Wowza Community

Less CPU intensive live encoder

Hello,

I am currently working on a project wich require to encode four h.264 or VP6 live stream to wowza server from a single computer.

Currently i am using Flash Media Live Encoder because i can run 4 distinct process using command line version (FMLEcmd.exe).

problem : it is extremely CPU intensive and i need a very strong computer to make this to work correctly.

Does someone know wich one of the listed encoder in the forum is the less CPU intensive and support to be run several time (or support multiple video input to multiple stream to wowza) ?

My goal is to reduce the cost of the encoding computer by using the less cpu intensive encoder software.

Thank you.

-SK

Not likely unfortunately. both VP6 and h.264 are fairly CPU intensive. VP6 granted is less intensive then h.264, but you’re still not going to find much that uses less CPU.

One thing I’ve noticed is that more L2 cache helps more then higher CPU MHZ when trying to get good performance out of encoders. But high amounts of L2 cache do not lead to cheap CPU’s.

There are some hardware boxes on eBay sold currently for the security market that claim to be h.264 encoders and 4 channels fairly cheap. Not sure if they’ll work for Wowza, havn’t had the desire to dump a few hundred bucks on an ‘experiment’ just yet. :slight_smile:

One thing you may be able to try is VLC. You might be able to tweak some of the options in it to do only a very simple encode that may use less CPU. Unfortunately my attempts to tweak VLC were for minimizing bitrate, which often resulted in lots of CPU being chewed up on the encoder, so those items won’t help you much.

–Chris