[Thomas An.]

I am curious about the scene data I am seeing. I have about 5 layers with some turned off. My impression is that the scene data is listing all materials including the ones that are not visible. At first, I thought it looked more or less correct, but now I see it listing 39 emitters - and I only have 3 in the scene. I have had others, but these were deleted. Am I misunderstanding something, or is this a bug?

Yeah, I have noticed that as well. Not sure what it means, but I suspect it may be counting mesh faces (not objects)

Following on to that - does the number of emitters have anything to do with noise? Or is there a combination of emitters that creates more noise in dialectics?

Victor offered a couple of hints about lights and noise:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4340

Also, if your emitters are very very small compared to the overall scene then it will take longer to get rid of noise. (Also, small emitters will produce sharper, but more grainny, caustics which take longer to clear).

Another factor of noise, is overall reflectance of the materials:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4583

Also, I do not see any render que... what is the best technique for multiple renders? I see that if I start several, they all obviously slow down... with the result that it takes a very long time to get a render with decent sample level in a reasonable time. Suggestions for the new boy?

Sorry, I don't know enough about network rendering.