Set priority for ffmpeg

[mjb2000 47]

I run MB on a box which also does a whole bunch of other things, including acting as my router, therefore I don't want some of the really important processes running on this box to compete with ffmpeg when transcoding. Is it possible to have an option to set the priority level of ffmpeg? At present it spawns with 'normal' priority, but if it could be launch with 'low' or 'idle' priority that would be great

 

M

[ebr 15665]

It is only going to consume the resources it needs to do its job.  And, since its job is mostly transcoding videos so they can be delivered to clients that is pretty critical (from our perspective).  Forcing it to run at a lower priority would likely result in the streaming functions not working well or at all.

[ebr 15665]

But, if he does have other, higher priority processes wouldn't that potentially rob ffmpeg of processing and cause transcoding to suffer?

 

Is this something that could be tested at the machine level by indicating on that system for the process to always run at a certain priority?

[mjb2000 47]

I probably should come clean and explain that one of the other processes on this machine is a pfSense router running in a Virtual Machine, so whilst video playback is important, network connectivity for the whole network is more important!

 

pfSense uses very little CPU, but I really don't want it queueing up behind an ffmpeg process using 100%

 

As null_pointer said, even at low priority, ffmpeg could still happily consume 100%, assuming no other more important processes are trying to use the CPU

[dethknite 37]

You could install process lasso (or other free tools) and set all ffmpeg processes to start at low priority.. or set the vm or pfSense processes to always run at highest priority.  (can nice the processes by default if linux).

 

With process lasso, you can also control memory and disk priority usage.

 

Although features like this are always helpful... I do not feel this is on the importance list IMO, as it can be handled by each user already... so no need wasting man-power to recreate the wheel.

 

Worst case scenario.. you could always setup another VM that is for MB3 only... or get another dedicated system.

Edited November 5, 2014 by dethknite

[mjb2000 47]

Some great points - thanks dethknite - I will look in to process lasso. 

 

I would put MB3 in another VM, but I'm also working on using Intel QuickSync for hardware h264 encoding (further lightening the CPU load) and at the moment I don't think I can use the QuickSync GPU encoding from within a VM.

 

I'll update here when I have news of hardware encoding.

 

M