]

why not use the other computer via RDP or other remote access to start your conversion? Do you want to use both PCs to convert only 1 single file at a time? If so then I guess it is almost impossible to do so, else you'll be wasting your processing power, and instead could get both PCs to be used to convert two files simultaneously, one on each machine...

[rubberman]

ffmpeg can use separate threads (hence cpus or cores), but I don't know of non-commercial renderers/transcoders that will do the distributed rendering thing. There certainly are professional/commercial ones that support distributed rendering farms, and since the source code to ffmpeg (it is open source) is easily available, you could, in theory, modify it to run on multiple machines. In fact, that would be a great enhancement for the tool.

[rubberman]

why not use the other computer via RDP or other remote access to start your conversion? Do you want to use both PCs to convert only 1 single file at a time? If so then I guess it is almost impossible to do so, else you'll be wasting your processing power, and instead could get both PCs to be used to convert two files simultaneously, one on each machine...

Actually, this is not unfeasible, and there are professional/commercial tools that can do this; however, what they do is to pass some frames to each node, and when each node replies to the handler with the converted frames, the handler/distribution tool will reassemble them in the correct order for the output file. Technologically speaking, this is not rocket science any longer.

[lpsarsam]

I see, this is not impossible, but quite difficult and the payoff isn't really worth it. I would imagine, unless it was a wired network, copying the files across to the nodes would take more time than the actual conversion...

[rubberman]

I see, this is not impossible, but quite difficult and the payoff isn't really worth it. I would imagine, unless it was a wired network, copying the files across to the nodes would take more time than the actual conversion...

Actually, a reasonable implementation would not send file, but open a TCP/IP connection and send just a few frames at a time to each ready rendering node. The total data sent (in each direction) would overall just be the size of the input and output files together. Yes, a wired network would be good, but in fact, this could be done over the internet as well, much as Seti-at-home and other scientific stuff, like the folding protein applications, are done. They just send a bit of the data, which the end-points can process easily, at a time.