<p>Compressor 4.1 does not support distributed renderings for other programs (such as FCPX).  This is documented on page 11 of the <a href="http://images.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Transitioning_to_Compressor.pdf" rel="nofollow">Transitioning To Compressor document</a>.  You can only do distributed encoding for transcodes defined entirely within Compressor, not renders.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-11T19:21:12.127Z
Okay, I missed that detail when reviewing the white paper; it makes more sense now. So the only way I can use the distributed processing function is to use compressor to transcode existing videos by building a batch from scratch within compressor then?
Alex
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-11T19:25:43.490Z
@Alex - right, and it would have to already have been rendered out of FCPX.  This makes sense when you think about it because Compressor knows how to distribute the load of its compression algorithms, but doesn't have any information on how to distribute FCPX rendering tasks.
AJ Henderson
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-11T17:52:15.190Z
2014-02-11T17:52:15.190Z
AJ Henderson
<p>I'm currently trying to get distributed processing to work using two different computers on the same network running the same versions of osx, fcpx, and compressor. When I go to choose the group I made from the "process on:" dropdown, it will not let me choose the group that I made. I'm trying to export to compressor directly from FCPX, and that works, but it would be much faster if I could farm out the videos from this computer to my other mac. Does anyone have any idea why I can't select my group?</p>

<video><software><final-cut-pro-x><compression>
Compressor 4.1: Why can't I select the group I made for distributed processing?
Alex
# Compressor 4.1: Why can't I select the group I made for distributed processing?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-02-11)

I'm currently trying to get distributed processing to work using two different computers on the same network running the same versions of osx, fcpx, and compressor. When I go to choose the group I made from the "process on:" dropdown, it will not let me choose the group that I made. I'm trying to export to compressor directly from FCPX, and that works, but it would be much faster if I could farm out the videos from this computer to my other mac. Does anyone have any idea why I can't select my group?

**Tags:** video, software, final-cut-pro-x, compression


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2014-02-11. Score: 1 | Accepted answer

Compressor 4.1 does not support distributed renderings for other programs (such as FCPX). This is documented on page 11 of the [Transitioning To Compressor document](http://images.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/Transitioning_to_Compressor.pdf). You can only do distributed encoding for transcodes defined entirely within Compressor, not renders.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Okay, I missed that detail when reviewing the white paper; it makes more sense now. So the only way I can use the distributed processing function is to use compressor to transcode existing videos by building a batch from scratch within compressor then?  
> **username_1**: @username_0 - right, and it would have to already have been rendered out of FCPX.  This makes sense when you think about it because Compressor knows how to distribute the load of its compression algorithms, but doesn't have any information on how to distribute FCPX rendering tasks.  

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