After Effects CS6 Render Farm

Hi All,
Another Friday, Another test of new AE waters....
I am busy reading up and trying to figure out how to use the three MAC's in the office to work together as a render farm. I have gone through the documentation and created a very simple scenario:
1) Windows XP "server" (it has the shared disk that i use for storage - 2TB spinning disk)
2) Created "Watch Folder" on XP Machine
3) all three MAC's can see and access the shared folder
4) Created a simple project - One 192MB video file (XMP) - applied keylight and matte choker
5) I did a render on the MAC, using only itself and standard setttings to a TGA sequence, to another shared folder on the XP server - this process took 3 minutes and 7 seconds to complete
6) I re-rendered the same project, with no changes on the mac, with the following settings:
and send them all to the watch folder (project saved there, files collected there etc.
7) once the project starts, it takes 20 minutes.
Is there a specific reason why the time would increase so drastically rather than decrease?
The macs all have 1 quad core CPU - 16GB memory and they are connected to a GB switch (all connecting at 1GBps) - If i check the tas manager on the XP pc, network utilization never goes above 25%.
Thanks guys,
Pierre

Hi Pierre,
I believe what you maybe seeing is a limitation on XP's file sharing. For the sake of simplicity network rendering treats every core as a user. So depending on which version of XP you are running it will either allow 5 or 10 users to connect to the computer at a given time. If you have other sharing services enabled (such as printer sharing) any connections to these devices count against this number of users. Given your other thread on where you discuss the rendering nodes, if possible you may want to try using windows 7 (this allows 20 users) or one of the windows server products (max # of users is based on CAL's)
Edited:
A couple of other things came to mind if you are using watch folders.
- If you are running anti-virus software on the server, ensure the watch folder directory and subfolders are excluded from scanning.
- Turn off render multiple frame simultaneously' in the preferences on the render nodes.
Hope it helps
Message was edited by: StevRo

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http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2010/03/performance-tip-dont-oversched.html
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Hi Rick and Greg,
Thanks for the quick responses. Below are all the details to all your questions. Also - just to emphasize again - my rendering goes super awesomely fast. It is not the rendering. It is the "Locking Existing Frames" process before the rendering that is ruining my life.
FREE MEMORY:
This is brand new Mac Book Pro with hardly anything stored on it.
The 8 GB of RAM is split into 2 memory slots, each with 4GB of RAM
3RD-PARTY CODECS:
I am not aware of any third-party codecs in this system. I imported some fonts (ITC Franklin Gothic) and some video files (see below), but I am not aware of any third-party codec installed on this system.
DISC CACHE:
My Disc Cache is enabled
My maximum disc cache size is 69 GB
I do not have a seperate "fast hard drive" or "SSD" seperate from my main hard drive, where I store my footage.
MPEG SOURCE FILES:
If by source files, you're asking about the video files I imported:
2 MP4s (5 sec. each)
3 QuickTime .mov (3 sec. each)
1 Audio-only FLV. (2 minute background music throughout video; used to be a Premiere working file)
MULTIPROCESSING
Turned off, but still locks up forever before rendering.
ADDITIONAL FUN FACTS:
Here are some additional observations that might help:
It doesn't just take a long time to start rendering; it freezes my entire computer for the duration of the "Locking Existing Frames" process - putting my entire life on hold for 3 minutes, every time I need to preview a minor detail... It's a nightmare.
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This is my job and I can't do efficiently until I solve this problem, so I will be very responsive until we can identify the issue.
Thanks again for all your helpful responses!

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