Unraid - How to transcode to RAM?

[solidsnakex37 42]

Recently did some server upgrades and increased my RAM to 256GB and I want to start transcoding to RAM instead of my SSD. 

What's the proper way to do this? I've tried a few ways but none seem to work. 

I am using the official Emby container, latest version 4.8.3.0, Unraid 6.12.8

If I use this for the container mapping: 



I then get this in Emby when I try and set the transcode path to /tcode




But if I use /tmp instead of /tcode for the container path, the Emby container won't even start. 

Thanks for the help!

Edited March 8 by solidsnakex37

[Luke 37068]

hi, we don't recommend transcoding to a ram disk, but if you feel like you must, then I would check out this article and see if it helps:

 

[solidsnakex37 42]

Hey @Luke! Thanks for the reply, why don't you recommend transcoding to RAM? I can keep this set to an SSD, but just curious why that's not recommended as it's such a popular option for power users. 

[Luke 37068]

1 hour ago, solidsnakex37 said:

Hey @Luke! Thanks for the reply, why don't you recommend transcoding to RAM? I can keep this set to an SSD, but just curious why that's not recommended as it's such a popular option for power users. 

 

[Marino_83 1]

@solidsnakex37

You could just use /tmp/emby (host) and something like /mnt/transcache in the container. I experienced the same as you are, but with this, the container starts without any other change and is transcoding to memory in Unraid.

But as the link above is telling us, it will fill up the memory. I tried a script, but this is not working as expected, as it is deleting the last x files, when the folder succeed x MB/GB. Not perfect and I don't know how to handle that with more streams than just one.

 

When you worked something out, please tell me.

[solidsnakex37 42]

On 3/19/2024 at 12:22 PM, Marino_83 said:

@solidsnakex37

You could just use /tmp/emby (host) and something like /mnt/transcache in the container. I experienced the same as you are, but with this, the container starts without any other change and is transcoding to memory in Unraid.

But as the link above is telling us, it will fill up the memory. I tried a script, but this is not working as expected, as it is deleting the last x files, when the folder succeed x MB/GB. Not perfect and I don't know how to handle that with more streams than just one.

 

When you worked something out, please tell me.

So I got the transcoding to RAM working with setting the "Transcoding temporary path" to /transcode in Emby

Then my container is this: 


You also have to chown the directory to give the correct perrmissions for Emby to write to it. 

As for filling up the memory, that part isn't an issue for me as I am running 256GB of RAM. I also have the throttling set to: 

  "ThrottleBufferSize": 500,
  "ThrottleHysteresis": 8,
  "ThrottlingMethod": "ByStreamBufferSize",

When a transcode ends, those files are removed from the /tmp/emby path. My use-case is a bit more of a niche area because my unraid server is on AMD Epyc, so I have plenty of memory to spare for transcodes. 

[Marino_83 1]

With my path I don‘t change the chown.

You‘re right. With that amount of memory you don‘t have to think about that so much. I’ve only a small amount off 64gigs installed

I saw some scripts, but with that oldest parts were deleted. sometimes when reaching a special amount auf filling than delete the oldest x files. But the file size differs. Who could say that nothing is deleted what is needed in the feature?
This is bothering me a little, because when there are more than one stream this could delete some part which are maybe prepared. Transcodes is faster than the watching. Nothing that I saw prevents the scripts from doing this. No check, what file is in use right now. No handling of more than on streams in sperate folders. With more streams at the same time the possibility of deleting wrong files increases. 

For now I just set a limit for the tmpfs I created. This could crash Emby but not the host system.

Would be nice when Emby could delete already used data while watching and not only at the end.

I’am not able to self writing scripts. Reading it and try to understand and do some changes to it is what I can do atm.

 

Sometimes I anm thinking about getting 64g of memory in addition so that the system has 128g and just let it do the transcode.