knowing that tmpg gives fastastic output at very long render hours, I will like to know if tmpg can make use of several computers on a network to render, as implemented by Adobe after effects
I don't believe so. Multiple CPU (within the same chassis) is the only offload for TMPGEnc, currently coded for 2 CPUs. I heard that a 'server' edition of TMPGEnc is coming, allowing for more CPUs (again in the same chassis) and more than 2-pass VBR.
I forgot all about that feature of AE. Must try that next time.
I think that the "Plus" version is the one that allows the more CPUs than two and multiple pass VBR and that the "Server" edition would in deed allow distributed encoding. But I might be wrong, very often I am :-)
jnihil: Tnx for the link. And I think you're right, but then again -- it takes probably a year or so to develop good distributed platform for TMPGEnc and within a year-18mos, based on Moore's law, we have around 4-5GHz CPUs and encoding a regular movie should take relatively short time, so I don't know if there's really demand for a product like that. Of course for some studio use when you encode something that's extremely whopping in size (digital cinema cam material with something like 2350x1000 resolution or so :-) with 4-pass, maybe then.. But that market is kinda limited, I guess :-)
Having to move several gigabytes of video data over the network to the various PCs prior to the encoding could be a bit of an overhead, especially if you're trying to use an old PC that's collecting dust in the corner. I guess gigabit ethernet NICs are getting cheap these days.
