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Looking for a dedicated server to video encode.
blackzilla
Member
in Requests
Hi, as the title said I'm looking for a dedicated server to run video encoding software like ffmpeg (ideally 24/7) .
The video encoding I'm doing is mostly lowering the bitrate of videos and I don't want to continue using my CPU and want to offload this type of work because its very intensive on the CPU.
My problem is that I won't need it always meaning that I'd need it let's say every 5 or 6 months and batch re-encode all the videos I need to.
I'm looking for something like the server auctions over at Hetzner as I don't want to pay for setup fees every time I need something like this.
My maximum budget I'm willing to spend is 100€ a month.
Comments
How long do you think the encodes will take?
Might want to look into cloud compute with dedicated CPUs and bill by the hour.
Only this one is below 100 bucks.
Ideally, you could go with Intel Core i9-190920X or AMD Ryzen 9 3950X one.
Dat username
On my CPU (Intel Core i5 4690K) a 30min video is 15-20min of encoding.
What cloud compute you recommend? I was looking at this: https://www.coconut.co/ but they do not support uploading and download from your disk as far as I can tell.
How many videos do you think you'll batch encode in 6 months? I was thinking more so of hourly billed VPS with dedicated CPUs, just like Hetzner Cloud.
This service seems to have something for direct upload: https://docs.qencode.com/api-reference/transcoding/#direct-video-upload
Roughly 900 videos every 6 months should be just about right.
I think a better long term investment would just be to build a computer to do this and use it as a home server.
For video encoding, you really want GPUs as they can do it much more efficiently than CPUs can (that's one of the major purposes of a GPU, after all).
True, although maybe this warrants an investigation on if you would gain or lose by going with GPU instances (faster but more expensive).
What is your typical input and output video resolution. Also average duration for each video.
My presumption is that you own intellectual rights on those videos.
@blackzilla
From my experience, GPUs are usually more efficient but are a bit worse at compression ratios (though maybe this is just a misconfiguration). There's a company that processes news streams for large television networks (they compress the news livestreams live and send the compressed/processed video back to the television networks to distribute) and they opted to go with CPUs, as the extra compute cost led to lower overall costs with lower less bandwidth given the better compression ratios. It depends on your own case I guess.
Unfortunately I only provide CPU-only machines are only for large customers like that broadcast company, but if you need GPUs, I can provide hourly GPUs starting at $0.34/hour for a Quadro RTX 4000. Bills at $0.01/hour when off. A5000/A6000/A10/A40/V100/A100s also available at higher costs. Spin up/down via an API or via a webportal. Billing pro-rated to the minute and rounded up to the nearest cent.
Let me know if you're interested -- I can hook you up some credits and give you access to the beta of this platform in the next two weeks.
I think even this is gross overkill to be honest. I've used RTMP for a lot of live video transcoding without issue even on smallish servers
https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/how-to-set-up-your-own-private-rtmp-server-using-nginx.50/
But if you must run ffmpeg, I still think your budgets more than fair. You could also use a game server (i.e. NFOservers) but it doesn't necessarily need to run against a GPU if it's not your actual computer.
I would prolly enjoy another hourly gpu instance provider.
Haha thanks
Pricing should be lower than anything else on the market (my monthly GPUs rent out for like $200/month a pop) so might as well develop instant deployment/deletion/start/stop on top, as it makes no sense how high hourly prices are right now especially like $3/hr/V100? I’ll be doing less than $0.75, closer to $0.60 and $0.01 when off for data storage… stay tuned.
We have a Ryzen 9 5950X if that fits your requirements:
https://netdynamics24.com/client/order.php?step=1&productGroup=10
No setup fees, and if you are interested in, I can give you a promo code for discount.
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Given your requirement to batch encode a bunch of videos only every few months, I'd have to suggest that you'd really be better off just buying some extra memory for your desktop to offset that used by ffmpeg and just run the conversions at low priority ('start /low' or use a port of nice.exe). I do a similar thing here, and barely notice the backgrounded jobs, even when I forget to stop them before running games.
And at this time of year whilst 'Working From Home' it generate a bit of extra warmth in the office space too. It has to be more economical than renting services or building a dedicated PC, for the volumes you're suggesting. One month of your budget would get you 16-32GB of memory straight off the bat, with knock on benefits.
As @lentro says GPU transcoding is really best suited to real-time streaming, not 'lowering the bitrate of videos'. In my testing, albeit very subjective, the software based codecs were significantly better at compression (file size for a subjective quality) than GPU encoding, which is after all silicon based code thus limited in complexity and frozen in time.
Are you talking about increasing RAM?
Resolution could be anything from 720p to 4K. Output is always 720p 5k bitrate.
Avg duration is 30min.
Yes I do own the videos.
Consider getting VPS with high end cpu and 100% dedicated cores … such as Php-Friends or put in a post in Requests (I got a custom vps with dedicated cpu based VPS for 20 Euro per quarter, that was with 2 vCPU cores)
What do you mean "Requests"? Aren't we already in that category?
Only because running jobs in the background at low priority CPU still uses up some RAM, so maybe worth it if your system hasn't got that much, not essential. The recoding jobs can then just chug along mopping up the surplus CPU when your normal priority jobs don't need it, and you get the general benefit of more memory.
I'd look at soyoustart.com for a nice dedi, specifically SYS-5-SSD-64
I've already 8GB of RAM on my rig. Never had the feeling of getting more.
Could you please not spread false incomplete information without the full context (the exact encoding settings, codec, etc)? They not always faster. Depends on how you encode.
Thanks
Sorry... I don't mean to spread false information. There's a reason why a lot of video codecs are hardware accelerated though, and the hardware acceleration is generally in the GPU.
What I forgot to mention is that some use cases are totally fine with CPU rendering, especially if you can just run it in the background rather than real-time. I do apologise for that.
For a GPU, it doesn't necessarily have to be a discrete GPU though... A CPU with integrated graphics (an Intel CPU that supports QuickSync such as the Xeon E-2100 series, or a Ryzen with integrated graphics) can be useful too.
I didn't know that Godzilla had a brother.