So I was using plex docker on unRaid, it was working fine till I started using Plex much more. I have a dual Xeon socket 1366 based system so no Intel Quick Sync. I didn’t want to build a new server so I started looking into GPU Encoding. I have an old GTX 760 passed to a virtual machine that was initially running Ubuntu Server, I found that per the documentation I could Encode using Hardware but couldn’t Decode in hardware. I have an educational license to some Microsoft Software so I was able to get a copy of Windows 8.1 Embedded. After setting up PMS to my Virtual Machine using unRaid’s KVM I have the VM 16GB of RAM, made a RAM Drive with 12GB for the encodings to take place in and passed the 760 to it. Per the information for NVENC I’m able to do most h.264 files I can throw at it. For most intensive purposes it works great.
But I want more…
I have gave the VM 3 cores, 6 threads and I want to start doing H.265/HEVC. To do that I have to go to a Pascal Generation Card. I don’t want to put in another Consumer grade card I would also like to break past the 2 streams so I have been looking at a Quadro P2000 as a card to get as its the smallest card that apparently does unlimited transcodes.
So Questions are as follows.
- If I get the Quadro p2000 will I get unlimited Transcodes (within reason of course) hardware encodings?
- Will hardware encoding ever work with MPEG2 for live TV?
- Will hardware encoding ever be used for when recording Live TV and having the (Convert Video While Recording) option turned on?
Now here is another question.
After looking at the specifications and limitations of the Nvidia Shield, it looks like I could just put my Plex Server on a Shield and let it do its own thing there. I have a Shield TV Pro that I use for gaming purposes and don’t want there to be anything running that will hinder my gaming so I would probably get another Shield TV.
Would this be a better option than doing the virtual machine I outlined above?
I mainly don’t want much of a performance impact when recording Live TV to hit the server. On the same server I have another VM running with 4 cores/8 threads going to a VM with a GTX 1060 passed to it for Nvidia Gamestream.
I have tried to converge as much of my resources in to one machine as possable, for the power usage I think the Shield TV would be a more power effecent option but I don’t know, I have only used my PMS on the Shield a few times and it seemed… glitchy? Not as fast? IDK. Maybe it would have been faster if I had let it set for a while to process everything.
Also in case anyone wanted to Rackmount a Nvidia Shield, I found these Googling around. (for the Pro, here) (I think for the 2017 model) (and something called Twin?)
Thanks for any input you all can give.
PS. The server in question in case anyone is wondering/ask is a HP ProLiant DL370 G6.