Which MINIPC to transcode 4 - 4k streams?

[tcsevens]

Hi everyone, I can’t decide which Mini PC to choose. Can you help me ?

I’m looking for a mini PC, silent (or almost because it’s positioned in the living room), low consumption and powerful enough for max. 4 - 4k HDR transcodes.

Possibly that it is also powerful enough for the future and not to have change it in two years.

My OS would be Debian because I also have several applications (downloaders, VPN, samba, etc.). Today I have a Raspberry PI 4 which works very well, but cannot transcode anything… Do you have a mini pc for me ?

I was looking towards Beelink and miniforum, would this be correct ?
MINISFORUM Venus Series UN305C with Intel n305 or Beelink-i5-1240P or Beelink Mini PC EQ12 with N100. All compatible with QuickSync.

If you have another idea, don’t hesitate! Thanks for all

[drinehart]

I have 2 of the Beelink S12 Pro with both running Plex. I am running debian bookworm with a 6.5 kernel out of backports. Should do what you ask.

[nx6]

Note: The Beelink EQ12 gains you DDR5.

Interestingly the N95’s graphics system has a much higher dynamic frequency than the N100, but 1/3rd less execution units.

[tcsevens]

Ohhh you think EQ12 or S12 Pro is suffisant for transcode 4 stream 4k ?

Thanks !

[s_turner]

@nx6

Beelink EQ12

Absolutely. QuickSync is quite powerful and those Beelink’s are really nice (and quiet).

[nx6]

@tcsevens

Ohhh you think EQ12 or S12 Pro is suffisant for transcode 4 stream 4k ?

Depends on bitrate of the file you are playing. This as recently brought up in another thread and ChuckPa says no.

Intel Quick Sync transcode quality issues on Intel 12th/13th gen CPUs

From first-hand testing – Don’t use the N100. It won’t cut it. I helped a user test it. He thought it would work too. It fell FAR short. (Internal clock / bus speed can’t keep up with demands of pushing around raw 4K video frames for tone mapping) … It stuttered badly eventhough the HW was working Go get the JasperLake chuck@jasper:~$ grep 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo | uniq model name : Intel(R) Celeron(R) N5105 @ 2.00GHz chuck@jasper:~$

I think he is measuring transcoding/tonemapping on UHD disc remuxes, though. So transcoding a file that is already compressed from the (original source) will not be bogged down as it will not be 80-128 Mbps video stream.

[ChuckPa]

You must look at the Total Input Bitrate and the CPU + QSV clock speed.

An i7-7700 KabyLake can handle 600 Mbps INPUT (5 x 120 Mbps → 5x 20 Mbps).

Scale from here.

Now subtract -

1. Audio conversion (if required)
2. Subtitle conversion (if required)

The issue you face is the internal CPU PCI bus speed limit.

There is only so much raw video (completely decoded) you can throw around in the chip if you intend to do tone mapping or subtitle burning.

QSV does transcoding in 1 pass. Tonemapping is a Decode->Tonemap->Encode process

[nx6]

@ChuckPa

An i7-7700 KabyLake can handle 600 Mbps

Where did you get this figure from?
(not doubting it, just curious where I can find the info for a given processor).

The N100 machines are an interesting group, but the micro workstation machines you can find off-lease (Dell Optiplex 7050, Lenovo M73/920, HP Elitedesk minis) seemed like a better value proposition if you weren’t dead set on a less-than-15w system. Plus you’d have the backing of a more-established brand if you need repair parts.

[ChuckPa]

@nx6

I have a QNAP TVS-1282 w/ i7-7700 in it which I benchmarked when PMS added HEVC transcoding support (SDR) and then again when HDR transcoding was added and lastly again when tone mapping was added.

I also have a NUC8-i7HVK w/ i7-8809G in it.

(I have quite the little assortment of ‘things’ here)

(NUC6, NUC7, NUC8, 2 different Syno, ARMv8 QNAP, Thecus, GLK and JSL NUC boxes and then my main Xeon+Nvidia box)

The bulk of my info comes from ark.intel.com
From there, I do the math to get the ‘engineering estimate’ which I then test.

[ChuckPa]

Here you can see 3 arbitrary movies transcoding on JasperLake.

Intel GPU Top confirms the loading

This is what Plex reports

Transcoder is tonemapping (OpenCL across the CPU’s PCI bus)

Video input = 51Mbps + 53 M + 58 Mbps

[ChuckPa]

Just for laughs,

Here’s a 4th

There will be a quiz to see if you can identify the movies

[drinehart]

I will say that my use case is different from some of the folks using Plex. I just use it at home primarily and share only to a small number of family members who are not avid users. If I had 3 streams of any sort going simultaneously that would set a record lol. My N100 can handle a single stream of 120mbps jellyfish video just fine transcoded down to 720p 4mbps in a browser window. If you are wanting to stream to lots of folks, as ChuckPa has stated, you might have some issues with most of the low powered MiniPCs and might be better suited with a micro desktop or something similar.

[tcsevens]

Ohh thank you for your answers, everyone!

I’ve rarely had more than 3 Direct Streams, but I’m trying to anticipate the future and have something robust. Couldn’t the INTEL N305 be the compromise?