Real-time streaming experiences like live events, interactive video, cloud gaming, video communications, and virtual worlds are seeing massive consumer adoption. Meeting this demand with CPU-based codecs like x264 and x265 is expensive and inefficient, unnecessarily boosting CAPEX, OPEX, and carbon emissions generated by power hungry CPUs.

The trend for large platforms, like YouTube, is to build custom Application Specific Integrated Circuits, or ASICs, like Google’s Argos Video Coding Unit (VCU), which according to one report, has replaced over 10 million Intel CPUs in YouTube alone. While most companies can’t build their own ASIC, NETINT’s Codensity ASIC-powered T408 video transcoder can deliver the same benefits for engineers that encode, transcode and process, massive quantities of live or interactive streams. This How-To Guide compares the output quality, CAPEX, OPEX and carbon emissions for three production scenarios, as follows:

1. Encoding with FFmpeg using x264 and x265 on a 32-core AWS instance.
2. Encoding with FFmpeg using x264 and x265 on a 32-core server.
3. Encoding H.264 and HEVC with ten NETINT T408 video transcoders on a 32-core server.

The NETINT T408 video transcoder can output H.264 and HEVC encoded files and this document details the results for both codecs, first H.264, and then HEVC. Then it briefly addresses implementation details like factors to consider when buying a server to house the T408s and software options for managing transcoding activities. Table 1 shows a three-year financial summary of the three approaches for transcoding to H.264. Table 2 – for transcoding to HEVC.

Table 1. Three-year cost summary for 100 H.264 live encoding ladders for a 24/7 operation (T408 configuration = 1.00×).

Table 2. Three-year cost summary for 100 HEVC live encoding ladders for 24/7 operation (T408 configuration = 1.00×).

About the T408

Briefly, NETINT designs, develops, and sells ASIC-powered video transcoders like the