4k transcoding Server

[TheDreadPirate]

Here's my two cents. With 10 users, its pretty easy to get that many TRANSCODES. The problem is tone mapping HDR to SDR. That is very computationally expensive and is not handled by NVENC or QSV. Its a general GPU task.

For example. My i3 12100's iGPU can do ~12 1080P transcodes. But can only do one HDR to SDR tone map.

If you are going to consistently have 10 simultaneous users, here how I would do it.

OS: Ubuntu
CPU: Any recent CPU. Match with a board that can do 128GB+ of DDR5 if you HAVE to do a RAM disk (don't think this is necessary with NVMe SSD)
GPU: Intel Arc A380 or A750
RAM: 128GB if you NEED a RAM disk, 32GB if transcodes go to SSD.
SSD: Pretty much any reputable PCIe 3 NVMe SSD. 256GB, minimum.

I also suggest you pre-transcode your 4K HDR content to 1080P SDR and keep the 4K content IN A SEPARATE LIBRARY. Because of how computationally expensive tone mapping 4K HDR is, its really not suggested you mix 4K content in with the rest of your 1080P content. It should be reserved for people with the hardware to actually play 4K HDR without transcoding and tone mapping. And keeping it in a separate library helps to enforce that separation.