NVIDIA Quadro P5000 encoding in linux working on GPU but also using CPU

Wowza Streaming Engine
1

Hi,

I have NVIDIA Quadro K5000 running on Ubuntu Server 18.04.

Transcoder is configured to encode 3 bitrates 1080p, 720p and 320p using “NVENC”.

With “nvidia-smi” command i can see Wowza running process on GPU, so the GPU is transcoding but also the CPU is increase up (around 90% with 8 incoming streams).

When i change the transcoder to use “Default” encoding instead “NVENC”, “nvidia-smi” command showing GPU does not use the any Wowza process, so transcoding using just CPU (95% with 2 incoming streams).

Any solutions?

2

Dependent on your CPU, it may be that it simply is running at max capacity even with all the right settings. You can compare your configuration against https://www.wowza.com/docs/wowza-transcoder-performance-benchmark.

There are 3 places where you can decide to use CPU or GPU:

  • Decoding (in the template XML under Root/Decode/Video/Implementation)

  • Each encoding profile (Root/Encodes/Encode/Video/Implementation)

  • Scaling (Root/Scale/Implementation)

Also, make sure the K5000 supports the codec that you want to de-/encode (see https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix)

3

Please run the following command which will show everything that your Nvidia cards are doing.
nvidia-smi -i 0 -q

You should see a section that looks as follows:

    Utilization
        Gpu                         : 46 %
        Memory                      : 27 %
        Encoder                     : 0 %
        Decoder                     : 0 %
    Encoder Stats
        Active Sessions             : 0

It is likely that your decoder and/or encoder is overloaded.

4

Thank you for reply,

I change value in XML file to “NVENC” instead “default”.
Now CPU usage is better than before, now Wowza transcoding 20 rdp streams to 3 bitrates (1080p, 720p, 360p),
My machine CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz, CPU usage: 80%.

RAM: 16GB

GPU usage: 1855MiB / 16275MiB

How many streams i can transcode with this machine?

Are this configuration is correct because GPU is used only 1855MiB/16275MiB ?

5

Thank you for replay,

I run this command, following results are from this command:

GPU command:nvidia-smi -i 0 -q

 
    FB Memory Usage
        Total                       : 16275 MiB
        Used                        : 1849 MiB
        Free                        : 14426 MiB

    Utilization
        Gpu                         : 64 %
        Memory                      : 4 %
        Encoder                     : 22 %
        Decoder                     : 41 %

Wowza transcoding 20 RDP input streams to 3 bitrates ( 1080p, 720p, 360p ).

On this machine CPU is : “Intel® Core™ i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz” CPU usage on is: 80%