Multi Computer to encode same video

[skozzy]

Not sure if this has been talked about here but I figure i'd see what people think.

Many of us now I imagine have a collection of computers at home from upgrades, I know I still have a few, plus my laptop and my wifes computer. Well I was wondering how it would go getting all these spare computers to convert seperate sections of a SOURCE video at the same time.

Lets look at it this way, Computer 1 acting as a server computer that also converts its share of a video stream, computer 2+3+4 (or more) acting as slaves converting their share of the video stream. The slave computers tell the server computer its ready to convert a section of the video source, the server then sends it a section of the source video over the home network, the salve converts that section and sends it back, then the server puts those parts together and the cycle continues.

That is a basic concept, as far as I know there is not anyone doing this on any encoding program. Just with the spare junk computers I have here plus the laptop and wifes computer I could possibly get 3x or 4x the conversion of the same video using this method. Or imagine a network night with mates instead of playing just games you could be converting a dvd in the background on low priority in a few minutes between all of you, or a community coversion over the internet.

I will sit back and see what comments pop up.

[rhester]

It's been discussed. A lot.

Closest anyone has come is using HandBrake CLI in a Beowulf cluster, but because they weren't familiar with Beowulf job control, they didn't understand how to control the number of CPUs it could use per machine.

Distributed computing tasks are by their very nature very difficult to synchronize properly.

Rodney

[realityking]

I'd suggest to encode one DVD at each computer, that is what I sometimes do.

[skozzy]

I do that now if I have more then 1 do to, but this is more to see what has been or may be planned for multiple computers to encode 1 dvd

[dynaflash]

afaik nothing is planned

[Dither]

Fyi there is Media Encoding Cluster project. It's still in alpha stage but the idea is there.