I’m planning a NAS/media server build for general centralized storage + Jellyfin to stream my media library, which consists of a mix of AVC, HEVC, and AV1 encoded videos. I’ll be watching on various devices, primarily on the living room TV w/ a Chromecast. The Chromecast is capable of playing AV1 videos (I know this b/c it says “direct playing” in the Jellyfin media info panel on my current setup).
Given that my Chromecast is capable of direct playing AV1 encodes, when I source the parts for my new server build, does my new server also need to be capable of AV1 transcoding or does this capability only matter if the client device doesn’t support AV1 video? I ask because I’ll possibly source my build from used parts, and the answer to this question may impact which generation Intel processors I focus on. I’m currently focusing on 12th gen i5-12400 b/c it has QSV capabilities and supports AV1, but if AV1 support isn’t needed for my server, then I may look for older gens to save a few bucks. Thank you!
It helps if your server can decode AV1, but you never need it to encode to AV1. Basically the main usecase for transcoding AV1 would be burning in ASS formatted subtitles, commonly used for anime. If you keep your anime in other codecs then you shouldn’t need to transcode AV1 ever unless you add more clients into the mix that can’t handle AV1 natively.
For what it’s worth, I use an Intel N100 with quicksync, and that can decode AV1 because it’s 12th gen. Works great for me.