Best GPU for server side transcoding?

[Betonhaus 9]

What's considered the best GPUs to use for an Emby server to handle transcoding and rendering trickplay previews and so on? I have an Intel Arc A310 but i wonder if I should upgrade to an A770 or something.

[Jdiesel 1317]

The A310 will be plenty. There isn't much to gain after a certain point and even an Intel iGPU is sufficient. Are you running Emby on Windows or Linux? Do you do much 4K transcoding with tone mapping?

[Betonhaus 9]

7 minutes ago, Jdiesel said:

The A310 will be plenty. There isn't much to gain after a certain point and even an Intel iGPU is sufficient. Are you running Emby on Windows or Linux? Do you do much 4K transcoding with tone mapping?

I'm running it on Ubuntu Server, the majority of my content is 1080p but I do have some 4k content and I have an android tv device that does 4k and seems to try to render complex/animated subtitles in 4k or something. I didn't realize I had tone mapping disabled, I enabled software and hardware with cable, Extra-T OpenCL quicksync

 

For VAAPI should I use VAAPI HW Tone Mapping or Extra -T OpenCl?

Should I use Hable, Reinhard, or Mobius?

Edited April 5 by Betonhaus

[Luke 39988]

On 4/5/2025 at 7:41 PM, Betonhaus said:

I'm running it on Ubuntu Server, the majority of my content is 1080p but I do have some 4k content and I have an android tv device that does 4k and seems to try to render complex/animated subtitles in 4k or something. I didn't realize I had tone mapping disabled, I enabled software and hardware with cable, Extra-T OpenCL quicksync

 

For VAAPI should I use VAAPI HW Tone Mapping or Extra -T OpenCl?

Should I use Hable, Reinhard, or Mobius?

Hi, I would just experiment and see what you like the best. There is no best answer for all scenarios. Please let us know what you come up with. Thanks.

[marriedman 59]

Kinda/sorta off topic - if you can find SRT or SSA subtitles for those videos that have PGS subtitle, put them in the same folder as the video file and name it the same as the video plus "default".

e.g. Movie (2025) [2160p].en.default.srt

I found that takes care of my clients that cannot handle bitmapped subtitle issues. 

If you can't find SRT or SSA subs, you can sometimes rip the PGS and run OCR on them to get a text out put. I personally have never had luck with that though.

[Luke 39988]

@Betonhaus has this helped?

[Lessaj 293]

1 hour ago, marriedman said:

Kinda/sorta off topic - if you can find SRT or SSA subtitles for those videos that have PGS subtitle, put them in the same folder as the video file and name it the same as the video plus "default".

e.g. Movie (2025) [2160p].en.default.srt

I found that takes care of my clients that cannot handle bitmapped subtitle issues. 

If you can't find SRT or SSA subs, you can sometimes rip the PGS and run OCR on them to get a text out put. I personally have never had luck with that though.

I convert all subs to SRT using SubtitleEdit via CLI and overall the OCR is pretty good but there are definitely errors that come up. If I'm watching something and I find it's really bad I'll extract the SRT and fix it and remux it.