I just built a brand new Plex server based on the new bleeding edge 11 series Intel Rocket Lake CPU i5-11600K. (I knew I should of waited a year!)
So for the most part, I actually have it working very well except for one thing, I cannot get the transcoder to use the new Intel quicksync hardware in the new Xe GPU generation to transcode from 4K HDR file into a 1080 SDR player. I am using the iOS plex player app on my phone to test. I start the player with “Play Version” and select the 4K HDR source, I then make sure the “Settings” on the playback have been selected to a 1080 setting. The transcoding works and looks good (at 60% CPU used) but I really want it to use the HEVC hardware present in the new Xe GPU to do the work. As I understand it, looking at other posts, the Plex transcoder is capable of doing a hardware 4K HDR to 1080 SDR conversion completely on older Intel GPU hardware right now, I think my problem now is my hardware is too cutting edge and I’m either missing something in my Ubuntu installation or the Plex server code is missing something to recognize that I have all the hardware available.
Please note, I do not have a problem at all playing a 1080 SDR file using transscoding, I get the (hw) status just fine with 1080 SDR source files. My problem is I can;t get a 4K HDR to transocde with tonemapping using hardware. It always fails using the hardware and falls back to software. I am not using any subtitles in any of my tests. (I understand burned in subtitles will always use software transcoder)
History of setup:
I started with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server but then upgraded to 20.10 server.
I figured out the linux-kernel was still too old to support Rocket Lake, so I installed the latest kernel I could find that was released: 5.11.11-051111-generic
Great, kernel found the hardware, but wouldn’t enable it without a kernel parameter, so I added “i915.force_probe=4c8a” to my kernel parameters.
Great!, now the GPU was being installed! I thought I was homefree! But no, I needed more stuff. Neither vainfo or clinfo said I had anything!
Originally I had followed the Plex guide on setting up HDR->SDR hardware support. It mentions the begneit driver and other things. Well they are all too old for Rocket Lake I found out.
So I then proceeded to install the new media packages for “iHD” instead of the “i915” stuff Ubuntu installed, and installed the new “Neo” Intel iHD compute packages.
To install latest available Ubuntu kernel:
Downloaded from: Index of /~kernel-ppa/mainline/v5.11.11/amd64
linux-headers-5.11.11-051111_5.11.11-051111.202103310025_all.deb
linux-headers-5.11.11-051111-generic_5.11.11-051111.202103310025_amd64.deb
linux-image-unsigned-5.11.11-051111-generic_5.11.11-051111.202103310025_amd64.deb
linux-modules-5.11.11-051111-generic_5.11.11-051111.202103310025_amd64.deb
Then to install:
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
Added “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“i915.force_probe=4c8a”” to /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub
sudo usermod -a -G video $LOGNAME
sudo usermod -a -G video plex
sudo reboot
> uname -r
5.11.11-051111-generic
To install the new “iHD” stuff:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install intel-opencl-icd intel-media-va-driver-non-free libmfx1 intel-level-zero-gpu level-zero vainfo clinfo
Added “LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=iHD” to /etc/environment
sudo reboot
To install the new “Neo” compute stuff:
sudo apt remove intel-opencl-icd
Download packages from Intel github: Releases · intel/compute-runtime · GitHub
Followed the install instructions provided by Intel from above link.
sudo reboot
At this point I was very happy as both vainfo and clinfo were reporting:
> vainfo
libva info: VA-API version 1.10.0
libva info: User environment variable requested driver 'iHD'
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/iHD_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_10
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.10 (libva 2.10.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Intel iHD driver for Intel(R) Gen Graphics - 21.1.2 (67dbfde)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc
VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointStats
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointFEI
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointFEI
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileJPEGBaseline : VAEntrypointEncPicture
VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointFEI
VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointFEI
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileVP9Profile0 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVP9Profile1 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVP9Profile2 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVP9Profile3 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain12 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain12 : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain422_10 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain422_10 : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain422_12 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain422_12 : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain444 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain444 : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileHEVCMain444_10 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCMain444_10 : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileHEVCMain444_12 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCSccMain : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCSccMain : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileHEVCSccMain10 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCSccMain10 : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileHEVCSccMain444 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCSccMain444 : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
VAProfileAV1Profile0 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCSccMain444_10 : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileHEVCSccMain444_10 : VAEntrypointEncSliceLP
> clinfo
Number of platforms 1
Platform Name Intel(R) OpenCL HD Graphics
Platform Vendor Intel(R) Corporation
Platform Version OpenCL 3.0
Platform Profile FULL_PROFILE
Platform Extensions cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_fp16 cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_icd cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_intel_command_queue_families cl_intel_subgroups cl_intel_required_subgroup_size cl_intel_subgroups_short cl_khr_spir cl_intel_accelerator cl_intel_driver_diagnostics cl_khr_priority_hints cl_khr_throttle_hints cl_khr_create_command_queue cl_intel_subgroups_char cl_intel_subgroups_long cl_khr_il_program cl_intel_mem_force_host_memory cl_khr_subgroup_extended_types cl_khr_subgroup_non_uniform_vote cl_khr_subgroup_ballot cl_khr_subgroup_non_uniform_arithmetic cl_khr_subgroup_shuffle cl_khr_subgroup_shuffle_relative cl_khr_subgroup_clustered_reduce cl_intel_spirv_media_block_io cl_intel_spirv_subgroups cl_khr_spirv_no_integer_wrap_decoration cl_intel_unified_shared_memory_preview cl_khr_mipmap_image cl_khr_mipmap_image_writes cl_intel_planar_yuv cl_intel_packed_yuv cl_khr_int64_base_atomics cl_khr_int64_extended_atomics cl_khr_image2d_from_buffer cl_khr_depth_images cl_khr_3d_image_writes cl_intel_media_block_io cl_intel_va_api_media_sharing cl_intel_subgroup_local_block_io
Platform Host timer resolution 1ns
Platform Extensions function suffix INTEL
Platform Name Intel(R) OpenCL HD Graphics
Number of devices 1
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics [0x4c8a]
Device Vendor Intel(R) Corporation
Device Vendor ID 0x8086
Device Version OpenCL 3.0 NEO
Driver Version 21.13.19438
Device OpenCL C Version OpenCL C 1.2
Device Type GPU
Device Profile FULL_PROFILE
Device Available Yes
Compiler Available Yes
Linker Available Yes
Max compute units 32
Max clock frequency 1300MHz
Device Partition (core)
Max number of sub-devices 0
Supported partition types None
Supported affinity domains (n/a)
Max work item dimensions 3
Max work item sizes 512x512x512
Max work group size 512
Preferred work group size multiple 64
Max sub-groups per work group 64
Sub-group sizes (Intel) 8, 16, 32
Preferred / native vector sizes
char 16 / 16
short 8 / 8
int 4 / 4
long 1 / 1
half 8 / 8 (cl_khr_fp16)
float 1 / 1
double 1 / 1 (n/a)
Half-precision Floating-point support (cl_khr_fp16)
Denormals Yes
Infinity and NANs Yes
Round to nearest Yes
Round to zero Yes
Round to infinity Yes
IEEE754-2008 fused multiply-add Yes
Support is emulated in software No
Single-precision Floating-point support (core)
Denormals Yes
Infinity and NANs Yes
Round to nearest Yes
Round to zero Yes
Round to infinity Yes
IEEE754-2008 fused multiply-add Yes
Support is emulated in software No
Correctly-rounded divide and sqrt operations No
Double-precision Floating-point support (n/a)
Address bits 64, Little-Endian
Global memory size 13255081984 (12.34GiB)
Error Correction support No
Max memory allocation 4294959104 (4GiB)
Unified memory for Host and Device Yes
Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) capabilities (core)
Coarse-grained buffer sharing Yes
Fine-grained buffer sharing No
Fine-grained system sharing No
Atomics No
Minimum alignment for any data type 128 bytes
Alignment of base address 1024 bits (128 bytes)
Preferred alignment for atomics
SVM 64 bytes
Global 64 bytes
Local 64 bytes
Max size for global variable 65536 (64KiB)
Preferred total size of global vars 4294959104 (4GiB)
Global Memory cache type Read/Write
Global Memory cache size 524288 (512KiB)
Global Memory cache line size 64 bytes
Image support Yes
Max number of samplers per kernel 16
Max size for 1D images from buffer 268434944 pixels
Max 1D or 2D image array size 2048 images
Base address alignment for 2D image buffers 4 bytes
Pitch alignment for 2D image buffers 4 pixels
Max 2D image size 16384x16384 pixels
Max planar YUV image size 16384x16352 pixels
Max 3D image size 2048x2048x2048 pixels
Max number of read image args 128
Max number of write image args 128
Max number of read/write image args 128
Max number of pipe args 0
Max active pipe reservations 0
Max pipe packet size 0
Local memory type Local
Local memory size 65536 (64KiB)
Max number of constant args 8
Max constant buffer size 4294959104 (4GiB)
Max size of kernel argument 2048 (2KiB)
Queue properties (on host)
Out-of-order execution Yes
Profiling Yes
Queue properties (on device)
Out-of-order execution No
Profiling No
Preferred size 0
Max size 0
Max queues on device 0
Max events on device 0
Prefer user sync for interop Yes
Profiling timer resolution 83ns
Execution capabilities
Run OpenCL kernels Yes
Run native kernels No
Sub-group independent forward progress No
IL version SPIR-V_1.2
SPIR versions 1.2
printf() buffer size 4194304 (4MiB)
Built-in kernels (n/a)
Device Extensions cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_fp16 cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_icd cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_intel_command_queue_families cl_intel_subgroups cl_intel_required_subgroup_size cl_intel_subgroups_short cl_khr_spir cl_intel_accelerator cl_intel_driver_diagnostics cl_khr_priority_hints cl_khr_throttle_hints cl_khr_create_command_queue cl_intel_subgroups_char cl_intel_subgroups_long cl_khr_il_program cl_intel_mem_force_host_memory cl_khr_subgroup_extended_types cl_khr_subgroup_non_uniform_vote cl_khr_subgroup_ballot cl_khr_subgroup_non_uniform_arithmetic cl_khr_subgroup_shuffle cl_khr_subgroup_shuffle_relative cl_khr_subgroup_clustered_reduce cl_intel_spirv_media_block_io cl_intel_spirv_subgroups cl_khr_spirv_no_integer_wrap_decoration cl_intel_unified_shared_memory_preview cl_khr_mipmap_image cl_khr_mipmap_image_writes cl_intel_planar_yuv cl_intel_packed_yuv cl_khr_int64_base_atomics cl_khr_int64_extended_atomics cl_khr_image2d_from_buffer cl_khr_depth_images cl_khr_3d_image_writes cl_intel_media_block_io cl_intel_va_api_media_sharing cl_intel_subgroup_local_block_io
NULL platform behavior
clGetPlatformInfo(NULL, CL_PLATFORM_NAME, ...) Intel(R) OpenCL HD Graphics
clGetDeviceIDs(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ALL, ...) Success [INTEL]
clCreateContext(NULL, ...) [default] Success [INTEL]
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_DEFAULT) Success (1)
Platform Name Intel(R) OpenCL HD Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics [0x4c8a]
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CPU) No devices found in platform
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_GPU) Success (1)
Platform Name Intel(R) OpenCL HD Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics [0x4c8a]
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ACCELERATOR) No devices found in platform
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_CUSTOM) No devices found in platform
clCreateContextFromType(NULL, CL_DEVICE_TYPE_ALL) Success (1)
Platform Name Intel(R) OpenCL HD Graphics
Device Name Intel(R) Graphics [0x4c8a]
ICD loader properties
ICD loader Name OpenCL ICD Loader
ICD loader Vendor OCL Icd free software
ICD loader Version 2.2.12
ICD loader Profile OpenCL 2.2
NOTE: your OpenCL library only supports OpenCL 2.2,
but some installed platforms support OpenCL 3.0.
Programs using 3.0 features may crash
or behave unexpectedly
The good news after all this, Plex was now using the hardware transcoder when I was requesting 1080 files remotely, BUT if I requested 4K HDR → 1080 SDR then it is falling back to using the software transcoder. As I understand it, it should be using the hardware to do this. Note, I am not requesting any subtitles, they are disabled. I expect the 4K HDR → 1080 SDR process to use the hardware. This transcode does actually work currently with this setup, but uses 60% of the CPU to do it! So this is the one remaining problem I have not solved yet, and I need help from the Plex team to see if I have missed something in my configuration, or if there is a problem on the Plex server side not setting up the Rocket Lake quicksync correctly?
LOGS
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-04-04_06-30-33.zip (3.7 MB)
PLEX VERSIONS
Server Version#: Plex Media Server v1.22.2.4276-3cbd5e781 - Ubuntu PC x86_64
Player Version#: PlexMobile/7.15 (iPhone; iOS 14.4.2; Scale/3.00)
Thanks for your help.
If anything, I hope my setup instrutions above help more people get setup on this very new hardware as well!
