Self-hosted Jellyfin CPU or GPU for 4K HDR transcoding?

MoonlitSanguine@lemmy.one to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 68 points –

Hey everyone, I'm building a new server to run Jellyfin (with a few other services like Pi-hole) and I'm stuck on GPU or CPU transcoding.

My main concern is smooth 4K HDR transcoding for 1 stream. I've been reading mixed advice online – some people say a strong CPU with good single-core performance can handle it, while others recommend a dedicated GPU.

Should I focus my budget (~$1000AUD/$658USD) on a good CPU, or spend some of it on a dedicated GPU?

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What specifically isn't working? I've got Jellyfin running on Docker with transcoding from a Nvidia GPU.

I pretty much followed the documentation here: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/hardware-acceleration/nvidia. I can share my docker-compose for that specific use case if you'd like.

"jellyfin-ffmpeg5 deb package" is one bit I'm confused about. Is that part of the docker installation? If not, if I install the deb, can the docker installation use it? Do I have to configure something there?