3 Encoding Servers, Gigabit lan 2.5 fps

[mrtaylor06]

Hello everyone!

Im using an amd 10 lenovo with 12 gb of ram as the host computer running windows 10. i have 3 lenovo encoding servers running ubuntu 16.10 two have intel i5 3.20ghz and one zeon 3.20ghz. all have gigabit lan/gigabit router. when i start the encoding process, i have great success running at 65/70 fps but sadly drops to 2.5 fps. it seems to me as if the host stops sending packets to the encoding servers to be processed. any thoughts?

-Jonathon

[Carsten]

Create a new project, any simple content that is long enough to run into the slowdown, then cancel and send the log file to carl.

If you disable/disconnect all the remote servers and render only locally - will the slowdown also occur?

How many threads have you set on the master machine? My first guess would be that the master machine turns into heavy swapping, so RAM vs. number of encoding threads could be the reason.

Which DOM version and OS are you using? Are you doing 2k or 4k?

- Carsten

[mrtaylor06]

I’m running all machines (host and servers) with 12 gb of ram. The host machine will only run 2.5 FPS by itself. All versions are the most up to date on host and server. 4 threads are running on the host. As with the servers disconnected the host will only render at 2.5 FPS. With all encoding servers connected, starts at 65/70 and slows down to 2.7 on the dot. Host is running windows 10 just checked over all updates last night, encoding servers are running Ubuntu 16.10. Just as a recap, all of these machines have gigabit lan, witch they see the switch and communicate at 1,000 mbps. So I’m not 100% of the potential issue here.

[carl]

As Carsten says the log file from your master project may be informative.

[Carsten]

Hmm, maybe I got something wrong - how many threads is each encoding server using? Your mentioning of 65/70fps made me think you may have that many encoding threads configured on all your encoding servers. So many threads would probably bring the master machine down to it's knees. What exact CPU type is the 3.2GHz xeon? Are you sure all machines run the same version of DCP-o-matic?

2.5 on an AMD10 appears low, but then again, it is AMD, and it doesn't offer hyperthreading, so, it may be normal to perform slightly under par.

When the slow down occurs, do you see any unusual hard drive activity on the master machine? Can you fire up task manager and check CPU load and swap file size?

Also, when you test, make sure you delete the partial video file and partial DCP in your project folder in case you cancel and start new - DCP-o-matic will always run over the existing frames, giving a very high number of encoded frames/s initially, but only indicating realistic numbers once it starts creating frames that have not been created previously. In that case, the slowdown you see would be normal, but not the fact that your setup only settles on 2.5fps. Can you post a screen shot or tell us what you see under 'Tools'->'Encoding servers...'?

- Carsten