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Using the GPU in the cloud

Here is an example workflow for how to use the GPU in the cloud to render your videos using EC2 instances.

Update Remotion​

Ensure you are using Remotion v4.0.248 or later for this guide to work.

Launch an EC2 instance​

1
 Ensure you are allowed to use a GPU

You might need to ask AWS for a limit increase for the number of GPUs you can use.
You can do this in the AWS console.
Go to "Service Quotas" -> "AWS Services" -> "Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)" -> "Running On-Demand G and VT instances" -> "Request increase at account-level".
You may also click here to go to the page directly for the us-east-1 region.

2
 Launch an EC2 instance

Click here to launch an EC2 instance on us-east-1.

Select "Browse more AMIs", search for ami-06a1f46caddb5669e, select the "Community AMIs" tab and select the image with the right AMI (ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-jammy-22.04-amd64-server-20230608).

note

It might take up to 30 seconds until the search finds the AMI and it is not the first result.

We recommend the g4dn.xlarge size - note that this instance costs $375 per month with the default configuration.
If you get a message "Subscribing to AMI is taking longer than expected", it is normal. You may need to wait a few minutes.

3
 Configure instance:

Once you connected to the instance, run the following commands:

Upgrade the Linux Kernel to v6
sudo bash -c "apt update && export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive && export NEEDRESTART_MODE=a && apt upgrade -y && reboot"

The instance will restart and therefore disconnect. Wait a few moments and then reconnect.

Install the Linux Dependencies for Remotion:

Install Linux Dependencies
sudo apt install -y \
  libnss3 \
  libdbus-1-3 \
  libatk1.0-0 \
  libasound2 \
  libxrandr2 \
  libxkbcommon-dev \
  libxfixes3 \
  libxcomposite1 \
  libxdamage1 \
  libcups2 \
  libgbm-dev \
  libpangocairo-1.0-0 \
  libatk-bridge2.0-0

Set up GPU drivers:

Install libvulkan
sudo apt install -y build-essential libvulkan1
Install GPU drivers
DRIVER_URL="https://us.download.nvidia.com/tesla/535.104.12/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-535.104.12.run"
DRIVER_NAME="NVIDIA-Linux-driver.run"
wget -O "$DRIVER_NAME" "$DRIVER_URL"
sudo sh "$DRIVER_NAME" --disable-nouveau --silent
rm "$DRIVER_NAME"
Configure startup service
echo '[Unit]
Description=Run nvidia-smi at system startup

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nvidia-smi
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target' | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/nvidia-smi.service
sudo systemctl enable nvidia-smi.service
sudo systemctl start nvidia-smi.service
Install Node.js
sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource-repo.gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg

NODE_MAJOR=20
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg] https://deb.nodesource.com/node_$NODE_MAJOR.x nodistro main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs -y

Render a video with the GPU

Clone a Remotion GPU demo
git clone https://github.com/remotion-dev/gpu-scene
cd gpu-scene
npm i
npx remotion gpu --chrome-mode="chrome-for-testing" --gl=vulkan # Verify content is hardware accelerated
npx remotion render --chrome-mode="chrome-for-testing" --gl=vulkan # Render a test video

With --chrome-mode="chrome-for-testing", a flavor of Chrome is used that emulates a display, which can make use of the GPU.
With --gl=vulkan, Chrome uses the right OpenGL renderer.

note

Warnings such as vkCreateInstance() failed: -7 and Failed to create and initialize Vulkan implementation. may show up, however, the render should be significantly faster.

See also​