home made render farm

[rdsii64]

I have finished putting together an HD video in Final Cut Pro x and have started the encoding the finished product. Since Final Cut pro will let me form out the rending chores to other macs on my network (if I had any). I am going to get myself a gigabit switch and few used mac mini's and make a sort of rendering farm on the cheap. Can a mac mini run without a keyboard monitor and mouse? or should I use a KVM. I don't want to have to buy 5 monitors, keyboards, and mice.

 

[C64]

Seems they can: http://macminicolo.net/facility.html

 

[Vermifuge]

I have finished putting together an HD video in Final Cut Pro x and have started the encoding the finished product. Since Final Cut pro will let me form out the rending chores to other macs on my network (if I had any). I am going to get myself a gigabit switch and few used mac mini's and make a sort of rendering farm on the cheap. Can a mac mini run without a keyboard monitor and mouse? or should I use a KVM. I don't want to have to buy 5 monitors, keyboards, and mice.

Does FCPX have it's own distributed computing or does it use X-Grid? I was thinking of setting up my own X-GRID with the systems i have. My understanding is you need your work system, an X-Grid Server and then all the other computers that will be used for x-Grid. Is this the same for FCPX?

 

[rdsii64]

Does FCPX have it's own distributed computing or does it use X-Grid? I was thinking of setting up my own X-GRID with the systems i have. My understanding is you need your work system, an X-Grid Server and then all the other computers that will be used for x-Grid. Is this the same for FCPX?

That is something that I do not know.

 

[mrklaw]

I have finished putting together an HD video in Final Cut Pro x and have started the encoding the finished product. Since Final Cut pro will let me form out the rending chores to other macs on my network (if I had any). I am going to get myself a gigabit switch and few used mac mini's and make a sort of rendering farm on the cheap. Can a mac mini run without a keyboard monitor and mouse? or should I use a KVM. I don't want to have to buy 5 monitors, keyboards, and mice.

yes its fine. Plenty of people use theirs headless. I do with mine, just remotely log in via screen sharing for any admin needs. And lion now has full screen mode for screen sharing so its even more usable.

 

[old-wiz]

I think you would need a screen/keyboard/mouse for the initial setup, but after that go headless. I've seem pictures of racks of minis and nary a keyboard or mouse or screen in sight.