Looks like Plex ships with Mesa Gallium drivers that are over two years old (mesa-23.0.2). I totally get the idea of sticking with older drivers for stability, but these are really outdated and don’t support a lot of the newer AMD APUs that have come out recently. That means hardware transcoding just doesn’t work on them — like with the new Strix Point 890M (gfx1150/1151), which I’m using.
I’ve spent days trying to hack together a workaround to get things running. I managed to get the transcoder working manually, but it all falls apart when Plex tries to transcode during playback. It seems like PMS ignores or overrides the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and LIBVA_DRIVERS_PATH variables, which makes things extra frustrating.
Any chance we could get some love for AMD? Or maybe just update the bundled drivers to a more recent version that actually supports the newer chips?
The FFMPEG 6.1 upgrade is now in forum preview.
It is nearing merge into PMS beta for next stage and subsequent release to Public.
After that time, drivers will be updated. I know Intel Media Driver and Intel Compute Runtime will be first due to their widespread use for the iGPUs.
We discussed AMD. As you point out, the drivers are an issue but more importantly, how the Transcoder uses them needs work (FFMPEG 6.1 can do things differently than the current transcoder). I do not know what any tasking / scheduling is for that work as that’s Chris’s to determine.
Doesn’t look like the beta stuff works. I’ve tried to use it but even with the new drivers (which I KNOW support latest iGPUs from AMD), it fails to transcode:
Oct 02, 2025 15:01:11.230 [140703233862456] VERBOSE - [Req#1c29/Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Rescanning for external libs: ‘/config/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/cf7e61
1-580b18dbc1ce38ef1c15aaf8-linux-x86_64/’
Oct 02, 2025 15:01:11.230 [140703233862456] DEBUG - [Req#1c29/Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API vaapi for device ‘/dev/dri/renderD128’ (AMD Strix [Radeon 880M / 890M])
Oct 02, 2025 15:01:11.230 [140703233862456] VERBOSE - [Req#1c29/Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Failed to open /dev/dri/renderD128 as DRM device node.
Oct 02, 2025 15:01:11.230 [140703233862456] ERROR - [Req#1c29/Transcode] [FFMPEG] - No VA display found for device /dev/dri/renderD128.
Oct 02, 2025 15:01:11.230 [140703233862456] DEBUG - [Req#1c29/Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: opening hw device failed - probably not supported by this system, error: Invalid arg
ument
Oct 02, 2025 15:01:11.230 [140703233862456] DEBUG - [Req#1c29/Transcode] Could not create hardware context for hevc
