looking for USB video encoder

[caffeineshock 14]

idk if something like this exists. but im looking for an external video encoder (kinda like rip out the nvenc part of a nvidia gpu and connect it via usb) that can be used by ffpeg which is used by emby.

i mean there are usb bitcoin asics so... 

if something like this does not exists: any way to offload the load from the cpu to a external piece of hardware (maybe a network encoder? a second device?) without the use of a gpu on the emby server itself

Edited November 17, 2022 by caffeineshock

[RanmaCanada 344]

No it's not possible.  Why do you want to use an external encoder?  What is your use case in regards to this.  If your emby server is your main rig, you're better off buying or building a new stand alone encoder box.  I personally use a laptop with a smashed screen to offload all my encoding.  Uses 15 watts of power at peak!

[caffeineshock 14]

not possible is wrong. i could hook up a small gpu with dedicated nvenc encoder via thunderbolt i would have an external gpu that i could use to encode. not exactly what im looking for

also there is an ai accelerator from google that is plugged in via usb

so please dont tell its not possible. ofc its possible.

why i need this for? well encoding obviously i share gpu(s) between multiple vms. one of them is my emby vm. but every vm needs vram just because it has access to the gpu. and as soon as the encoding starts the amount of vram thats used is increased. not that bad as long as no other vm tries to use the gpu and wants some memory as well. ths way it could happen that the gpu does not have sufficient memory for for encoding and an other task.

to prevent this i could use an other gpu for encoding. or maybe there is an external device for it 

 

edit----- 

no its not my main rig. slightly too low for this. is a dedicated device. but still. it would be very nice to have an external device for encoding only. if something like thihs exists (ofc i could use pcie over fiber from an other network device to passthrough a pcie device that i could use on the vm but thats gonna be very very expensve and not exactly what im looking for  )

Edited November 26, 2022 by caffeineshock

[RanmaCanada 344]

The amount of money required to use an external GPU box is insane.  The boxes themselves cost around $400 (unless you got that Razor sale for $150), and then you still need to use a separate power supply (if the box you buy doesn't have one) and hope that your m.2 slot on your motherboard is compatible, and not to mention the cost of the GPU.  There is no physical stand alone USB encoder that works as you want, that is what my "No it's not possible" answer was for.  Again it's far easier to just use an external laptop that is loaded with your Emby server and have it access the files over the network.  Can be done for $200 or less (my 11th gen i3 was $115) and will use significantly less power than a GPU and will give you better results.  If you want to be really creative, you could also try to use a usb pcie riser like miners use, and see if it will work that way, but again, you still need to buy the hardware at great cost.

Just buy a used/broken screen laptop, and have it hidden somewhere in your house on your network.

[rbjtech 4260]

Really need to understand the use case some more.

If you referring to generic 'encoding'  - then there are lots of distributed encoding platforms that split workloads up onto whatever hardware you happen to have - ripbot264 is probably one of the first to ever do this and still my go to - but new kids on the block like tdarr etc can also do this over a flashy web based framework.  Hardware wise, use what you like - but for consistency, use the same hardware across the distribution.   The most cost effective is the intel integrated gpu's (maybe the ARC gpu's also but have no experience of those) - Nvidia GPU's are total overkill as you are paying for the 3D power, not the encoding/decoding power - as @RanmaCanada has said above.  A 'fleet' of low power laptops all with Intel 11th gen+ iGPU's on a distributed encode will make short work of most workloads.

If however your question is what can emby do for distributed transcoding - then the answer is not a lot.  It can't currently even use multi GPU's on the same encode for example.  You can pick between them - but I'm not even sure it would fallback to the secondary one if the first one was maxed.. 

 

[Oupree 0]

your meaning something like this, https://www.oupree.com/IP-Video-Decoder-Transcoder/MP10U-H-265-UVC-HDMI-Media-Player.html  encoding usb video files to ip streaming?

[caffeineshock 14]

yeeeaah.... sort of. if i understand it right you throw a media-file via tcp at this device and it puts out a stream or whatever you set it to to output. then yeah probably something like this. but im not sure ffmpeg can make use of it (and therefore emby), which would be an issue

imaging taking a nvdia/amd/intel gpu, cutting out the mpeg encoder and plugging it into an usb port. 

or imagine a second computer next to your computer. the first handles the database, webserver etc etc. the entire emby BUT as soon as a file has to be converted ffmpeg on second pc starts pulling the neccessary data via tcp, transcodes them and "gives" them back to emby to provide to the client

Edited January 25 by caffeineshock