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We bought a couple of i7 NUCs every time a new generation was launched, mainly to have access to the latest GPU features. That is, we hoped to use Intel's MFX
by pipo234 3y ago
We bought a couple of i7 NUCs every time a new generation was launched, mainly to have access to the latest GPU features.
That is, we hoped to use Intel's MFX Media SDK for transcoding h264 (or even h265) video. Unfortunately both the SDK and the hardware were too much of a moving target, going from software to hardware only, Windows only then later linux only on CentOS, then only on Ubuntu, then (partially) open source. Dropping support for older generations, breaking API changes. Opaque licensing policies.
At some point we gave up and simply went with ffmpeg. Works great on AMD too, or ARM for that matter.
Still using a NUC as main development machine, extremely fast and mostly quiet.
- alliao 3y agohow does it compare with Apple silicones? M1/M2 the mac mini seem like a no brainer at those prices for transcoding?
- Arn_Thor 3y agoI think that'll depend on the use case. last I checked, 4k transcoding + tone mapping was still not working right on Plex.
- pipo234 3y agoHaven't tried, but I don't expect it to be competitive. Note that software transcoding means: CPU only, and M1/M2 is still just a bunch or ARM cores. We've tested on Amazon's Graviton 2 and 3 systems and so-far found them to be on par or slightly cheaper than their x86-64 counterparts. But this is mostly due to AWS aggressive pricing of ARM systems, which is quite the contrary for Apple hardware. MacMini's currently are approximately twice as expensive as the Intel i7 NUC, Gigabyte Brix and similar hardware we bought. Also, dev tools targeting server software development on Apple hardware (ie. Linux, please!) are still wanting.