Mezzmo - 100% CPU transcoding even on Quad Core CPU

[li21]

Hi all

Today I went and got a Athlon X4 640 3.0ghz CPU just for the purpose of Mezzmo transcoding..

I've had nothing but issues with stopping and stuttering and 100% CPU maxxed out on my Dual Core Athlon.
So I thought this replacement would fix it..

But still I'm maxing out 100% and the transcoding status says "too slow @ xxFPS"

transcoding settings: WD TV Live Profile, Normal CPU Priority, Quality on my device is 4 notches from the left (lower quality)

Anyone know why this is ?
Seems to happen with ALL videos that are HD / Bluray rips.
They will play fine for a while but sooner or later the video will catch up with the transcoding progress.

I also just reformatted and Freshly installed WIndows to make sure it wasn't windows screwing with it.. but its not.

I would have though a Quad core CPU would have been more than adequate?

Anyone else having these issues?

[Paul]

Some Blu-ray rips can have very high bitrates and if Mezzmo (using ffmpeg.exe) needs to do a full transcode, then it will require a lot of CPU and RAM.

Please contact us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com and we may have a patch that can help reduce the requirement for a full transcode (and do a quicker remux instead). In your email to us, please include a set of logs when you try to stream your Blu-ray rip. This will help us pinpoint any bottlenecks in your setup. Turn transcoding on (see http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread...nostic-logging) and restart your Mezzmo server. Connect to Mezzmo server using your WD TV Live and play the Blu-ray rip. After it starts to stutter, stop your Mezzmo server and exit Mezzmo. Zip up all the logs & send them to us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com.

[smitbret]

Hi all

Today I went and got a Athlon X4 640 3.0ghz CPU just for the purpose of Mezzmo transcoding..

I've had nothing but issues with stopping and stuttering and 100% CPU maxxed out on my Dual Core Athlon.
So I thought this replacement would fix it..

But still I'm maxing out 100% and the transcoding status says "too slow @ xxFPS"

transcoding settings: WD TV Live Profile, Normal CPU Priority, Quality on my device is 4 notches from the left (lower quality)

Anyone know why this is ?
Seems to happen with ALL videos that are HD / Bluray rips.
They will play fine for a while but sooner or later the video will catch up with the transcoding progress.

I also just reformatted and Freshly installed WIndows to make sure it wasn't windows screwing with it.. but its not.

I would have though a Quad core CPU would have been more than adequate?

Anyone else having these issues?

I don't think what you are experiencing is abnormal. I have an AMD Phenom IIx4 955 that is overclocked to 3.8Ghz and transcoding a raw BR rip to 1080p still challenges that. Most of my streaming is to a WD Live so I'm able to disable transcoding competely, but I do have a couple of other devices that need OTF Transcoding.

I just played with my system after reading your post and I would think your results are consistent. I have a couple of DirecTV HDDVRs that require me to transcode everything to MPEG-2 so I ran a quick test with my BR rip of Aliens. I was unable to transcode with my CPU when it was set to 1080p, regardless of quality. I did notice in the task manager that FFMpeg's CPU usage never got above 70% even with priority set to "very high". The fps ran between 13fps and 28fps which is not going to be adequate.

I switched to 1080i mode (which, incidentally, should probably be named 720p since the resolution is 1280x720) and I was able to run it at the highest quality setting between 36-52fps. Plenty of headroom for OTF transcoding.

If I were a betting man, I would guess that the only CPUs you're going to get to run 1080p at a decent quality setting for BR rips will be an overclocked i5 or i7. I have my doubts that a 6-core would even be consistently up to the task for anything more than the absolute lowest 1080p settings.

[Paul]

Excellent information, smitbret. Thanks for testing this & posting the results.

[paulyz]

I want to renew old my PC system to transcod 1080p files on-fly. My tv panasonic tx-p46g20e. Is cpu Intel Core i5-3450, 3.10GHz, 6MB, LGA1155, 22nm, 77W, enough for transcoding?

[Paul]

I want to renew old my PC system to transcod 1080p files on-fly. My tv panasonic tx-p46g20e. Is cpu Intel Core i5-3450, 3.10GHz, 6MB, LGA1155, 22nm, 77W, enough for transcoding?

It appears that the i5-3450 CPU is quad core - which is our minimum recommended for transcoding HD 1080p video. I would probably recommend more cores (e.g. i7) if you can afford it.

[paulyz]

It appears that the i5-3450 CPU is quad core - which is our minimum recommended for transcoding HD 1080p video. I would probably recommend more cores (e.g. i7) if you can afford it.

I did test with q6600 (quad core 2,4 Gghz), for 1080i looks ok (cpu always 90-100% usage) but for 1080p this cpu is to weak

I7 - whats mean + 120-150 eur or + 400 eur for hexa core cpu

Yes, I can think about AMD FX-8150 8 cores cpu ( it's cost like I5), but I don't know, amd at this time looks unreliable for me

[Paul]

I'm certainly no expert in the performance & reliability of Intel vs. AMD processors, so sorry I can't help much in this regard. Hopefully others will post their computer setup & how it performs with Mezzmo - especially with regards to transcoding HD 1080 video.

[JohnM]

By the way the I7 is not the high end of Intel CPUs, just the ones they sell to consumers. You can get something like a Intel Xeon E5-2687W 3.10GHz (20MB Cache) (Eight-Core CPU) $1924 per chip. That is a medium range Xeon. It is designed for servers and workstations.

[paulyz]

By the way the I7 is not the high end of Intel CPUs, just the ones they sell to consumers. You can get something like a Intel Xeon E5-2687W 3.10GHz (20MB Cache) (Eight-Core CPU) $1924 per chip. That is a medium range Xeon. It is designed for servers and workstations.

Xeon ir server cpu. Yes, if you millionaire, you can use it in workstation.

I did test with mezzmo and serviio (how I understand bought programs use FFmeg.exe), but servioo use about 40% less cpu for transcoding (some movies I can watch with serviio without problem with dual core 2.0 ghz cpu), but serviio use more hdd space (~4-9 gb). And yes, main problem for serviio is correct aspect ratio, only mkv' s with 1280x720 or 1920x1080 serviio show correct. Due this trouble I decide to use mezzmo.