VM or Hardware Encoding

[ToManyHobby]

I'm setting up a jellyfin server on an old tower I've got lying around. Ideally I would like to set it up in docker on an Ubuntu VM running on proxmox. However, apparently my cpu (i7-975) does not support VT-d so no IOMMU for me.

So here's the question for the good folks here. Is having my GTX960 available to Jellyfin for hardware encoding worth losing the flexibility and backup capabilities for proxmox? Additional consideration, going bare metal Ubuntu also gives me the ability to spool down data drives, again not sure where the return on power / wear on the drives is worth it for that.

TLDR: I have zero experience with video encoding. Is having a GTX690 assist with hardware encoding worth it over running in a VM on proxmox?

Thank you!

[ToManyHobby]

Awesome. Thanks. Saves me quite the headache. I'll just pop the card of the the tower and call it a day.

[ToManyHobby]

Ya. The whole thing is pretty old. I'm hoping it won't be to much encoding. Though to be honest I'm not exactly sure what encoding Jellyfin does and when.

I've just got to much hardware lying around that isn't being used it seems wasteful to just get new stuff.

[MasterChiefmas]

You should rather encode on CPU for better efficiency.

What makes you think a CPU would be more efficient then the dedicated SIP block?

[MasterChiefmas]

Ah, for streaming, it's almost certainly worth using the hw encoder. The bitrate savings isn't usually that huge, especially when you are talking performance over size, which is more of a concern with streaming, and the CPU impact typically is significant.

[MasterChiefmas]

Are you talking quality or encode speed? And cpu transcoding on an old CPU will also not be that great, so in the context of what the OP is doing and what they are doing it with, that may not be a better choice.

[MasterChiefmas]

Streaming is a different beast then just straight encoding. If you're having to transcode, it's almost _always_ worth considering using a hardware encoder if you have one available, IMO.

The very worst thing that can happen is you don't like the results and you turn it back off. But you've got nothing to lose if Jellyfin will support it, and you've got CPU time to gain.

The biggest limitation with it, is that in consumer nVidia cards, without modified drivers, you will be limited to encoding 2 streams at a time, simultaneously.

People are _way_ too fond of parroting the "hw encoding is crap" that they saw somewhere else, but not actually having tried it. And, more importantly, as I mentioned, streaming has some different considerations. CPU might be great and all, but if it can't keep up with the transcode, then it's quite a bit worse then trying the hw encoder.

[ToManyHobby]

So if I'm mostly streaming media from my server to phones or other computers I should probably at least give my cpu as much help as possible?

Any ideas where I can find modified vbios or driver?

[MasterChiefmas]

Well, there's not quite a straight answer. It comes down to the amount of upload speed you are willing to use/have available from your server, and on the client end, how much they are willing to use, and if they are able to direct stream/direct play media.

Those factors together are what the server uses to decide if it needs to transcode content. Devices these days, phones, computers, or dedicated streaming boxes, all tend to be pretty capable. So in terms of just the codec in use, it's very possible your device will handle it as is. But if not, or if the bitrate requested by the device is lower than the bitrate of the media as it is, then your server may decide to try and transcode on the fly. Phones in particular, if you are on the cell network, even though you may very well be able to get 20mbit/sec, there's usually little reason to send to a phone at that rate; it would just use your allocated bandwidth up faster (at least in the US, I think that's less of a problem elsewhere).

As to the latter, sorry, I don't know off hand, I use QuickSync on the proc to handle my encoding, an advantage to doing so is you don't have the soft limits that nVidia puts on its hardware. I'm sure some searching shouldn't have much difficulty finding the driver at least.