Compressor eating CPU time...after quitting

Question

I've been running Compressor lately for some DVD projects. I set up a batch to encode, but quit after about half the video files were encoded to work on some other things. Performance was pretty darn sluggish. I checked Activity Monitor, and lo and behold, compressord and qmasterd were still running and gobbling up CPU time. I force quit both of them, only to see them crop up again a few seconds later. WHAT? A force quit should absolutely terminate the process, no questions asked. I don't want Compressor running in the background, which is why I quit it and Batch Monitor in the first place. This is not a feature, this is a problem, and an inexcusable one at that. Anyone know how to get rid of this crap without a restart?
In addition, Compressor will not let any part of my computer sleep while running. The display on my iMac wont even dim, much go into standby. I can understand why it wouldn't let the computer or hard drive sleep, but the display? Come on! I sleep in the same room as this computer, so it's kind of an annoyance when I want to encode a batch overnight.

Answer 1

Heya Noble,
Basically, your computer's still compressing.
Compressor is the application that allows you to prepare your transcoding and/or encoding.
Once you "submit" the process, Compressor is done.
Qmaster takes over to transcode or encode the file as submitted by Compressor.
Batch Monitor merely allows you to view what's happening until Qmaster is done.
If you force quit Qmaster, then you'll never have a transcoded movie or encoded MPEG2 clip.
Your machine will probably compress 10 minutes of DV-NTSC source to the MPEG2 60 minute high quality setting in about 7 to 8 minutes. So, if you were encoding an hour of footage, you would have to allow Qmaster about 48 minutes to work. HDV source takes much, much longer. If this seems like "forever", then consider this: a G4/400 takes four hours to encode 10 minutes of DV-NTSC source to MPEG2. At that rate, an hour of footage would take a full day to encode.
Most importantly, these numbers are based on not using the computer for anything while it's transcoding and/or encoding. Even surfing the web will increase the time it takes to process the file or files that you've submitted.
If you are frequently submitting jobs to Qmaster, then you might consider getting a second computer so that you can work on one system while the other one encodes. It's not uncommon to have a dedicated box just for encoding. In general, the faster the processor(s), the faster the render.
If you are submitting jobs that are hours in length, then you might look into distributed network encoding that's now available with Compressor (more processors = more speed).
If your budget doesn't allow for another machine, you'll want to plan for using your computer at a "lesser" performance level or not using it at all until the job is completed.
You should be able to put the display to sleep, but not the computer nor the hard drive.
If you're having trouble with this, perhaps a piece of cardboard set in front of the display may block enough light such that you can sleep. You could also cover the computer with a box, just be sure to provide adequate ventilation. Be careful not to cover the computer with a blanket as it's sure to overheat and you won't be running Compressor at all.
Of course, if you don't want to put anything in front of the computer: launch Final Cut Pro, make the Viewer window active while a Slug is open, choose View > Digital Cinema Desktop Preview - Main. Then press command F12 to enable it. Your screen will go entirely black! Press escape to return to disable it. Leave iTunes open while playing some soft tunes and you should be counting sheep in no time.
Hope this helps,
Warren
  Mac OS X (10.3.9)