SCO0095 - Using Xgrid to Encode Video with VisualHub

Did you know that your Mac comes with the power to be part of a multiprocessor supercomputer, straight out of the box!

Yes, included as part of OSX (Tiger 10.4) your Mac has access to Xgrid, software developed by Apple's Advanced Computation Group which allows you to group and access a network of Macs and share the under utilised processing power using Distributed Computing technology!

What's even better is it's pretty easy to setup (at least if you follow this screencast!).

But why would you want to do this?

Have you got an Apple TV?
Do you encode or convert lots of video?

Well Xgrid is fully supported by VisualHub, one of the video converters demonstrated in SCO0095 - How to Get Videos Onto Apple TV. So if you have a few spare Macs, you can create your own Xgrid network at no cost and speed up the encoding process significantly.

Check out the screencast for a brief explanation of the technology and a walk through guide on setting up your own Xgrid network.

Even if you don't want to set Xgrid up, it's pretty cool technology and yet another reason why we love the Mac so much!

Here are some of the links as mentioned in the show:

GeekMeetsGirl - VisualHub Xgrid Enabler
Xgrid Wikipedia Entry
Apple Server Admin Tools
Apple Xgrid Page
VisualHub Forums

Discussions: Forum

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