[FFmpeg-user] Testing transcode speeds on Raspberry Pi 4

[MediaMouth]

> On Apr 17, 2020, at 1:57 AM, Ted Park <kumowoon1025 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I think I did the same thing, or similar at least. I thought the specs said 4k decode & encode but I might have been  misreading 2 4k displays & 4k decode, for hardware encoding it says 1080p60 max. Apparently the SoC on the Pi 4 is basically the same as the one on the 3B+, with better thermal & power management, not a significant upgrade as I thought it was when I got it.
> 
> For anything up to 1920x1080 though, I feel like there must be a hardware accelerated scaler that can use the same format as the input for encoding, and if you have a way to manage workers and segment the transcoding job, organizing the units (basically some sort of chassis and power distribution solution) and a "mini-fleet" management, a portable mini render farm on a dolly is feasible for something like a "dailies farm in a backpack". (the "reference" hw accelerated encoding tool included in Raspbian produced output that didn't look as good as I expected from the bitrate)

Thanks for all that.  Very helpful
Managing the transcoding wouldn't be an issue -- we have a pretty solid system that can distinguish between source resolutions and codecs and traffic any file to the ost appropriate machine.  I'll test a few 1080p files to see what the speeds are, but so far impression is an RPI-powered render farm might not have have a practical or even financial advantage over more expensive machines.