Changing the Minimum Frames Setting for Shake Jobs
When you submit batches for processing with Shake Qmaster, a command dialog appears when you add a Shake job to a batch. Most of the settings in this dialog correspond to commonly used Shake commands. However, the Minimum setting is unique to submitting Shake jobs with Shake Qmaster and requires some explanation.
As described in the Shake Qmaster User's Manual, Shake Qmaster divides Shake jobs into segments of frames for efficient distributed processing. For example, one service node may process frames 1 through 10, while another service node processes frames 1 through 21.
When you are submitting a Shake job, you can change the value in the Minimum field to change the minimum number of frames in each Shake Qmaster segment. For example, with a minimum value of ten (the default), Shake Qmaster would divide a 100-frame job into at least ten segments of ten frames each. If you changed the minimum value to five, Shake Qmaster would divide a 100-frame job into at least 20 segments of five frames each. When you set a minimum, keep in mind that while smaller segments allow a job to be distributed to more nodes at once, smaller segments can also mean that more processing effort is spent on opening and closing Shake on each node.
This information comes from the Qmaster Late Breaking News for Shake version 3.0. You should refer to the Help menu on your computer if you have a different version. Updated or expanded information may also exist elsewhere in the Knowledge Base.