SOLVED: A310 Transcoding help

[aeto]

Do you have "non-free" and "non-free-firmware" in your debian sources?

I do have non-free packages activated.
Which btw has been the default setting since Debian 12 :)

1. bpo kernel does not include bpo firmware package (bookworm does not provide those you need trixie/sid repo)

Ugh, I guess I'll have to reinstall my operating system then, as my previous experiments with Sid as few years ago did not go too well and I ended in dependency hell. Probably going for Ubuntu LTS in that case.
Or do you have any other concerns/recommendations for me? Personally not a huge fan of Canonical but if that the best option it's fine.

2. ARC GPU does not officially support 4th Gen Core processors

This is very disheartening to hear. I wanted to use arc because I wanted to work against ewaste and deemed it cost effective, as the CPU is outside of transcoding still more than capable enough for what I've thrown at it for far with all of the rest of services running. The A310 seemed like a good cheap option to increase the lifespan and feature set, for relatively cheap. Additionally I was planning on using a 7th gen LGA 2066 CPU at some point, which is still in a PC that is in need of an upgrade, but that platform also doesn't support ReBar.

I did some more research specifically on what is not supported here, and it seems to be ReBar mainly?
Realistically how much performance am I losing or am I missing something else here? On your Hardware Selection page you say around 10%, but on Reddit I found figures as high as 70%. Considering this is mainly just for my girlfriend and I with the occasional friend or family, I don't think more than 2 simultaneous trans codes is the case for me.

I also still have a GTX 980 Ti laying around (which was originally in that system) But energy and AV1 support concerns made me get the Arc.

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So is my Hardware that I currently own just not recent enough for Jellyfin transcodes? Playing original files is more than okay.
I use an nvidia shield TV (2019) in my living room and my main issue is the bad subtitle support that Android apparently has (according to a good friend who does Anime Fan-Subs who has talked to a Plex developer, so my info may be wrong). This makes watching Anime with more advanced subtitles basically unusable. Which is why I wanted to be able to transcode in the first place.

Thanks so much for your help so far. Knowing Debian doesn't support Arc at least sheds light on why I've lost so much hair over this (and there is not that much left), and eliminates the search for now. Switching to a new OS is annoying, but since I run everything in docker it should be fairly easy to re-deploy.

aeto