signalwarrant wrote:I would also love to know how to do this. I have about 800 movies and TV shows available to stream and about 400 users. Continual buffering is the problem I'm trying to solve.
With that many users you have two problems to deal with. First CPU load as transcoding takes quite a bit of CPU power, and second is going to be upload bandwidth from the server. Even set as low as 200kbps if you have 10 users watching video you'll need 2000kbps going out just to service the video feeds, not including any other network traffic. Do the math if you're at 1000kbps times avg. # of users to determine minimum bandwidth needed, then realistically figure you'll probably need at least 50% more to have some overhead for other traffic.
CPU - each stream if it needs to be transcoded will max out even a very powerful server rather quickly. Transcoding is different than bandwidth strain as I've found that it seems the load increases proprotionally to the difference between the original bandwidth of the recorded video and the final output. This means thst if your taking 1080i recordings from TV and knocking it down to 200kbps it wiil take more CPU load than if it's only knocking it down to 1000kbps. That may be just my imagination as I haven't done any hard testing, but that's the way it feels to me in everyday use.
The best solution for video is to preformat to mp4 and bypass transcoding to alleviate CPU load, but then all the video goes out at much higher bandwidth.
With 400 users you probably need dual quad core CPU's at a min and 100/100 connection speed. I'm just guesstimating, but that's probably not too far off.
As an alternative you could use the Madsonic mod and limit access to video - not a cure, but it might help.
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 4:35 pm