Configure NVIDIA NVENC accelerated encoding on Amazon EC2 for Wowza Streaming Engine

This article explains how to configure and run NVIDIA NVENC accelerated encoding on Amazon EC2 using a extra large (xlarge) GPU instance types. Wowza doesn't provide a pre-built AMI that works on these instance types. However, you can install Wowza Streaming Engine™ media server software on these instance types to get NVENC accelerated encoding.

Note: Accelerated transcoding with Wowza Streaming Engine is only supported on Amazon EC2 instances that are created using the NVIDIA AMIs. These AMIs include required drivers and kernel modifications.

Configuring the software

1. Select an HVM (G2) EBS-Backed 64-bit AMI ID from the list of Amazon Linux AMI IDs to launch an extra large (xlarge) instance.
    
2. When the instance is running, open an SSH session to the instance.
    
3. When the login as: prompt appears in the Terminal window, enter the user name ec2-user to login to your Amazon EC2 instance. When working with Wowza Streaming Engine, we recommend logging in as the root user. Execute the following command to become the root user:
   
   

   sudo su -

4. Use the following command to make sure the instance is up-to-date:
   
   

   yum -y update

5. Reboot the instance:
   
   

   reboot

6. Login to the instance again using steps 2 - 3 above.
    
7. Download the appropriate Linux x64 Driver from NVIDIA to update the EC2 instance. Specify the GPU type, series, product, and operating system as required to determine the correct driver. The latest NVIDIA driver often provides a performance improvement over the default driver installed on the EC2 instance. 
   • G3: Tesla M-series M60
   • P2: Tesla K-series K80
   • P3: Tesla V-series V100

   Note: Amazon may change the GPU hardware for instance types at any time. For the latest information about instance types GPUs, see Amazon's Recommended GPU instance types.

8. Change the current directory to the location of the driver package and install the driver by running the following command as root:
   
   

   sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-352.63.run

    

   Note: One of the last installation steps will offer to update your X configuration file. Decline this update for the EC2 instance.

9. Download the Linux installer for the Wowza Streaming Engine and install the software as you would on any Linux-based computer.
10. Update to the latest Wowza Streaming Engine software.

Wowza Streaming Engine is now configured to take advantage of NVENC accelerated encoding. Be sure to adjust the Implementation property for each video encode in your Transcoder template to use the NVENC encoding implementation.

More resources

• NVIDIA Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix