I've had fairly good luck using Debian Linux, VLC, x264 and a i7-3770k to groom and stream some satellite video feeds. One machine is processing two mpeg2 HD channels to mpeg4 in real time. That system is documented in earlier postings on this forum.
I'd like to use an older Xeon x5450 multicore server for the same function with the addition of a graphics card/gpu. Can anyone recommend a Linux distro and graphics card that could match or exceed the performance of the i7-3770k based system? About a year ago I tried my hand at integrating a nvidia/cuda based card but had little luck getting reliable performance. The distros I used then were very hard to get the card integrated into the op system.