The Kiwi Farms Media Processing Server

Might I suggest using AVIF for images? It's basically AV1 codec converted to compress images. People on various forums and dedicated websites say that JPEG-XL is better than AVIF, but I have personally found that AVIF offers better compression and image clarity at similar size to JPEG-XL and webp.
...you're better eating the higher storage space with x264/5 than the processing time of encoding in AV1.
H265 isn't royalty free. Gotta use VP9 instead. Also, AV1 incoding has gotten much better. I can get some decent speed encoding 1080p 60fps on my CPU from 2021.
new2.webp
The speed was still increasing, but the file ended rendering.

Also, AV2 is around the corner, could that be worth the wait as well?
 
Intel Arc Pro B60.
bro where the fuck can I get these built? do I have to hire a workbench builder to make something custom?

Might I suggest using AVIF for images? It's basically AV1 codec converted to compress images. People on various forums and dedicated websites say that JPEG-XL is better than AVIF, but I have personally found that AVIF offers better compression and image clarity at similar size to JPEG-XL and webp.
I'm already using AV1 for the advertisement banners. will probably use AV1 for thumbnails during the rewrite.
 
bro where the fuck can I get these built? do I have to hire a workbench builder to make something custom?
Are you building a new box for this or throwing the card in an existing blade? There is a smaller B50 that might give you more flexibility, if the latter. The B50 also only requires PCIe power, 70watt TDP.
 
Are you building a new box for this or throwing the card in an existing blade? There is a smaller B50 that might give you more flexibility, if the latter.
Our current servers do not have the power supply required. We do have a spare 4U that doesn't do much that could be upgraded. I'm not set.

$6000 is honestly too much for our workload if I managed to get something like NETINT Quadra Cards but it makes me wonder if we could meme together something that can do both media + ai inference. Like if I'm doing this why not do subtitles as well? Why not have it identify what's in the videos and make that searchable?
 
My GPU server at home that I use for AI shit and the occasional encoding for webms is just a gaming mobo in a 4u chassis and a couple RTX cards. Power supply was the hardest part
 
bro where the fuck can I get these built? do I have to hire a workbench builder to make something custom?
small to medium encoding servers aren’t necessarily common, you might send some emails to see if they can accommodate you. Otherwise, look for something barebones with all the pcie you need and buy the cards separately.
 
Our current servers do not have the power supply required. We do have a spare 4U that doesn't do much that could be upgraded. I'm not set.
I have the opposite problem in my homelab, with redundant 1000w PSUs in a 1U blade that I can't fit my storage or GPUs in. I would still consider the B50 for a low impact drop-in upgrade. Unlike the B60, it sips power and only needs what it gets through the PCIe slot.
 
I actually cannot find any GPU servers anymore that aren't $250,000 H200A monsters like wtf. I just want two cards. Am I going to have to build this myself?
They are basically all being built for massive AI datacenter usage now. Blame Sam Altman for that.
 
Like if I'm doing this why not do subtitles as well? Why not have it identify what's in the videos and make that searchable?
This would be literally a dream come true for me and every lolcow's worst nightmare. I constantly want to reference random videos and can't because they're buried in several thousand page threads with no obvious search terms in the post.
 
ok chyat how about this

1x https://www.ebay.com/itm/127566125829
4x https://www.ebay.com/itm/297951440555

I think someone offered me a bunch of WD Enterprise 12TBs recently, I need to go find that email. It came at a really bad timing because I had already bought 16TBs for the server but it would actually be SUPER DUPER PERFECT for this
Something like that is what I'd go for. Single rack server with a ton of Intel ARC, because those, for all their many faults, have always been good for video transcode and they're cheap relative to all other cards. I also wouldn't fuck around trying to fit multiple differing roles into one server; it's better to have one beefed-up, futureproof (Skylake is still solid, especially for the offloaded workload) media processing server rather than one that has to share workload with some AI slop. Transcode is easily scalable and predictable, AI subtitling may not be, especially if you combine multiple. Either go bare metal dedicated or virtualize everything, and this would be a good bare metal.
 
Unless you want to run an AI workload as well, you should save yourself the headache and just use ARC since you're presumably running a Linux based server. NVIDIA has always been hostile to open standards force vendor lock in. They are so hostile they don't bother to even implement the standard video encoding/decoding API for Linux (VAAPI). On Linux, NVIDIA really only cares about one thing CUDA (for AI) everything else, is subpar, and again, they don't care working with other open standards so NVIDIA cards will always feel second class.

Also, it will be easier to maintain your server without NVIDIA. Intel and AMD drivers are both in mesa + the Linux kernel. No hassle or wondering if NVIDIA supports your kernel version.

The B50 is an excellent deal as far as cost goes (but also far short of using your whole budget.) and is intended for servers/workstations. It also is a half height card. Intel intentionally did that so it can fit servers.

If you're worried about the issues that Intel has had going on lately, that's the beauty of open standards, you can just use an AMD card because VAAPI provides the same API. It's plug and play... unless you choose NVIDIA.

Edit: I should mention this exists. But the fact that it needs to is just sad. https://github.com/elFarto/nvidia-vaapi-driver
 
Ignoring the AI meme, on the assumption that intel continue to support Arc, intel cards are great bang for buck.

also if we're reencoding media, niggermarking is back on the table
 
People on various forums and dedicated websites say that JPEG-XL is better than AVIF, but I have personally found that AVIF offers better compression and image clarity at similar size to JPEG-XL and webp.
JXL is an actual image format so it has features like smart progressive decoding and way higher resolution limits, and is designed for static image compression rather than video compression which has a temporal component
 
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