If I don’t plan on watching video away from home, is there any benefit to using hardware transcoding?
I have an I7 CPU on the DVR server and I have hardware transcoding enabled. But I only use Channels DVR for in home viewing so perhaps Software Transcoding would improve performance?
Transcoding is not used while you are at home.
Hardware transcoding is faster and uses less power and cpu than software,
I have a couple of PCs on my home network, so I’m watching live and recorded content via a web browser on those PCs. There is certainly transcoding taking place on the server side. Correct?
Yes, correct. The web player uses transcoding regardless of where you are.
Hardware transcoding means hardware optimized, i.e. use a specialized video transcoding feature of the CPU for efficient video conversion using very few resources.
Software transcoding uses regular CPU instructions. It usually uses 2-3x more energy and CPU capacity, but can generate better picture quality in some cases.
It’s up to you which one you prefer.
That helps.
May I also ask if these AMD Ryzen APUs will do hardware transcoding on Linux Mint?
AMD hardware transcoding is only available on Windows.
okay. That is disappointing
So far AMD has not released any details on how to use AMF (Advanced Media Framework) on Linux. They say it’s coming soon (https://github.com/GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/AMF/issues/4#issuecomment-415210012), although it may only work on Ubuntu when it is released.
Doesn’t VA-API also support AMD chipsets?
My Channels DVR is Linux Mint (basically Ubuntu)
What does the ATV use for transcoding?
Channels app does not require transcoding when at home. Otherwise it will use whatever setting is selected on the web UI.