OBS for Debian based server

[Nanobug]

Hello,

I couldn't find anything on this, that's why I'm making this post.
I'm going to use a VM for my streaming PC, instead of dedicating a PC for it.
But since I'm trying to be resource minded, I was thinking of instead of using a desktop environment, I should use it without, since it's basically just going to work as a relay.
For my specific purpose, I'm going to use GPU transcoding.

I couldn't find anything on this, so I'm unsure if it's even possible.
Does anyone know if it's doable?

 

[AaronD]

You get a pretty big performance hit by running in a VM compared to directly on the hardware. Yes, modern hardware does accommodate that, and modern virtual hosts take advantage of it, which brings the two worlds closer together, but it's still significant.

And OBS takes a lot. Not so much for the app itself, but for the amount of data that you're shoving through it. It's really recommended to run directly on the hardware, not in a virtual environment.

If you're only transcoding an existing stream, like a single scene in OBS with a single source, and that just goes back out in a different format, then OBS is way overkill. Look at the documentation for ffmpeg, which is what OBS uses internally, and use it directly. Keep in mind though, that *that's* also what takes the big resources, so you still might not like the results.

 

[Nanobug]

I'm going to use GPU passthrough, so it won't really be noticed on the performance.

Obviously I'll keep an eye on it, and add resources to it if need be to make sure it has what it needs, I might even dedicated some CPU cores to it so it won't be shared.

It's only going to be one at a time while I'm streaming to Twitch.

I was more thinking of it was possible to do it on a Linux server without a desktop environment on top of it.
But the ffmpeg might not be a bad idea.
Got any pointers on where to start with that, other than just going nuts on Google? :)

 

[AaronD]

Pretty much go nuts on Google. The manpage might help, but that'll be one of the top Google hits anyway.