Server Version#: Version 1.21.1.3876
Player Version#:8.11.0.22186
windows server 2019
ram drive for transcoder
Hello All,
doesnt matter what device on my home network or outside my network, i get buffering every 10 seconds when converting 4k hvec to h.264 .
have tried 20meg 12meg and smaller. it doesnt matter. i have hdr tonemapping off. i have tried old drivers and new drivers.
at home my devices all support direct stream and that plays fine. this video is playing at 68mbps. no hiccups. all other transcoding seems to work fine, although i dont think i have a 4k non hvec file to try..
for clients i have tried on my windows 10 desktop app. i have an nvidia shield, and also fire stick 4ks. all same results. the logs are with me using my fire stick 4k. again plays fine direct stream.!
attached are logs and screens of info. let me know if i need to add anything else.
adding that if i disable hardware encoding and decoding plex wont use both physical cpus. only using 1 numa node. so with 1 10 core cup it cant keep up. with 2 it could but its not using both.
Did it just start doing it for you? Iām having a similar issue, but Iām only trying to play 1080p. 720p plays fine, but 1080p buffers every 10-15 seconds. I never had a problem using windows 7 and using my plex server as my primary computer at the same time, but I bought a new primary computer, and moved up from win7 pro to win10, and now this started about a month or so ago. Iām wondering if an update did somethingā¦
it hasnāt worked properly since i can remember. i just started grabbing a few 4k hvec files recently, and wasnt able to play them remotely. so i started testing on my home network which is 1 gig wired ethernet.
gotchya, Iāve got a different issue then I thinkā¦ Due to storage space (or lack thereof, I always only went up to 720p, with only a couple 1080p files, but Iāve got a bigger raid array now so I started using more 1080p and they all buffer horriblyā¦ Nothing at all about the hardware has changed, just a complete format and fresh install of win10 instead of win7pro. Now itās a dedicated Plex server and it doesnāt seem able to handle as much as it did when it was my primary computerā¦
Common misconception that you can slap a GPU in your server and start doing 4K. The transcoding process is still throughput bound by the audio transcode in order to keep it in sync with the video. Audio can only be processed by one core with HD lossless audio needing a single thread PassMark score north of 1500 of which the E5-2648L only has 931.
Thats fine. But one core isnt being used past 60%. If 1 core was the bottleneck then it would be 100usage. And even then if thatās the case how about add multicore audio trancoding support.
Second I can transcode all Other 1080p streams with trancoding audioā¦ So why would 4k make a difference? The audio whether 4k or not is the same size and should take the same cpu power.
Also doesnāt account for when I turn off gpu acceleration I get less buffering.
just wanted to confirm that it for sure is not my cpu that cant handle the audio transcode. i just played a 1080p movie with same exact audio output DTS-HD ma 5.1 transcoding to aac like my original post.
and it plays flawlessly. the only diff is the the video is h.264 and not hvec.
and as u can see cpu hardly being used for the transcoder for audio.
I am having a similar issue. Ryzen 7 3800x, 32GB ram, RTX 2060. Minimal CPU/GPU/Network/Disk activity, but still buffering on both local and remote play. Single threaded passmark score is 2667.
so tried to play the jellyfish files. all 4k hvec files play direct play on my nvidia shield. switch the bitrate to get it totranscode will play for 10 seconds and buffer.
1080p hvec plays fine direct and transcoded, my shield is gig connected to my server as well.
this rules out audio being the limitation since there isnt audio? correct?
my pc with a gig lan connection transfers movies back and forth at 115MB/s and through the webplayer i couldnt get any 4k hvec files to even play at all it would buffer for 15 sec then the movie would just exit. all 4k files did this. the 1080p hvec played.
its not pushing the gpu hard at all..which seems like a bug.
added a ss on the start time of playing the file and gpu usage, this was the 3rd time trying this and the video was buffering about 10 sec after playing.
also tried playing the file directly on my server same problem as my other networked pc. the file bufferes for 30 seconds and then just exits.
i did have 1 cpu in and it wasnt working so i added the 2nd i had laying around to see if it could at least software run, but plex only uses 1 or the other numa nodeā¦
should plex be using both numa nodes for 1 stream? other threads say only 1 numa per stream.
here are new logs, 7% gpu usageā¦ doesnt make sense. says cant keep up. yet when i direct play it handles it fine. so i know its not a network problem. buffers about every 8 seconds after switching it off direct play.
in the logs i noticed-
Jan 17, 2021 10:56:00.937 [7476] DEBUG - [Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: opening hw device failed - probably not supported by this system, error: Unknown error occurred
also this error repeats over and over
-Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.036 [9380] DEBUG - HTTP 200 response from GET http://192.168.2.47:9080
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - XML: Entity: line 1:
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - XML: parser
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - XML: error :
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - XML: Start tag expected, ā<ā not found
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - XML: status=ok
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - XML: ^
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - Error parsing content.
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - Error parsing XML: Error parsing file.
Jan 17, 2021 10:59:12.037 [9380] ERROR - SSDP: Error parsing device schema for http://192.168.2.47:9080
Other than āTPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support not presentā which could be a problem between the OS, Nvidia driver and a possible Plex regression, Iām not seeing any standout issues. If you have had this file a while I would re-analyze it and try playback again to see if Plex picks a different optimization.
If local playback does the same thing the state of the Android client canāt be all your troubles. It might be a case of waiting for the next server version, were you ever on a version where this was working?
Iām having a similar issue. i5 3.5 ghx, 8GB RAM, GTX 1060, Windows 10. Direct plays 4K HDR perfect. On my Roku Premiere+ 1080p - (4K to 720p 4mbs), constant buffering. Roku Stick 4K, (4K to 720p 4mbs), plays fine. Web player (4K to 720p 4mbs), plays fine. Android Pixel 3a XL Plex App - (4K to 720p 4mbs), constant buffering. 1080p content transcoded to anything plays fine.
It seems like the hardware or player software is not liking the transcoded files in some cases. I have been thinking it was my friends and family that had settings wrong but itās in the server software somewhere.
Last thing I did before the logs was play a 4K HDR file transcoded to 720p 4mbs to android app. Buffered @ 4 times in 30 seconds.
I ran into the same issue you did trying to transcode 4k with a 1650. Since the 1650 only has a 128bit memory bus, it doesnāt have the bandwidth to transcode 4k. Looking at resource utilization is deceiving because even though the GPU is only using about 35%, it will still buffer during playback due to the memory constraint. Upgrade to a 1660 or higher (Turing NVENC) with 192bit+ memory bus and youāll be able to transcode 4k remuxes at close to 100mb/s. Iām able to transcode at least three 4k remux BDrips on my 1660 ti before I run out of GPU memory. One exception is if you turn on HDR tone mapping in Windows, your CPU will need to be powerful enough to handle that in software. Hope this helps.
If thatās the case that stinks.. How do you verify this though? The gddr5 128bit version has 8 Gbps of speed. Shouldnāt that be plenty? VS 12gbps for the 1650 gddr6 version. I have the 8gbps
Unfortunately I canāt upgrade. I have a 2u server. Needs a low profile card
