Monthly Archive for September, 2006

Upgrading to the latest release - Making it work

In the latest releases - Blackmagic V3.3 and Megarip V4.3 - We added the ability to process jobs in parallel by allowing you to specify multiple imaging and rendering processes. We found that if you upgrade from an older version of the software then you need to initialise this feature for any job to process. If you do not then jobs will queue up in the image queue with the status “Waiting to Image”

To initialise this once the software is upgraded do the following.

Start the Server and Client
Launch the Cluster Manager from the Application menu (and close it again if you want)
Choose System Settings from the Application menu and click OK.

Any jobs waiting to image should now process though and all future jobs will work fine. This only applies to upgrades (new installs do not have this problem) and you only have to do this once.

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Mac Pro Intel Core 2 Duo and Blackmagic

Today we received our Mac Pro with 2 Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs installed. A few minutes after unpacking it Serendipity Blackmagic 3.3 was up and running. A quick inspection of the “Cluster Manager” window revealed a speed rating of 705 !!

Clustermanager-Macpro-Quadpng

Cpuinfo-Macpro-Quad

Blackmagic 3.3 includes a new feature which allows multiple jobs imaging and rendering at the same time, up to a maximum of 2 x the number of CPUs, to better utilise quad core processors. Here are some results from our first run on the Mac Pro.

In all cases we submitted 2 8 up screened jobs and timed how long it took from start to finish including spooling, imaging and rendering.

Case 1: 1 imaging and 1 rendering job allowed: Time taken 7 minutes 33 seconds
Case 2: 2 Imaging and 2 rendering jobs allowed: Time taken 5 minutes 59 seconds

As you can see the new feature really takes advantage of the 4 cpus in the Mac Pro. Expect Blackmagic 3.3 to be released in the next day or two.

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