Hardware advice for a transcoding box?

Channels DVR Server
#1

I'm looking for a transcode heavy box. My current benchmarks are an i5-6500T which isn't great, all the specs say it's good but I get some choppy playback as if the encoder was a step behind. I have an i3 11th gen but it doesn't far much better, I think the intel platform struggles on mpeg2 hardware decode. The other is a mac mini m1 which is a beast. mixed sources from hdhomerun to h.264 library files. mixed clients from mobile, TVs, and browsers and it just shreds encodings even with supported devices getting hevc streams.

I'm going to setup a dedicated channels 'source' box to handle a couple of hdhomeruns. Then stack up some channels in docker containers so all the family members can have their own instance on their devices as a workaround for the lack of multi-user support for logins, dvr, and libraries.

So, is a mac mini m1 about the best $/performance I can do? Anyone done any gen12 intel boxes to compare? I know I can get about double the performance moving to a mac studio with an m1 max, but that's not a good value. M1 mini is $550-600 while a small optiplex is at least that much and the other apple hardware is a LOT more.

Form factor is a big deal also, so the M1 Mini is checking a lot of boxes here.

I'm not locked to apple here, but their M1/M2 chips have some serious video encoder/decoder hardware in them that works like a champ with Channels. I'd be happy with a SFF intel box as well.

Thoughts?

#2

The hardware transcoder on the M1 macs has been the most impressive we’ve seen so far. I’ve been able to transcode 3 streams at 3-4x without issue. We’ve even recently gotten HDR transcoding working. I’ve moved my DVR to an M1 mini recently and been very happy with it.

3 Likes
#3

honestly, the best bang for the buck is a refurb Nvidia P2200. handles all the things with unlimited streams.

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#4

I bought this 11th gen machine a year ago and couldn't be happier (after some failed attempts with Windows boxes older than you metioned). I think I've seen it go as low as $450 since (oh and I see it's just over $400 now).

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-Aspire-Desktop-11th-Gen-Intel-Core-i5-11400-6-Core-Processor-UHD-Graphics-730-8GB-DDR4-512GB-NVMe-M-2-SSD-Black-Windows-10-Home-XC-1660G-UW93/405376644

It's running Channels DVR server and SageTV server simultaneously without issue. I did have a Sammy 980 1tb nvme drive that I swapped in as the boot drive, added a 2TB Sammy 870 (2.5") and 10TB 3.5" spinner that I pulled from my older media server. I did then purchase an extra 8GB of memory to bump it to 16GB.

The actual dimensions of the box are 13" deep x 12" tall x 4" wide.

The Apple M-series CPU's do look very impressive, however, I have no experience with them.

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#5

p2200 is great but it falls down decoding 4k. I have a p2000 and a p2200 in other boxes and they're solid but I think memory bandwidth is a big issue, so they're like 3-4 4K sources and that's it. The Mac Mini M1 is double that. I can get 9 4k>1080p transcodes out of plex on the m1 and then the GPU shows 95%.

I'm not sure if I need the 4k for broadcast, so if this is JUST an encoding box for 1080p content that could be a good choice other than it pushes me to a physically larger box.

If I try to handle my movie library then it's not going to cut it. I'm currently storing a 4k and a 1080p version of each video and I'm at like ~12TB of 'redundant' 1080p copies I would really like to get rid of.

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#6

My annoyance with 11th gen intel stuff is that they all get the same 'GPU' bits. I have an i3-11200 4-core HP box (basically like the Acer above but i3) and it can do about 8 1080p>1080p transcodes or half that in 4k (in plex). My Alienware M15r6 with an i7-11700 can do exactly the same. 'software' transcodes in 1080p are actually faster on that chip due to cores and clock speed :confused: Basically I'm leaning to an intel option requiring something like the p2000/p2200 or a driver hacked nvidia to get where I want it. Or just stick with the mac m1 as it seems to be some 50% faster and have enough memory bandwidth to handle more 4k streams.

I could just scale out and do multiple encoder units but then form factor is really and issue, and so mac mini's small footprint comes into place again.

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#7

Sounds like you're in the market for a some serious horsepower, $900 to $2500 I suppose. My little $400 machine probably won't get that done.

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#8

Personally, I don't see getting away from storing separate 4k and 1080p encodes.
Especially with things like DV/HDR10+, unless the 4k is purely for resolution and not the other technologies that supplement 4k.

At this stage, if the 4k encode isn't curated to be directly playable, then there's notable loss.

#9

you're probably right. trading storage for CPU/GPU, storage is probably going to win on price.

I'm less interested in 4k for resolution and more interested for HDR. I have some of the library in 1080P/hvec/HDR10. I feel like 1080p/HDR10 get's me 90% of what 4k/HDR10 does. But I only care about that in the TV room with the big 4k/HDR set. The other TVs in the house really dont matter.

#10

That depends on what you pay for electricity

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#11

true, but that cuts both ways with ~3.5W hard drives vs 65W CPUs and 75-300W GPUs.

#12

Would a 2020 M1 mini work? Or do I need a more recent revision?

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#13

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