FFmpeg Processes

[Smile]

With the latest version, v3.4.1.0, I am having frequent problems with high CPU usage and the media server becoming unresponsive. When I check the task manager I find that there a dozen "FFmpeg.exe" processes that are active and consuming the bulk of the CPU. (No small accomplishment for this machine.)

I am wondering if anyone else is having this problem and/or if there is a patch to fix it.

p.s. Capturing logs to send to support does not seem reasonable based on the period of time this happens over.

[JohnM]

You could try changing the number of threads option. You will find it in the file FFmpegAdditional.xml located in the directory C:\ProgramData\Conceiva\Mezzmo\DeviceProfiles (this is on win7 with the sw installed on C:).

WARNING! Before you change anything back up the file.
You should see a lot of entries like: <ffmpegadditional id="union+thread0">-threads 0 -async 0</ffmpegadditional> and
<ffmpegadditional id="h264_encoding">-threads 0 -async 0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -copyinkf -coder 1 -flags +loop -fflags +genpts -subq 7 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -b_strategy 1 -x264opts direct-pred=auto:b-pyramid=normal:mixed-refs=1:weightb=1:8x8dct=1:fast-pskip=1:crf=22:ref=2:bframes=3:aud=1:me=hex -partitions -parti8x8-parti4x4-partp8x8-partp4x4-partb8x8 -bidir_refine 1 -strict experimental</ffmpegadditional>

You will note that in both examples threads is set to 0. That tells ffmpeg to adjust automatically to the number of cores and threads your machine has. You can reduce the usage by setting a number. If for instance you have a quad core processor with hyper-threading you could have 8 ffmpegs running. Set the number to 4 and you will use only half the cpu. BUT it could take twice as long to transcode the material. Or you could just wait for Paul to give you the best advice.

[Paul]

We have not had any other users reporting this, but we'd like to fix the issue you are experiencing. A set of logs is best for us to see/understand what is happening. Turn on logging (see http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/419-FAQ-How-to-turn-on-diagnostic-logging) and restart your Mezzmo server. Try to reproduce the problem by playing several videos on your device(s). Check your Windows Task Manager and when you see many ffmpeg.exe processes running & consuming CPU. Then, stop your Mezzmo server and exit Mezzmo. Zip up all your logs and email them to us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com.