For a local broadcaster, I’m investigating the option to setup CasparCG as a play-out. Because I need a stable internet connection and infrastructure, I want to use a cloud provider to set up the VM that will run CasparCG server.
I tried doing that with Azure VM, but it does not seem to support OpenGL and does not have a GPU, which is recommended for performance. I’m wondering if anyone uses a cloud VM (AWS, Azure, TransIP, etc…) to run CasparCG and has any suggestions which one to use. I’m also curious about the costs.
When we tried this it was on Google Cloud Platform and we were constrained to using Tesla Accelerator cards which required us to do quite a few hacks. Didn’t end up being a viable option. With these purpose built machines you should at least be able to get an OpenGL 4.5 context without too much hassle. Challenge will be to run a headless display (required by the html producer) and getting a broadcast quality video feed out of the machine.
If you do not have a stable internet connection and, as Balte explaned, cloud providers are no option, you are left with two options:
First: Try to find a way to get a stable internet connection, via fibre etc.
Or second: Find a Datacenter that does „Server Houseing“. You can bring your own hardware and only pay for internet-trafic, power and amount of rack units. That could be quite a cheap option.
Thanks for some great suggestions. I think the AWS option is too expensive, so I’m thinking of buying a dedicated server for this that we can run from a location that has a stable connection. When I look at the system requirements, I see that higher than Windows 7 is not supported. Is that still accurate for version 2.2 of CasparCG?
Hi Balte, could you tell me a bit more on why did Google end up not being an option? I’m just starting to look for a cloud solution… what does AWS offer you guys that Google did not?
It was a showcase of the Google Platform, that’s why we went with Google.
I could tell you, but this was a couple of years back so it’s pretty irrelevant to know the challenges we had back then. Just to take one: we had to do quite some hacks to get a valid OpenGL context at all. But these days Google Cloud Platform advertises with being capable of OpenGL contexts, so it’s obviously a non-issue.
Hi leonedo (or anyone else with info)… we are also looking at using casper playout via Cloud provider (AWS etc). Did you end up having any success and if so can you pls pass on your findings?
I didn’t really have much time so I ended up using a Windows Server 2019 VM on Google Cloud, I only need it for a few days I did work without problems, but again I only used a small set of features for a short time.
Q - Has anyone else been able to deploy a long term / production ready (24/7) version of casper from the cloud (eg AWS or similar) using a dedicated Graphics based instance (eg AWS G3) or similar?