What is the best config for FFAstrans in 2023

[JFVedia2023]

Hello,

Long time user of FFAstrans. I will mind to change the old computer we use. It's running 24/7 for about 8 years.

This computer will only run FFAstrans.

What is the best config ? More cores (like intel I9 with 2GHz 24 cores) or higher CPU frequency ? (like intel I9 with 4GHz 8 cores)
How about the ram.

We are television station, we need faster and multi thread applications.

Thanks for your precious help
Kind regards

JF

[emcodem]

Hi JF, welcome to the forum and thank you for using FFAStrans!

What is the best config ? More cores (like intel I9 with 2GHz 24 cores) or higher CPU frequency ? (like intel I9 with 4GHz 8 cores)
How about the ram.

It all depends a lot on what you do but RAM usually don't matter a lot, e.g. 32 is far enough. About cores it is pretty simple: if your jobs usually run slow and use only 1 CPU (because lots of filtering), then you better get high frequeny but less cores. Just be aware that Core Ix processors can normally not use the full turbo frequency on all cores at the same time (e.g. only a single core gets the full turbo), this is why XEON processors can deliver more throughput, they can apply the max turbo on all cores at the same time.
If you do lots of h264 preview encoding, think about some nvidia gpu and dig into the hardware encoding topics here But of course you can also do h264 hardware encoding using the Core IX processors

we need faster and multi thread applications.

You cannot have both at the same time, you can either speed up one single job OR get lots of throughput by sacrificing single job speed.

[JFVedia2023]

Thanks for your reply.
Actually, FFastrans is used to do proxies h264 files from mxf when they are dropped in a watch folder.
But we also use to watch folder FTP server and only download files from there. (no conversion)
So there is "encoding process" and "file delivery"

I don't know. Maybe get a 8 cores with high frequencies. I'm a little bit lost to be honest

Actually, our I7, 4GHz 8 cores is doing pretty well, but it's the time to think about the best config.

[emcodem]

Well if all you encode is proxies, you would experience miracles when looking into hardware encoding
If you currently have an I7, you can actually start with hardware encoding right away because it has "quicksync" encoder builtin

Here is some topic covering it:
https://ffastrans.com/frm/forum/viewtop ... _qsv#p7488

But the downside is that it requires some engineering using the hardware encoders, ffastrans has no bulitin support for it (you need to use custom ffmpeg or cmd processor)

On the other hand you say your current CPU is enough, so you can potentially just buy a new machine with a more recent version of the same type of processor
I think it can be good for you to check how the CPU usage is when the machine is under heavy load currently and maybe post a screenshot of the CPU task manager view so we can see what you need.