Multiple HDHomerun units? Maximum?

[Erik 120]

Hi,

 

Just curious if anyone is running 3 or more HDhomerun units. I currently have 2 and am considering a 3rd, but didn't know what the max amount of recording streams might be or maybe its a hard drive limit.

 

I have a dedicated server (i7, 32GB RAM) and since they are all HDhomerun extend units the server doesn't have to transcode so low CPU usage.

 

 

Thoughts?

 

Thanks,

Erik

 

[Guest asrequested]

I don't think there is a limit to how many tuners you can have. As long as you can physically connect the device, you should be ok. You'll only have 6 tuners and there are a number of people using 2 Primes (6 tuners). I want one of these, which has 6 tuners, but it's very expensive.

[Erik 120]

I didn't think Emby had a limit. Just didn't know if I was recording 6 shows at once let's say all onto the same hard drive if the hard drive can do that.

 

I know my drives copy to one another at about 150mb/s but so if that's their limit how much does each recording stream require? That's a better maybe.

 

Thanks

[Guest asrequested]

I didn't think Emby had a limit. Just didn't know if I was recording 6 shows at once let's say all onto the same hard drive if the hard drive can do that.

 

I know my drives copy to one another at about 150mb/s but so if that's their limit how much does each recording stream require? That's a better maybe.

 

Thanks

 

What your hardware can do, is a different question. You'll have to look at the write speeds of your drive. It looks like the extend uses MPEG2, which is a large stream. When recording, I'd suggest to keep enabling hardware transcoding and you should be ok.

[Erik 120]

Thanks,

I have all the unit's "heavy" transcoding so Emby is only doing the container swap to .mkv but I'll have to test a stream with a resource monitor to see the actual usage. Then multiply it.

 

I'll post the results.

[Erik 120]

I have all 3 HDhomerun Extend units up and running (6 Tuners) and did a test with 5 recordings at the same time.

 

They start and record just fine, but all end before the end of the scheduled recording (all were 60 min and stopped from 27-38 min in).

 

@@Luke , I attached the logs if you can see why they aren't completing. Also, each ffmpeg process is using 16-17% of the CPU, if that normal? As the units are set to heavy transcode so Emby should just be doing the container swap to .mkv from what i understand. So this results in %100 CPU usage with just 4 streams and over in the example below.

 

The log and transcoding log attached from trial recordings to start at 1700.

 

thanks!

 

[puithove 208]

It's definitely transcoding, not just the "container swap" you're thinking it's doing.  Here is what FFMPEG is doing (this is in the transcode log):

Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (h264 (native) -> h264 (libx264))
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (ac3 (native) -> aac (native))

 

That means it's re-encoding the video from h264 to h264 using libx264, and also the audio from ac3 to aac.  This is why you're hitting your CPU limit.

 

Go into the server settings, LiveTV, Settings (the area where you set the settings for recordings).  Check to see if you have both options for "Preserve Original Video" and "Preserve Original Audio" set.  I know the video option was a pretty recent addition, so make sure you're running a recent version of the server.

[Erik 120]

Thanks @@puithove

 

I'll download the beta and give that a try, Ill see if that's why the episodes are cutting out as well.

[kanipek 224]

I have 6 Connects plus 2 primes for 18 tuners total. I have not used all for recording at the same time. But I have used 10 for recording plus a couple streaming. No problems here.

[Erik 120]

@@kanipek thanks for that. do you have Emby transcoding each or just straight recording?

[kanipek 224]

I do not have trans-coding enabled, straight mpeg transport stream files.

[Erik 120]

Thanks, my 6 should be fine then once I turn off the transcoding of the recording.

 

Cheers

[Erik 120]

@@kanipek one more question if you don't mind..

 

Are all the recording (when you do a bunch) all recording to the same HDD or is it spread around in a pool or something?

[mediacowboy 438]

I have started to watch this thread as I find it very useful.

 

I have started to thinking about building a new server. With this new server I was thinking about adding a dedicated recording drive. I will eventually have 6 tuners to record TV with. From what I have read here one drive should work for this but I got to thinking. Would two identical 1 TB or 2 TB in a RAID 0 be over kill?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[puithove 208]

Most of the MPEG2 streams that I've seen from US cable run around 15 Mbps (thats mega BIT per second).  Some channels are compressed more, some less but that's a pretty consistent average.  Even your slower 7200rpm spindle drives are writing in excess of 100 MBps (that's mega BYTE per second).  Now granted, that's for a single sequential file write - if you're writing to 6 files and possible reading from others at the same time it'll be slower... but the chance of the drive falling far enough behind to be a problem is probably pretty low.  I'm assuming that Emby has at least a small RAM buffer for each stream, and most OSes will also have a IO write cache as well to cover the occasional hiccup.

 

But then again a two-drive raid 0 would certainly reduce that risk and I'm all for making things faster  You do of course double your risk of being taken offline by a drive failure though.

[kanipek 224]

@@kanipek one more question if you don't mind..

 

Are all the recording (when you do a bunch) all recording to the same HDD or is it spread around in a pool or something?

I record to 1 SATA drive for everything.

[kanipek 224]

I have started to watch this thread as I find it very useful.

 

I have started to thinking about building a new server. With this new server I was thinking about adding a dedicated recording drive. I will eventually have 6 tuners to record TV with. From what I have read here one drive should work for this but I got to thinking. Would two identical 1 TB or 2 TB in a RAID 0 be over kill?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I record and edit daily then convert and move to a RAID 5 array. I initially had a RAID 0 set up years back for recording, but in my experience it was overkill. If you tend to leave your recordings on that drive for an extended period then it might be worth it in case of a failure.

[Erik 120]

@@kanipek thanks!

 

Also, how are you forcing Emby to straight record without transcoding? The preserve video/audio options or a different way (as I tend to stay on stable releases and the preserve video isn't an option yet)

[mediacowboy 438]

I record and edit daily then convert and move to a RAID 5 array. I initially had a RAID 0 set up years back for recording, but in my experience it was overkill. If you tend to leave your recordings on that drive for an extended period then it might be worth it in case of a failure.

If I do live TV recording it is for shows I want to watch but don't want to keep.

[kanipek 224]

@@kanipek thanks!

 

Also, how are you forcing Emby to straight record without transcoding? The preserve video/audio options or a different way (as I tend to stay on stable releases and the preserve video isn't an option yet)

I have never used the transcoding feature within Emby except right after I set it up months ago (just wanted to test it out) there is a transcoding section under Manage Server which is where I set that up if I remember correctly. I only stick with the stable release version here. But Also I should tell you that even though we are recording to mpeg transport stream files - .ts - that doesn't mean you are recording .mpg files. What ever the stream is encoded as by your provider is what you will get - even though you end up with the .ts files what the encoding is can be .mpg or .mp4 based on what you are getting down the cable. Most of our HD channels are now .mp4 format and what I end up with after editing are .mkv files which I convert to .mp4. Sounds complicated, but not really.

 

Also if you are using the Extend version of the HomeRun there is a place under each device to allow using the transcoding feature - which I believe is turned on by default.

[kanipek 224]

If I do live TV recording it is for shows I want to watch but don't want to keep.

Yeah then it would probably be overkill - in my opinion.

[Guest asrequested]

I have started to watch this thread as I find it very useful.

 

I have started to thinking about building a new server. With this new server I was thinking about adding a dedicated recording drive. I will eventually have 6 tuners to record TV with. From what I have read here one drive should work for this but I got to thinking. Would two identical 1 TB or 2 TB in a RAID 0 be over kill?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I only have one Prime. I have a single 2TB HDD and it works just fine. I use a single drive as I don't keep any recordings, so the drive has a lot of traffic and if it fails, it's easy to replace. I have no need of redundancy. A RAID 0 I think would be inviting trouble. If you look at the DVRs by tv providers, they only have one drive.

[puithove 208]

@@kanipek thanks!

 

Also, how are you forcing Emby to straight record without transcoding? The preserve video/audio options or a different way (as I tend to stay on stable releases and the preserve video isn't an option yet)

 

Yours is transcoding because you have the option to convert to MKV/MP4 enabled.  If you turned that off, it would just copy the stream as-is to a .TS file (this is the output format from the cable), no transcoding involved.

 

The new options for Preserve Video/Audio allow you to copy the existing stream into a new file format.

 

So you do have the option to record without transcoding (which is the default) on the existing stable version.

[Guest asrequested]

@@kanipek thanks!

 

Also, how are you forcing Emby to straight record without transcoding? The preserve video/audio options or a different way (as I tend to stay on stable releases and the preserve video isn't an option yet)

 

Check this setting, too

 

[Erik 120]

Thanks. Yes I have the hardware transcoding option selected, I just didn't realize that selecting the MKV container was causing transcoding. I'll set that back when I get home and test some recordings (until the beta goes stable at least).

 

Cheers