I built GhostStream while working on a self-hosted media server and wanting a simple way to offload video transcoding to whatever hardware was available on the network.

GhostStream is an open-source video transcoding server with:

- zero configuration startup

- automatic GPU / encoder detection (NVENC, QuickSync, AMF, VideoToolbox)

- live HLS streaming, ABR, and batch modes

- automatic fallback to CPU if hardware encoding fails

- a small HTTP + WebSocket API for progress updates

It’s designed to run locally (no cloud dependency) and works well as a sidecar for lightweight media servers.

If you want to see it working quickly, the repo includes a demo that starts a transcode from a public video URL and opens playback automatically:

    python examples/demo.py