Hardware Recommendations
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The recommended hardware depends on many factors, such as the stream count, video format – HD/UHD/8K, MPEG-2/H.264/HEVC/Daniel2, bit-rate, chroma format, and GOP size. The CPU and GPU load also differ depending on Cinegy Multiviewer operating mode and setup of alerts.
Nevertheless, as we continually optimize our software tools for improved performance, we have tested the following typical configurations for our and our customers' reference. Please note that these hardware recommendations are based on previously tested older systems. The listed CPUs should be used as a guide for selecting modern equivalent options rather than strict requirements. We also strongly recommend reviewing the GPU recommendations for optimal performance.
Cinegy products work only on machines with a CPU supporting a minimum instruction set SSE4.1.
Configuration Samples
Regardless of which hardware configuration sample you use from those described below, please note that after installing a dedicated graphics card, you should disable the onboard graphics card (e.g., Matrox) using the Windows Device Manager > Display Adapters and selecting the "Disable device" option for that card.
For example, to be able to monitor ~20 H.264 Full HD (1920x1080p) streams, a server with AMD EPYC 7543 @2.8 GHz or a similar alternative can be used. For monitoring up to 16 HD H.264 12-15 Mbit streams and having one output H.264 stream – AMD EPYC 7313 3.0 GHz is sufficient.
NVIDIA GPU offloaded encoding/decoding can dramatically reduce CPU requirements. NVIDIA Quadro A1000 or Quadro A2000 are excellent choices for multiple accelerated outputs. A general recommendation whilst deciding on the choice of a GPU is to consider NVIDIA models with multiple NVENC and NVDEC chips.
Several SDI streams can be monitored on the machine with virtually any CPU when output stream encoding is offloaded to the NVIDIA GPU. For example, to monitor 16 SDI HD streams and output an H.264 encoded UHD stream, a machine should be equipped with an NVIDIA GPU, 4 SDI cards, and a motherboard with the corresponding number of PCI slots.
For example, to be able to monitor up to 20 H.264 Full HD (1920x1080p) streams, an NVIDIA Quadro A2000 card is required. In this case, virtually no requirements are applied to the CPU.
For operation in screen output mode, a compatible graphics card with DirectX acceleration is recommended.
GPU Support
Intel GPU
To improve the performance of discrete Intel graphics cards, it is strongly recommended to enable "Resizable BAR" in the BIOS.
GPU encoding and decoding are supported on graphics cards compatible with DirectX 11 or higher and the Intel Video Processing Library (Intel VPL). For detailed hardware support information, refer to the following link.
AMD GPU
GPU encoding and decoding are supported on graphics cards that are compatible with DirectX 11 or higher.
NVIDIA GPU
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Note
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After installing a dedicated graphics card, please disable the onboard graphics card (e.g., Matrox) using the Windows Device Manager > Display Adapters and selecting the "Disable device" option for that card. |
To optimize the performance of your NVIDIA graphics board, it is recommended to use the "Prefer maximum performance" value for the "Power management mode" parameter in the NVIDIA Control Panel.
NVIDIA RTX and other Turing-generation GPU boards no longer support interlaced H.264 encoding. This applies to all versions of any Cinegy software supporting GPU encoding and is a hardware limitation of the NVIDIA boards. Pascal and earlier boards, as well as Blackwell GPUs, are not affected. If using GPU-accelerated NVIDIA features, please be careful to match your settings to the capabilities of your board. Instead, you may use the Daniel2 GPU encoder.
Daniel2 GPU encoding and decoding are supported by NVIDIA video boards that have CUDA Compute Capability 3.5 and higher. If the NVIDIA video board has the CUDA Compute Capability of an earlier version, then use Daniel2 CPU encoding and decoding.
NVIDIA Driver Version Updates
Due to the frequent release of NVIDIA drivers, it’s unfeasible for Cinegy to test every driver version with every possible GPU card combination to ensure compatibility with our software. As a result, we are unable to recommend a specific NVIDIA driver version for optimal performance. However, in our "Important Known Issues" section of release notes, we highlight any issues encountered with NVIDIA drivers during our testing phase and, if they are fixed in subsequent driver releases, we provide information about the fixed version and offer recommendations for selecting the appropriate range of NVIDIA drivers. Therefore, when considering an NVIDIA driver update, it’s essential to verify its compatibility with your specific hardware and software configuration.
Cinegy Multiviewer 25.12 supports the latest NVIDIA boards, which require new NVIDIA drivers and a new SDK to be utilized. For that reason, the minimal NVIDIA driver version is 456.81. Before starting any upgrades, please make sure that the OS under which you are running Cinegy Multiviewer and the model of the NVIDIA board you are using are supported in the version of the NVIDIA driver you choose.
The NVIDIA GPU driver had an issue (NVIDIA Incident Report 4005908) where H.264 interlaced video was incorrectly marked as progressive. This issue has now been fixed starting from driver version 553.35.
If you use the older driver, you may have an issue with NVIDIA encoding initialization; in this case, you will have the corresponding message in the log file, and encoding will fail.
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Note
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Please perform the process of updating the NVIDIA drivers only upon stopping Cinegy applications. For detailed instructions on installing an NVIDIA driver, please refer to the NVIDIA Drivers installation article. |
Network
A separate network is recommended for broadcast video multicast data, keeping general traffic away from time-critical video traffic.
Cinegy Multiviewer in MPEG-TS output mode supports two network interfaces on RTP/UDP/SRT streaming output – primary and backup. For mission-critical operations, it is recommended to use up to 2 separate adapters for each stream (primary and backup).
Most Cinegy IP-based tools and applications support a specific source network interface definition for each channel, player, and module. For mission-critical high bandwidth and bit rate multichannel operations, we recommend using separate network cards and dedicated network segments so that multiple cards and networks can be used on each server.