Transcoding on DS 1621+

[ericarias1984 1]

Hi All

 

I have a 6 bay NAS (DS1621+) with SSD cache offloading.  I have a bunch of 4k movies in my librbary and I am trying to setup transcoding on it.  There is a section to setup the transcoding temporary path.  If I point this path to my SSD drives in my NAS, this should greatly improve transcoding, is that correct?  If so, I am having a difficult time locating the SSD paths.When I search for a path, I see a bunch of system directories which are on my NAS, see below:

I am confused which path is pointing to the SSD drives?  These drives are setup as SSD cache volumes for the NAS so they dont show up here as a volume to choose from.  Wondering how I can set this up?  Anyone have any experience with this?

 

Thank you!

[Luke 42077]

Hi, the Synology cache drives are handled automatically by the Synology operating system. You can't copy files directly to it, as far as I know.

[DJX 18]

There is a way to set it up as a volume but quite cumbersome. Check online for some tutorials 

[Luke 42077]

OK I didn't know that. So if you've done that, then you'll need to know the full path to them, and then you can try entering that path into the emby folder picker dialog.

[ericarias1984 1]

Thank you everyone for the reply.  Would this be the only way to improve transcoding performance?  RCurrently right now, if I try and play a transcoded file from my laptop via the browser, it stutters like every 5 seconds unless I set the quality to 1080P down from 4K.

 

[Carlo 4561]

I can tell you I've done it both way.  I mounted the SSDs with Linux commands and tested this.
I then took the two 1TB SSDs and set them up for read/write caching in the Synology OS.

Either way would work but I'd suggest not manually creating them and just using them for caching data.  Seems to work quite well for me recording several shows off tuners, streaming live tv and still can transcode a 4K HDR movie.

So I'd suggest trying the easy method first!

[DJX 18]

31 minutes ago, cayars said:

I can tell you I've done it both way.  I mounted the SSDs with Linux commands and tested this.
I then took the two 1TB SSDs and set them up for read/write caching in the Synology OS.

Either way would work but I'd suggest not manually creating them and just using them for caching data.  Seems to work quite well for me recording several shows off tuners, streaming live tv and still can transcode a 4K HDR movie.

So I'd suggest trying the easy method first!

How does emby know to use the cache drives for transcoding when using the default synology method of the slots being used as cache. In the emby setup do you still map to it?

[Luke 42077]

Just now, DJX said:

How does emby know to use the cache drives for transcoding when using the default synology method of the slots being used as cache. In the emby setup do you still map to it?

It doesn't. It's all handled by the Synology OS.

[DJX 18]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

It doesn't. It's all handled by the Synology OS.

Oh right. Thats good to know! May consider this as I have alot of SW transcoding when family view my mp4 home videos. Maybe it's better that's done on a SSD than my Reds

[Carlo 4561]

It's really smart how it uses the SSD cache even without any specific tuning.

However they have a SSD Cache Advisor you can run as well.  I just turned it on and it told me it will take about a week.

I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what the results will be.

[ericarias1984 1]

Thank you!  I will turn this on to see if it improves the transcoding because as of right now I cant transcode via the web browser a 4K movie, too much stutter and the Synology goes to 100 percent CPU.

[Luke 42077]

On 9/24/2021 at 1:07 AM, ericarias1984 said:

Thank you!  I will turn this on to see if it improves the transcoding because as of right now I cant transcode via the web browser a 4K movie, too much stutter and the Synology goes to 100 percent CPU.

@ericarias1984

Hi, has this helped?

[FrostByte 5392]

I know it may be too late, but if you're still in the return window you might exchange your 1621 for one of the Synology systems with an Intel 4K GPU.  The only reason I went with Ryzen is because I don't do any transcoding.  Cayars has a 4K GPU so his is naturally going to be faster at transcoding 4K than ours.   

 

Edited September 27, 2021 by FrostByte

[ericarias1984 1]

Thank you!  Unfortunetley I am not in the return window anymore  and transcoding is pretty bad with the current setup.  It hasnt helped much to turn that advisor feature on.  Possible to swap out the CPU?

[Carlo 4561]

Not that I know of.  Even if you could, for the cost you would likely be better off buying a NUC (or repurpose a PC) and installing Emby on that. Something with QuickSync on Nvidia is going to really help with the transcodes. With the NUC/PC you could install on an SSD and use that for Emby as well which would help a lot as well.

You NAS as is has 4 1GB Ethernet ports and could be expanded with a 10 GbE adapter.  A NUC or PC can be expanded also.  Just depends on the switch you have. You can get USB3 5GbE (5GbE, 2.5GbE, 1GbE, and 100MbE) adapters pretty cheap for use with a NUC. That way even with a dumb switch you could do bonding so the ethernet link between the two boxes isn't an issue.

[FrostByte 5392]

The 1621+ should also support Link Aggregation as long as your switch supports it also.  I have my 1821+ configured as two 2GB ports instead of 4 1GB ports