Serviio

Hello,

After hours of non success with DS214Play i consider to build a windows 10 for filesharing and serviio.

I have a couple of questions:

what is the minimum CPU/RAM for transcoding 4k HEVC+DTS to h264 + any DD 2.1?
Do Serviio support GPU for transcoding?

To answer your second question, I don't believe Serviio has the ability to use GPU processing. There is an Intel switch, but it of course relies on an Intel GPU, and I'm not certain how much value it offers.

As far as CPU, my suggestion would be to get as many cores as possible, as Serviio can use all available. There's a setting on the console under the transcoding tab that can assign as few or as many cores as you like. There's also an Optimal setting, which is default, so it can adjust the cores used based on demand. My test server is not very powerful, and to be honest I've never attempted to transcode H.265. But while it's usually maxing the CPU utilization out, it never completely freezes the computer in use. Once you have plenty of cores, I think the CPU speed is of lesser importance. But with Intel I'd go at least with the i5, and with AMD the Ryzen 5.

RAM doesn't really seem to be much of an issue. I have 8 gig in both of my Serviio machines, and memory never seems to be an issue.

thank you for the answer.

what is the minimum CPU/RAM for transcoding 4k HEVC+DTS to h264 + any DD 2.1?

Not sure what the minimum spec is but I've done it with an i5 and 8Gbps of RAM. No drama but as mentioned, it will use all available CPU resources while transcoding. CPU and disk seem the major factors, not so much with RAM (assuming 8G or above - you shouldn' run anything Windows with less ). I allocate all of my CPU cores to Serviio.

The bigger issue is what else is running. If the server has other demands then the CPU may get bogged down. As long as it can maintain transcoding at a rate faster than it streams there is no issue (assuming all other factors are good - such as your network).

Curious as to what advantage you perceive in transcoding on-the-fly to H264 rather than MPEG2 which uses less CPU to achieve and for streaming on a LAN wont in my experience produce any noticable difference. The only reasons I would do it to H264 is where the renderer doesnt support MPEG2 at the resolution required, or arguably, you are streaming across the internet (where bandwdith may become an issue and the higher compression of H264 comes into play). No drama with transcoding to H264 just wondering what the driver is if you are worried about minimum specs.

Transcoding to AC3 is not an issue for even basic hardware.