hardware platform you developing UMS program

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dafior01
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Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 11:54 pm

hardware platform you developing UMS program

Post by dafior01 »

Dear Developers,

Nowhere is any info which are minimum, good or the best hardware requirements for UMS. You as developers have the best knowledge how code works and which hardware component is the most important.

Please advice what specific is fine for server comp with UMS to stream HD quality to TV over LAN.

1. System: 32 or 64 bit? Windows or Linux?

2. I believe that CPU is important - so which one is enough and can handle streaming HD? AMD / INTEL - one core, dual core or ... ?
Any special requirement for motherboard?

3. What abut RAM - 2 GB is fine or we need more?

4. VGA - do we need powerfully VGA? Or transcoding is on CPU level and we can have any VGA for example build in motherboard. We steam over LAN, so eave monitor is not neccassy if we connect remote to server.

I'm looking for your advice. I would like to transcode over Lan FullHD movies to my Samsung PS51D6900 TV. And this comp will be dedicated only for this (and for FTP share).

At the moment I have installed UMS in version 6.1.0 on my old desktop, on Linux Ubuntu 14.04LTS system 32bit with below hardware I have:
RAM 2GB
Proc: AMD Athlon(tm) 64x2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
VGA: GeForce6800 GTS
HDD SataII WD 500G
LAN speed 100GB

My problem is very often movie is paused on TV and have to wait to start. When I check on comp what is going on, both CPU cores are 100%. In Buffer in UMS, when I stop movie, it slowly increasing but when I run movie, is consumed very fast. And than again movie is paused.


Thank you
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DeFlanko
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Re: hardware platform you developing UMS program

Post by DeFlanko »

General Rule of thumb when it comes to "servers" the more hard ware you throw at it the better it runs.... the second half of that is Software optimizations, that's where github comes into play.

Now it all depends on the media types your serving up (mp4, avi, mkv etc) to which device ( android devices [wifi] , tv's [wifi/hardwired] , entertainment devices like receivers etc) where if the file format is compatible or not.

Meaning that if it IS compatible then the CPU load will be minimal because it's just Streaming the media. Where if its not compatible then it will use software in UMS to transcode the media into a usable format the device can recognize (say for example your Tv only reads MP4's... but your media is MKV) then FFMPEG will transcode "on the fly convert" the media so that it can be viewed. This is where the Hardware plays in, the more RAM and the More CPU to convert the media on the fly the better the experience.

Now i USED to run UMS on a P4 with Hyper threading and transcoded to ONE device just fine. But don't ask my PC to do ANYTHING else... Nowadays i have a Dual Xeon (16 Cores) with 48 GB of ram... i could Serve the world... and rip a Blu-Ray in 2 hours... and double over as a Home CCTV system recording at any given time about 6 cameras to disk... lol

...Ok did i spend some cheddar, Yup. Was it worth it, You betcha... (future proof)

i don't know exactly what a typical user is, if id have to guess id say a Person who just wants to watch movies on their tv... Then a Media server with at least 8 gb - 12 gb RAM, and an i5 Core (whats that... Quad with HT?) should do the trick.
dafior01
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 11:54 pm

Re: hardware platform you developing UMS program

Post by dafior01 »

Hmm, still no pure advise...

Generally funny situation. Any software I have seen so far, always has information what is required to run it properly. Here is nothing ;-)

Dear developers - please - say somethings. How your code was builded? How hardware is being used bu program?
Wolfgan
Posts: 370
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2013 12:33 am

Re: hardware platform you developing UMS program

Post by Wolfgan »

Check the UMSbuilder thread (viewforum.php?f=25), for light testing I found it sufficient and easy to install.
-- UMS serving PS3, WDTV, Samsung H6400 + J5500 and Kalemsoft renderers! (no video transcoding but remuxing accepted :D )
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DeFlanko
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Re: hardware platform you developing UMS program

Post by DeFlanko »

dafior01 wrote:Hmm, still no pure advise...

Generally funny situation. Any software I have seen so far, always has information what is required to run it properly. Here is nothing ;-)

Dear developers - please - say somethings. How your code was builded? How hardware is being used bu program?

the code was bundled from the USMBuilder which originated from Github. You could follow the project there to see the development progress.
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valib
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Re: hardware platform you developing UMS program

Post by valib »

dafior01 wrote:Hmm, still no pure advise...

Generally funny situation. Any software I have seen so far, always has information what is required to run it properly. Here is nothing ;-)

Dear developers - please - say somethings. How your code was builded? How hardware is being used bu program?
There is nobody who can tell what is the sufficient HW configuration for the UMS. Nobody knows what is a number of renderers connected to the UMS and what they are asking for. If the UMS is going to serve only one renderer the 1.6 MHz CPU and 2 MB RAM could be sufficient like I use my old notebook to serve for my Panasonic TV but for users who want to serve for more then one renderer maybe the most powerful configuration couldn't be enough when transcoding in the high resolution is needed but the configuration I mentioned could be enough when only streaming is needed. This is a dynamic process. So users should try what they need. Recommendation is to use the most powerful configuration you are able to.
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