On Sat, Aug 1, 2009 at 1:13 PM, BrianBrian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
There are always tradeoffs. If I understand wiki@home correctly it is also intended to be run @foundation. It works just as well for distributing transcoding over the foundation cluster as it does for distributing it to disparate clients.
There is nothing in the source code that suggests that.
It currently requires the compute nodes to be running the firefogg browser extension. So this would require loading an xserver and firefox onto the servers in order to have them participate as it is now. The video data has to take a round-trip through PHP and the upload interface which doesn't really make any sense, that alone could well take as much time as the actual transcode.
As a server distribution infrastructure it would be an inefficient one.
Much of the code in the extension appears to be there to handle issues that simply wouldn't exist in the local transcoding case. I would have no objection to a transcoding system designed for local operation with some consideration made for adding externally distributed operation in the future if it ever made sense.
Incidentally— The slice and recombine approach using oggCat in WikiAtHome produces files with gaps in the granpos numbering and audio desync for me.