Render Farm Strange Behavior (File Size, Speed) - HELP!
 

I've been render farming out a large project on two identical computers, except one has 12 GB ram, the other 24 GB. They are both running 6-core Intel 980x at 3.3Ghz. Same brand of memory also.

When I render out the exact same project as a TIFF sequence from both computers to a shared network drive, the computers appear to be processing the files differently. Here's what I mean:


12 GB Machine
6,076kb file size per TIFF
10 minute Average time between file creations

24 GB Machine
8,101kb file size per TIFF
20 minute Average time between file creations

This is very strange behavior. This is the EXACT same, IDENTICAL project file stored on the local harddrive on each computer (following Adobe's recommended render farm workflow). Messing with the multi-core rendering settings doesn't appear to make any difference to speed whatsoever. In fact, the "fastest" settings I've seem to have found are going against what logic would tell you and just turning that option off entirely.

Any help would be appreciated. If it was the other way around, with the bigger RAM machine pumping out files twice as fast, I would attribute that to the added RAM, but it's the other way around. The 12GB RAM machine is almost twice as fast and creating files 2000KB smaller. When I stitch the clips together in Premiere, there is no visible difference between the 6000kb and 8000kb files.

It almost seems to me that the 24GB machine is wasting time spitting out 2000kb worth of extra (unnecessary, useless?) information.

It sounds like one of the machines is also set to render out an alpha channel into the TIFFs. 6MB Tiffs would presumably be 8bit RGB at 1920x1080, while 8MB Tiffs usually the same resolution, but with a fourth channel of data for the alpha, which it doesn't sound like you need.
You don't mention it, but it sounds like you are using AE as oppsed to AME, so the way you disable the alpha channel, is in the Render Queue Output Module, once you select TIFF Sequence, right under the Video Output checkbox, there is a "Channels" dropdown selection. Make sure that RGB is selected instead of RGB+Alpha. That will most likely solve your entire problem.