Just when I thought I wouldn’t have anything to blog about, I find a bug in Compressor. Hoorah!

Step 1:

Make a cluster. Doesn’t have to include other machines, but it has to be a real cluster, created in QAdministrator. Read the docs if you don’t know how to get this far.

Step 2:

Submit a job to the cluster using the Compressor 2.1 “Video for iPod” preset.

Step 3:

Listen to the silence of your missing audio track!

Audio track is fine if you submit it to “This Computer” but disappears as soon as you submit it to a real cluster. Tested on an xServe, an iMac and a Macbook.

Fun!

As a minor aside though, if you want to run jobs simultaneously in Compressor (which Apple says can’t be done) take a look at the qmasterprefs command line program. Particularly this bit (using qmasterprefs -list):

-service “Compressor Processing” on instances 1 autorestart off unmanaged off

Changes the instances to whatever you want, rebuild your cluster and marvel at the simultaneous processing!