// the find
steelbrain/ffmpeg-over-ip
Connect to remote ffmpeg servers
ffmpeg-over-ip lets a media server (Jellyfin, Emby) use a GPU on a separate machine for transcoding without shared filesystems or GPU passthrough. The client binary masquerades as ffmpeg — it tunnels all file I/O over TCP to the server, which runs a patched ffmpeg with real GPU access. Solves a genuinely painful infrastructure problem for homelabbers and self-hosters.
The file I/O tunneling approach is the clever bit — no NFS, no SMB, no path mapping, files never touch the server disk. Ships pre-built patched ffmpeg binaries so you don't need to compile anything. HMAC-SHA256 auth on every command is the right call for something that executes arbitrary ffmpeg arguments. Integration test coverage is thorough — concurrent sessions, HLS segment deletion, pipe protocol, fallback behavior all have their own test scripts.
Single shared secret for auth means any client that knows the secret can run arbitrary ffmpeg commands on the server — there's no per-client identity or ACL. The GPL v3 fio/patches layer contaminates anything that statically links those components, which the split license tries to manage but will trip people up. No TLS — HMAC protects against tampering but the file data and ffmpeg arguments travel in plaintext, which matters if you're using this over a network you don't control. 35 forks for 1100 stars suggests people are using it but not building on it, which is fine for a tool but means the ecosystem stays thin.