I’m starting to get more and more HDR content, and I’m noticing an issue with my Jellyfin server. In nearly all cases, it’s required to transcode and tone map the HDR content. All of it is in 4k.
My little Quadro P400 just can’t keep up. Encoder and decoder usage hovers around 15-17%, but the GPU core usage is pinned at 100% the entire time, and my framerate doesn’t exceed 19fps, which makes the video skip so badly it’s unwatchable.
What’s a reasonable upgrade? I’m thinking about the P4000, but that might be excessive. Also, it needs to fit in a low-profile slot.
Edit: I’m shocked at how much good feedback I received on this post. Hopefully someone else will stumble on it in the future and be able to learn something. Ultimately, I decided to purchase a used RTX A2000 for just about $250. It’s massively overkill for transcoding/tone mapping 4k, but once I’m brave enough to risk breaking my Proxmox install and setting up vGPU, I’m hoping to take advantage of the Tensor cores for AI object detection in my Blue Iris VM. Also, the A2000 supports AV1, and while I don’t need that at the moment, it will be nice to have in the future, I think.
Final Edit: I replaced the Quadro P400 with an RTX A2000 today. With the P400, transcoding 4k HEVC HDR to 4k HEVC (or h264) SDR with tone mapping resulted in transcode rate of about 19fps with 100% GPU usage. With the A2000, I’m getting a transcode rate of about 120fps with around 30% GPU usage; plenty of room for growth if I add 1 or 2 users to the server. For $250, it was well worth the upgrade.
I thought the same with Android TV, but at least for me, it doesn’t work at all; I’ve tried two different Android TV boxes, too, and they both have the same problem.
I wish I could find everything in SDR or at least HDR10, but that’s not always an option. I’ve found several “Linux ISOs” that are only available in DV, and some where the only option is 4k HDR or 1080p, and I really prefer to avoid anything below 4k unless absolutely necessary. 4k SDR is always my preferred format, though.
Not sure what Linux ISOs are, but it’s pretty rare that something is only available with Dolby Vision and not HDR10. Have you verified that HDR10 gives you trouble? 4K HDR is also usually HDR10, unless specifically marked as DV, in my experience.
Anyway, another option, if you don’t care for HDR, is to transcode/tonemap everything in the background. This way, you don’t have to worry about performance during playback.
Linux ISOs are copies of installers for various Linux distributions. They’re totally free and legal to distribute, and a very above-board and legitimate thing to store on a server with more space than a normal person could reasonably need. They are very much not copyrighted content.
Ah. Sarcasm is difficult to see in text based communication.