Can't seem to enable hardware transcoding

Having trouble getting the DVR software to recognize my hardware transcoder. I’ve been through the other threads and haven’t been able to resolve it. Thought I’d ask for help.

Here is the output of a common command I see requested. ./channels-dvr/latest/ffmpeg -hide_banner -vaapi_device /dev/dri/renderD128 -f lavfi -t 0.1 -i color=black:640x480 -f null -y /dev/null ffmpeg version n3.2-469-g7374036 Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 4.8 (Ubuntu 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04.3) [AVHWDeviceContext @ 0x2a81f80] No VA display found for device: /dev/dri/renderD128. [vaapi @ 0x138c250] Failed to create a VAAPI device

What does the CPU/OS section on the web ui say?

OSLinux Ubuntu
16.04 (kernel: 4.4.0-66-generic)
CPU
8 cores / Intel® Core™ i7 CPU Q 740 @ 1.73GHz
RAM4.07 GB
65.0% free

That’s a pretty old processor. Doesn’t look like it supports “Intel QuickSync” according to https://ark.intel.com/products/49024/Intel-Core-i7-740QM-Processor-6M-cache-1_73-GHz

It was just an old laptop that I threw it on to try it out. So it’s just a hardware limitation? Thanks, I’ll see about moving to a better machine now that I know the product is legit.

Correct, your hardware does not support accelerated transcoding. Software transcoding should still work pretty well on that CPU.

I have a 2013 Mac Pro and hardware transcoding is not an option. I’ve seen others indicate hardware transcoding is available on Mac Minis. Is it that the Mac Pro doesn’t support it?

Thanks!

Depends on the CPU model.

2013 should be pretty recent though. What does the OS/CPU section at the top of the DVR web UI say?

OSDarwin
10.12.4 (kernel: 16.5.0)
CPU
6 cores / Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-1650 v2 @ 3.50GHz
load averages: 3.07 3.03 2.90
RAM68.72 GB
78.6% free

No QuickSync listed for that processor: http://ark.intel.com/products/75780/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1650-v2-12M-Cache-3_50-GHz

Thanks! That’s disappointing. However, with that much processing power, hardware transcoding isn’t really needed!