Running Phocus on a "headless" (no video card) server?

[Andy Johnson-Laird]

I was just curious to see if Phocus would run on a so-called "headless" Mac Pro so that I could convert some 3FRs into TIFFs in Batch Mode. The Mac Pro 5,1 (with dual Xeon 6-cores) is running Snow Leopard (10.6. [How odd? Writing 10 dot 6 dot 8 and I get a smiley for the dot 8?] and I've removed the video card (which is codespeak for "the damned video card died an ugly death and Apple has yet to send a working replacement.")

I'm connecting to the Mac Pro from another Mac Pro using screen sharing in the Finder (Go > Connect to Server, vnc://servername).

Anyway, to my surprise, especially given how picky Phocus is when it comes to video cards, it actually works. You can batch select and batch export images.

Mind you, if you want to make Phocus crash, click on the Adjust tab. You will only have to wait, oh, about 500 milliseconds.

But the good news is that I can use the headless server to have Phocus grind through the 3FR->TIFF conversion.

Regards
Andy

[Alex Maxim]

Without a video card they all appear perfectly black. No adjustments necessary

[Andy Johnson-Laird]

Andy,

How are you applying adjustments to the images? Or you are not using Phocus to do any adjustments?

;d

I'm just using the standard adjustments, Derek. Just the normal batch processing workflow.

Regards
Andy

[Andy Johnson-Laird]

Without a video card they all appear perfectly black. No adjustments necessary

How did you know I was processing night shots at ISO 50 with a nine-stop ND filter and the lens cap on?

Actually, the conclusion is that, at least on a Mac, you can be better off having NO video card than the "wrong" video card that Phocus objects to.

Regards
Andy

[Alex Maxim]

Actually, the conclusion is that, at least on a Mac, you can be better off having NO video card than the "wrong" video card that Phocus objects to.

Regards
Andy

It can also save money
How does it work without a video card? Does it have an integrated low-end one?

[NickT]

This thread reminds me of a machine I saw running at photokina that was using cluster processing (built in to OSX) to process bulk files, we just need to get Andy to progamme X grid for us..

[Andy Johnson-Laird]

It can also save money
How does it work without a video card? Does it have an integrated low-end one?

I was wondering that. I think OS X creates a virtual video display entirely in software. The maximum resolution is a respectable 1680 x 1050. No indication of the color depth, but I don't really care about that as I just want to use the compute power for 3FR grinding...

Regards
Andy

[Andy Johnson-Laird]

This thread reminds me of a machine I saw running at photokina that was using cluster processing (built in to OSX) to process bulk files, we just need to get Andy to progamme X grid for us..

Hey Nick!

You may not even need me to do that. With Phocus' ability to monitor a folder for incoming images, I suspect one could pipeline the whole workflow by copying 3FR files into the "input" hopper folder and having Phocus munge on them and export TIFF or TIFF-16s.

A side benefit is that the MacPro runs a helluva lot cooler without the Radeon HD 5870 heat source.

Regards
Andy