Hardware-Accelerated Real-Time Transcoding on 5 Series

[Ganesh_AT]

I am putting in this feature request for others to provide inputs.

Currently, the 3 series based on Intel Evansport has got real-time transcoding when viewing video files via the mobile apps.

My request is to extend this to the 5-series based on the Intel Bay Trail Celeron processors. The Evansport SoC in the 3 series has a custom hardware transcoding block, while the Bay Trail Celerons in the 50T and 51T series have the more widely supported Quick Sync engine. There are custom builds of ffmpeg which take advantage of Quick Sync, and I hope Asustor can take advantage of them for the 5 series NAS units.

I would also be interested in seeing what other forum members feel about this feature / whether this feature is an important one to look for when purchasing any NAS unit (for market research purposes).

[Steve@AST]

Hi Ganesh_AT,

We are working on 50/51 series hardware transcoding function already, we plan to release this function between Q1 and Q2

br.

Steve

[dedal]

Hi All,
When I recently purchased my 50x series NAS I hoped the Quick Sync technology will be utilized, so I am really glad to hear that this is going to be addressed soon.

@Ganesh_AT - I consider this to be one of the killer features of the new series. With such 'accelerator' this NAS is really going to be a decent media server which hopefully can stream 1080i videos.
@Steve@AST - I'd be more than happy to read more details on it, i.e what is expected gain in GPU transcoding over only CPU transcoding?

regards,
Dedal

[Steve@AST]

Hi dedal,

After we integrate hardware accelerate function on AS50/51 series, LooksGood will use GUP to transcode video stream.

[rahduke]

Oh I just made a new thread that is basically the same thing., I'll delete it. Glad to see this is being addressed, will LooksGood be the only app to be able to tap into these functions? That would suck...

[rahduke]

I just received my AS5002T this evening and just finished getting it all setup, upgraded to 4GB RAM. Plex does work very well, I tested 4 Plex HD streams at once (2 networked, 2 mobile) and an NFS share at 1080p it all worked fairly well. Even went so far as to download using SABNZBD from NAS appstore at the same time and almost achieved my max download speed (10mb per sec) The AS5002T is a little BEAST! The problem is that it absolutely pins the CPUs at 100% anytime you use more than 1 plex stream, FFMPEG with Quick Sync would really help the situation. I don't wanna constantly max out the CPU and suck wattage.

[rahduke]

Yea I'm going to retract my previous post. It seemed Plex was working fairly well when I tested it out originally but over an extended viewing period I'm finding it stutters, stops a lot. Really need hardware decoding if you want any hope of watching a 1080p stream through plex running on the 5series.