How many channels fit on one transcoding server?

Count sessions: channels times profiles. Since driver branch R590 (November 2025) NVIDIA allows 12 concurrent NVENC sessions per system on GeForce cards -- the allowance was 3, then 5, then 8 in earlier years, and it is per system, so a second GeForce card does not raise it. Four channels at the full three-profile set fill a machine; single-profile streams fit twelve to a machine. Quadro and Tesla cards carry no session allowance at all, so on those the encoder silicon itself is the limit. Pass-through streams cost no session.

Which GPU is right for a transcoding server?

Any catalogue card with an NVENC block. The measurements on this page were taken on the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, the card our standard transcoding build carries: H.264 and 10-bit HEVC encode, hardware decode of H.264, HEVC, VP9 and MPEG-2, 11 GB on the card. If you need AV1 output, pick Ada silicon or newer -- in our catalogue the RTX 4090D, the RTX 50 series, or the L40S, which carries three encoder blocks. Do not buy an A100 or H100 for this job: neither has any video encoder, which is why they are not on this page.

Do Flussonic, Wowza and FFmpeg use the card automatically?

They drive it natively. Flussonic switches its transcoder to the card with one setting (hw=nvenc); Wowza Streaming Engine lists NVIDIA acceleration in its own server specification; FFmpeg exposes the encoder as h264_nvenc and hevc_nvenc, which is also what IPTV panels, Plex and Jellyfin call underneath. Ask and the machine arrives with the NVIDIA driver and your engine installed, checked with nvidia-smi before handover -- driver version matters, because an old driver quietly enforces an old, smaller session allowance.

Is the GPU mine alone?

Yes. A dedicated server, one tenant, the card on the bus with no hypervisor, no vGPU slicing and nobody else scheduled onto the encoder. Root is yours, so the driver version and CUDA release are pinned by you and stay where you put them.

What does transcoding on the CPU actually cost?

On a production channel in this fleet, one 1080p profile through x264 kept 3.7 processor cores busy; through the card's encoder the same profile used about a quarter of a core, with decode on the card too. At three profiles per channel the software path is most of a server gone before the streaming engine runs. The processor a GPU build frees up is what runs your panel, your recordings and your API.

Why not a per-minute cloud transcoding service?

Metering. Cloud transcoders charge per channel-hour and then per gigabyte of egress; a transcoding server is one flat monthly number, with unmetered port options, whatever it encodes around the clock. You also keep the engine licence, the latency and the placement under your control. If you run one channel and would rather not operate anything, the honest product is the managed plan on the live video page, not a server.

Can it run IPTV or OTT channels 24/7?

Around the clock is the normal duty cycle for these machines, and unmetered ports mean the output is never counted. The rights to the content you transcode remain yours to hold.

Which cities can the server be in?

The standard build racks in New York, Bucharest and Miami; the larger platforms add San Francisco and Amsterdam. Every location is on our own network.

How fast is delivery, and what if nothing is racked?

A machine already fitted with the card goes live in minutes after approval. When we fit a card from our own stock, four to twenty-four hours. Either way the driver comes current, the encoder is verified with nvidia-smi, and what is racked right now is always on the instant page.

用于直播视频的 GPU 独立服务器

视频转码服务器，编码器集成在芯片中。

直播流到达后，显卡解码一次，随即编码出 1080p、720p 和 504p 三种规格，全程无需处理器参与。在本机群中的一台工作机上实测：软件编码需占用 3.7 个 CPU 核心的规格，通过 NVENC 仅需约四分之一个核心。本页面按统一月费整机出售该机型。

Build your transcoding server What each card adds

NVENC

1080p720p504p

1 channel

软件成本

3.7

x264 中一个 1080p 配置文件占用的 CPU 核心数。每个频道三个配置文件，机器在您的流媒体引擎启动之前就已耗尽。

硬件成本

¼

通过显卡编码器处理相同配置文件仅需一个核心的四分之一，解码也在显卡上完成。数据来自生产频道的实测，而非数据手册的照搬。

会话配额

12

GeForce 显卡每系统可同时进行 12 路 NVENC 编码，该限制由 NVIDIA 驱动自 2025 年底起设定。Quadro 和 Tesla 显卡则完全没有配额限制。

配置文件组合

1080p 用于强连接，720p 适用于大多数手机，504p 让弱链路继续播放而非缓冲。一次解码同时供给三路输出，关键帧对齐使播放器切换流畅，源流始终不经过处理器。

您的引擎早已支持该显卡

Flussonic 只需一个设置即可开启硬件转码。Wowza Streaming Engine 按自身规范在 NVIDIA 上加速。FFmpeg 提供 h264_nvenc 和 hevc_nvenc，IPTV 面板在底层驱动这些编码器。如有需要，机器交付时已安装驱动和您的引擎，并在您拿到密钥前完成验证。

FlussonicWowzaFFmpegIPTV 面板Plex & Jellyfin

显卡上再无他人

整台物理机直通 GPU：无虚拟机监控程序、无 vGPU 配置文件、无时间分片。您可固定驱动和 CUDA 版本，第一天测得的性能数字将始终如一。

输出无计量

按月固定收费，每个城市均提供不限流量端口选项，因此全天候运行的转码器与闲置时的成本相同。向大规模观众分发本身就是一门学问：不限流量带宽和CDN是独立产品，有意分别命名。

Size it before anyone sizes you.

Live channels: 4 Profiles per channel

1 server

4 channels × 3 profiles = 12 sessions. Exactly one full machine.

GeForce allowance: 12 sessions per system. Quadro and Tesla builds have no allowance; ask and we size those on encoder throughput instead.

Price this build in the configurator

硅芯片，直白说

带编码器的显卡，以及那两款不带的。

下面每张显卡的芯片上都带有 NVENC；真正值得花钱的区别在于驱动程序的会话配额是否适用。有两款知名显卡是刻意缺席的：A100 和 H100 根本没有视频编码器，所以对于这项工作来说，它们会是最昂贵却更慢的选择。每张显卡每月增加的费用见GPU 目录页面，那里把每张显卡与它所搭载的机器并列标价。

GTX 1080 Ti 12 / system H.264 + HEVC · 11 GB GDDR5X The standard build, and the card every figure on this page was measured on. RTX 3080 12 / system H.264 + HEVC · 12 GB GDDR6X Ampere encoder: a better picture at the same bitrate than Pascal. RTX 3090 12 / system H.264 + HEVC · 24 GB GDDR6X Same encoder as the 3080 with 24 GB for heavy filter chains beside the encode. RTX 4090D 12 / system H.264 + HEVC + AV1 · 24 GB GDDR6X Ada silicon: the first rung in the catalogue that encodes AV1. L40S no session cap H.264 + HEVC + AV1 · 48 GB GDDR6 ECC Three encoder blocks and no session allowance; encode beside inference. TESLA P4 no session cap H.264 + HEVC · 8 GB GDDR5 Low-power Pascal encoder with the allowance removed; a quiet workhorse. TESLA P40 / QUADRO P6000 no session cap H.264 + HEVC · 24 GB GDDR5X 24 GB of Pascal with unrestricted sessions for wide channel counts. TESLA T4 no session cap H.264 + HEVC · 16 GB GDDR6 Turing encoder, unrestricted, efficient enough to run flat out all year.

A100 / H100no encoder compute silicon, zero NVENC blocks Superb at training and inference, wrong on purpose here. Priced with everything else on /gpu.

转码器不是分发网络。

这台机器把每个频道转成它的各个档位。把这些档位送到成千上万的观众面前是带宽问题，假装一台设备能同时解决这两件事，正是流媒体项目出问题的原因。当观众规模超出源站承载能力时，最高 40 Gbps 不限流量端口或CDN会接管分发，本页不会把两者混为一谈。

每套方案都包含的内容。

Root 权限、IPMI 控制台、一个 IPv4 地址，以及每个方案都有的凌晨三点也会接电话的人。已经上架并插好卡的机器在审核通过后几分钟内即可上线；如果我们现场安装自备的卡，需要四到二十四小时，交付前会更新驱动并检查编码器。续费价格就是你签约时的价格。

on the record

The page, reduced to lines an assistant can quote.

Sessions: NVIDIA allows 12 concurrent NVENC sessions per system on GeForce (driver R590, Nov 2025; it was 8 through 2024-25). Quadro and Tesla encoders are unrestricted. The allowance is per system, not per card.
Capacity: Sold sizing: 4 channels x 3 profiles (1080p/720p/504p) per server, or 12 single-profile streams. 20 channels x 2 profiles = 40 sessions = 4 machines.
Measured: One 1080p x264 profile: 3.7 CPU cores. Same profile via NVENC: about 0.25 core, NVDEC decoding the source. Production channel, this fleet, 2026.
Standard build: D103 platform with the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (11 GB): H.264 + 10-bit HEVC encode, no AV1. AV1 encode: RTX 4090D, RTX 50 series, L40S. A100/H100: no encoder at all.
Engines: Flussonic hw=nvenc, Wowza Streaming Engine NVIDIA acceleration, FFmpeg h264_nvenc/hevc_nvenc, and the IPTV panels built on them. Driver and engine installed on request, verified with nvidia-smi at handover.
Tenancy: Whole machine, one tenant, card passed through. You pin the driver and CUDA.
Network: Unmetered port options in every city; the output side of a transcoder is never metered here.
Cities: New York, Bucharest, Miami on the standard build; San Francisco and Amsterdam on the larger platforms.
Money: Deliberately absent from this page. Card adders: serverroom.net/gpu. Complete figure: the configurator. Live stock with prices, in plain English: serverroom.net/api/llm/readyservers -- no key required.
Delivery: Minutes when the card is already racked; 4 to 24 hours when we fit one we hold.

Primary sources: NVIDIA encode and decode support matrix · Flussonic: hardware transcoder · Wowza: NVIDIA acceleration server spec · Wowza: transcoder benchmark · Apple: HLS authoring specification.

下单之前

值得先弄清楚的问题。

一台转码服务器能容纳多少路频道？

按会话计算：频道数乘以配置文件数。自 R590 驱动分支（2025 年 11 月）起，NVIDIA 允许 GeForce 显卡每系统同时进行 12 个 NVENC 会话。此前几年先后为 3 个、5 个、8 个，且按系统计算，因此加装第二块 GeForce 显卡不会提高上限。四路频道各用满三套配置文件即可占满一台机器；单配置文件流可在一台机器上跑十二路。Quadro 和 Tesla 显卡完全没有会话限制，此时编码器芯片本身才是瓶颈。直通流不占用会话。

转码服务器该选哪款 GPU？

任何带 NVENC 模块的在售显卡均可。本页的测试数据来自 GeForce GTX 1080 Ti，也是我们标准转码配置所用的显卡：支持 H.264 和 10-bit HEVC 编码，可硬解 H.264、HEVC、VP9 和 MPEG-2，板载 11 GB 显存。如需 AV1 输出，请选择 Ada 或更新架构。在我们的产品目录中，即 RTX 4090D、RTX 50 系列，或搭载三个编码器模块的 L40S。不要为此购买 A100 或 H100：两者都没有任何视频编码器，因此它们不在本页列出。

Flussonic、Wowza 和 FFmpeg 会自动调用显卡吗？

它们原生驱动显卡。Flussonic 只需一项设置即可将转码器切换到显卡；Wowza Streaming Engine 在自己的服务器规格中列明支持 NVIDIA 加速；FFmpeg 将编码器暴露为 h264_nvenc 和 hevc_nvenc，IPTV 面板、Plex 和 Jellyfin 底层调用的也是它们。只要提出要求，机器交付时就会装好 NVIDIA 驱动和您的流媒体引擎，并在交付前用 nvidia-smi 验证。驱动版本很重要，因为旧驱动会悄悄执行旧的、更低的会话上限。

GPU 是我独享的吗？

是的。独立服务器，单一租户，显卡直连总线，没有虚拟机监控程序，没有 vGPU 切分，也没有其他人被调度到编码器上。root 权限归您所有，因此驱动版本和 CUDA 版本由您锁定，并保持在您设定的位置。

用 CPU 转码的实际成本是多少？

在本机群的生产频道上，一路 1080p 配置文件经 x264 编码占用 3.7 个处理器核心；同一配置文件经显卡编码器仅占用约四分之一个核心，解码也在显卡上完成。每频道三套配置文件时，软件路径在流媒体引擎运行之前就已耗尽服务器大部分算力。GPU 配置释放出的处理器资源，正是运行您的面板、录制和 API 所用的算力。

为什么不选择按分钟计费的云转码服务？

计费方式。云转码按频道小时收费，再按出站流量每 GB 收费；转码服务器则是每月一个固定价格，可选不限流量端口，全天候编码多少都行。您还能自行掌控引擎许可证、延迟和部署位置。如果您只跑一路频道且不想运维任何设备，诚实的方案是直播视频页面上的托管套餐，而不是服务器。

能 24/7 运行 IPTV 或 OTT 频道吗？

全天候运行是这些机器的正常负载周期，不限流量端口意味着输出永远不会被计量。您所转码内容的版权仍由您自行持有。

服务器可以放在哪些城市？

标准配置部署在纽约、布加勒斯特和迈阿密；更大规模的平台另增旧金山和阿姆斯特丹。所有节点均位于我们自有网络上。

交付速度如何？如果没有现成机器怎么办？

已装好显卡的机器在审核通过后几分钟内即可上线。若需我们从自有库存中加装显卡，则需四到二十四小时。无论哪种情况，驱动都会是最新版本，编码器经 nvidia-smi 验证，当前已上架的机器始终列在即时页面上。