Hardware Requirements for PGS Transcoding

[DigitalEmbers 0]

Hi All,

Remotely (out of the house) playing media from my DS920+ (Emby Server with Premiere license) works ok until enabling PGS subs (4K HDR Remux > 1080p AAC Stereo (30mbps) which causes buffering (Windows 11/Kodi 19 with Emby for Kodi Addon), reading around sub transcoding appears to be a CPU bound process, if I was to look at getting a dedicated box for this, is there any recommended ones?

Interested in the Intel NUC’s as they are fairly small and lower powered, unless there is some config settings I’m missing from Emby on the DS920+ that could help?, when I checked the DS920+ the CPU usage is only around 30%.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Edited August 10, 2024 by DigitalEmbers

[RanmaCanada 494]

Due to the current degredation issues with Intel 13th and 14th gen CPU's you will be forced to buy a 12th gen NUC. As PGS transcoding is indeed CPU bound (and single threaded to boot), you want as much power as you can afford. My i5-1235u laptop can handle 1 4k transcode with PGS subs, barely. The fastestr processor you can get in a NUC is a i5-12500T which is not much faster than what I have in my laptop. if you want PGS subs away from home it would be better to just extract them and convert to SRT or Sub Station Alpha. There is some code apparently on the ffmpeg git for doing it via CUDA, but that would require at least a Turing Nvidia card from what I understand. I have had to turn off tone mapping for the server to use 100% hardware for transcoding the video as tone mapping with subs gets messy and apparently forces software mode (unless something is currently broken with hardware tone mapping). It says the CPU is at 1%, but in checking process manager, ffmpeg is actually taking upwards of 50+. Unless softworkz has done more magic with their godly coding skills, we have to wait for PGS subs to be added in hardware to any of the ASICS that are used by Intel, AMD or Nvidia.

 

 

[DigitalEmbers 0]

8 minutes ago, RanmaCanada said:

Due to the current degredation issues with Intel 13th and 14th gen CPU's you will be forced to buy a 12th gen NUC. As PGS transcoding is indeed CPU bound (and single threaded to boot), you want as much power as you can afford. My i5-1235u laptop can handle 1 4k transcode with PGS subs, barely. The fastestr processor you can get in a NUC is a i5-12500T which is not much faster than what I have in my laptop. if you want PGS subs away from home it would be better to just extract them and convert to SRT or Sub Station Alpha. There is some code apparently on the ffmpeg git for doing it via CUDA, but that would require at least a Turing Nvidia card from what I understand. I have had to turn off tone mapping for the server to use 100% hardware for transcoding the video as tone mapping with subs gets messy and apparently forces software mode (unless something is currently broken with hardware tone mapping). It says the CPU is at 1%, but in checking process manager, ffmpeg is actually taking upwards of 50+. Unless softworkz has done more magic with their godly coding skills, we have to wait for PGS subs to be added in hardware to any of the ASICS that are used by Intel, AMD or Nvidia.

 

 

Thanks for the response, it indeed does look like PGS subs is asking a bit to much, I can see a 12th Gen NUC i7-1260P but it’s a hefty price, I will only ever need the ability to transcode 1 stream at a time, I figure if I can get a 4K remux transcode working with subs anything less should not be a problem.

I did grab an SRT for the film and and tested that on the Windows/Kodi/EmbyforKodi addon and it still appeared to have the same issue, the srt subs were being burned in and kept causing stuttering. 

[RanmaCanada 494]

What device are you trying to play it on that does not support srt subs? Remember there are some experimental settings in the subtile options area. 

[DigitalEmbers 0]

2 minutes ago, RanmaCanada said:

What device are you trying to play it on that does not support srt subs? Remember there are some experimental settings in the subtile options area. 

I’ve started a new thread linked below with more details but this is on a Microsoft Surface Pro 7 running Windows 11/Kodi 19/Emby for Kodi

 

 

Edited August 10, 2024 by DigitalEmbers

[Sparker 43]

On 8/10/2024 at 4:35 PM, RanmaCanada said:

if you want PGS subs away from home it would be better to just extract them and convert to SRT or Sub Station Alpha. 

Sorry to dig up this old thread, but did you ever discover a way to automatically rip PGS subs and convert to SRT?

I have Bazaar, but even that is not great and routinely does not download the external srt if PGS is embedded (even though I have this enabled in settings).

[DigitalEmbers 0]

1 hour ago, Sparker said:

Sorry to dig up this old thread, but did you ever discover a way to automatically rip PGS subs and convert to SRT?

I have Bazaar, but even that is not great and routinely does not download the external srt if PGS is embedded (even though I have this enabled in settings).

No problem, I did not instead I moved to an alternative way of watching content remotely.

[Luke 42077]

10 hours ago, DigitalEmbers said:

No problem, I did not instead I moved to an alternative way of watching content remotely.

Hi @DigitalEmberscan you give it another try?

[DigitalEmbers 0]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi @DigitalEmberscan you give it another try?

Hi Luke, 

It has been some time, I remember back when I tried to watch content remotely (on holiday) the Surface was having trouble. At home I had a HTPC (Windows+Kodi+madVR) so I thought why not have the PC at home do all the heavy lifting/playback and I simply remote view the screen using Parsec which is optimised for low latency, it worked extremely well and no need for subtitle extraction/conversion or separate SRT downloads.

 

I understand this won't work for a lot of people. With the combination of hardware I have for me it works very well.

[RanmaCanada 494]

13 hours ago, Sparker said:

Sorry to dig up this old thread, but did you ever discover a way to automatically rip PGS subs and convert to SRT?

I have Bazaar, but even that is not great and routinely does not download the external srt if PGS is embedded (even though I have this enabled in settings).

There is no automatic way to rip and convert as PGS subs are image based and have to go through OCR in order to be converted to SRT. Even Subtitle Edit requires manual approval and the odd change in letters or symbols.

[all4dom 101]

Will emby ever be able to direct play pgs subtitles? I thought I read in another post some where that plex does it & the person was asking Luke if emby did it also.

[RanmaCanada 494]

1 hour ago, all4dom said:

Will emby ever be able to direct play pgs subtitles? I thought I read in another post some where that plex does it & the person was asking Luke if emby did it also.

It all depends on your client, NOT the server. If your client can direct play them, then there is no issue. The problem is too many people just expect it to "work" with potato hardware and they don't bother to do the due diligence of basic research to see what their hardware can playback.

 

[waldoverkill 0]

On 8/11/2024 at 2:35 AM, RanmaCanada said:

Due to the current degredation issues with Intel 13th and 14th gen CPU's you will be forced to buy a 12th gen NUC. As PGS transcoding is indeed CPU bound (and single threaded to boot), you want as much power as you can afford. My i5-1235u laptop can handle 1 4k transcode with PGS subs, barely. The fastestr processor you can get in a NUC is a i5-12500T which is not much faster than what I have in my laptop. if you want PGS subs away from home it would be better to just extract them and convert to SRT or Sub Station Alpha. There is some code apparently on the ffmpeg git for doing it via CUDA, but that would require at least a Turing Nvidia card from what I understand. I have had to turn off tone mapping for the server to use 100% hardware for transcoding the video as tone mapping with subs gets messy and apparently forces software mode (unless something is currently broken with hardware tone mapping). It says the CPU is at 1%, but in checking process manager, ffmpeg is actually taking upwards of 50+. Unless softworkz has done more magic with their godly coding skills, we have to wait for PGS subs to be added in hardware to any of the ASICS that are used by Intel, AMD or Nvidia.

 

 

Can I ask how you see this dashboard?

[Luke 42077]

4 hours ago, waldoverkill said:

Can I ask how you see this dashboard?

Hi, that is in the Diagnostics plugin, in the Emby plugin catalog.

[waldoverkill 0]

12 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, that is in the Diagnostics plugin, in the Emby plugin catalog.

Thank you.