# Hardware requirements for transcoding 25 channels
**URL:** https://community.wowza.com/t/hardware-requirements-for-transcoding-25-channels/33593
**Category:** Wowza Streaming Engine
**Created:** [May 31, 2013, 9:06am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hardware-requirements-for-transcoding-25-channels/33593 "2013-05-31T09:06:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Karel\_Boek](https://community.wowza.com/u/Karel_Boek)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 9:06am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hardware-requirements-for-transcoding-25-channels/33593/1 "2013-05-31T09:06:59Z")
I know there are several forum posts and articles about this subject, but I need some help in making a correct calculation. We’ve got 25 incoming channels with bitrates that vary from 10 to 30 Mbps. We’ll need transcoding and transrating to 3 (h.264) streams per channel, approx. 2500, 1500, 800Kbps. I don’t think there’s any server who can handle this on its own, but how many servers would we need and what specs?
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### Author:  [@Richard\_Lanham](https://community.wowza.com/u/Richard_Lanham)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 8:11pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hardware-requirements-for-transcoding-25-channels/33593/2 "2013-05-31T20:11:11Z")
Have you seen this Transcoder Performance Benchmark article?
[https://www.wowza.com/docs/wowza-transcoder-performance-benchmark](https://www.wowza.com/docs/wowza-transcoder-performance-benchmark)
This can give you at least a rough idea by comparison.
Richard
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### Author:  [@Karel\_Boek](https://community.wowza.com/u/Karel_Boek)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2013, 12:00am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hardware-requirements-for-transcoding-25-channels/33593/3 "2013-06-01T00:00:09Z")
Yes I’ve read that document, but 26 x 30Mbps is quite different than 10 x 3Mbps. Now I’m thinking of a hardware transcoder rather than letting Wowza do the transcoding; does that sound like a better solution to you too?
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### Author:  [@yee\_woon](https://community.wowza.com/u/yee_woon)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2013, 2:56am UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/hardware-requirements-for-transcoding-25-channels/33593/4 "2013-09-17T02:56:02Z")
did you found any answer? wowza only provide a benchmark and always refer to it. i had setup a system as follow and only can transcode 6 mpeg2 stream to 12 h264. however according wowza benchmark it must transcode 6 to 24. I tried all performance tuning. when i set the 6 to 24, cpu and gpu usage drop down to 10-20% and only audio can play back.
os: windows 2008 r2
ram: 8 gb
cpu: core i7 2600k 4 core/8 thread
gpu: gtx 680
use cuda transcoding
please share any experiences.
> Yes I’ve read that document, but 26 x 30Mbps is quite different than 10 x 3Mbps. Now I’m thinking of a hardware transcoder rather than letting Wowza do the transcoding; does that sound like a better solution to you too?