Any news on GPU transcoding, especially Intel Quick Sync?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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@AlexDua said:
Ok, Here is what QNAP does using their software, which if I am not mistaken is a flavor of Kodi and or perhaps Emby. I am going to try Emby once they have the 64bit version out on my AMD based Qnap Nas. :

Which video formats support hardware acceleration?
Applied Models:
• All NAS Series
Answer:
The following formats support hardware acceleration. Software decoding will be used for formats not mentioned below. The performance of software decoding will be limited to the system performance, and some video formats may not be played smoothly during On-the-fly transcoding. If this situation arises, consider using offline transcoding.

Supported formats for hardware acceleration:

Intel hardware accelerated series: H.264 CB, H.264 Main, H.264 High@L4.1 , MPEG2 Simple, MPEG2 Main@HL, VC1 Simple, VC1 Main, VC1 ASP@Level 3

AMD hardware accelerated series: H.264 High@L4.1, VC1 ASP@Level 3, MPEG4-P2 (Advanced Simple Profile), MPEG-2

Above is from:
Which video formats support hardware acceleration? | QNAP (US)

So the question is, why can Qnap do both Intel and AMD? Their core OS is not Windows either. And with their solution you can do multiple streams. Yes they are not as good as Plex in terms of features and interface but it allows transcoding without killing the CPU.

today i saw a headline in emby’s blog saying the 64 bits version was out :stuck_out_tongue:

They can cause they sell NAS boxes, right? they care about server features cause it nets more sales (follwing @RedSocks157 theory, that seems pretty valid).

Whats more, since i payed for permanent plex pass, what i want might be even less important now, since i can’t net them more money xD (still on the theory mentioned above).

There are probably other comercial reasons that they wont tell us… or maybe not. who knows.

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@RedSocks157 said:

@atrus said:

@RedSocks157 said:
I believe currently it is a really funky tweak, but it’s better than nothing right? The AMD solution is open source currently, and since I use an old APU in my server that is what I would most appreciate. I’m not sure about the status on Intel’s QS code, and NV is almost certainly closed source unfortunately.

A funky tweak doesn’t sound like something devs should spend time on. :slight_smile:
And as for Quick Sync (which this thread is about) on Mac, there does not seem to be anything anyone can do about it as Intel has not made the appropriate API´s available. I would love to read something about that if it proves me wrong. But I have found no evidence of me being wrong about that.

It’s just incredibly frustrating how long this feature has been requested and how many people have asked, and yet there has been zero progress made. Not even a real response or status update from a dev recently.

How can you even say that? Not even half a day has gone by since a dev responded. If you are referring to anything before November (which is the last time before today a dev responded) then yes, this feature request has taken a back seat due to the lack of a possibility to do this. It wasn’t until late summer that ffmpeg added support for this for one platform. There were tons of other things that tons of people wanted added in the mean time.

You would not believe how many times I have read a version of this in this very forum: “I can’t believe the incompetence of Plex, they have not added the absolutely crucial feature X and Y”. Everyone having different views on what is important. Yes, it is frustrating not to have your pet peeve worked on. I for one would rather see this not being added at all if that meant I was getting my pet peeve solved. That is how little I care about this compared to the feature I lack. I would trade in all other features for getting a better subtitle solution in place. Me being able to hit a button in the OSD and getting presented with subtitles from different sites from which I can download with the press of a button.

Subtitles are already supported in numerous ways. This hasn’t even been touched. And seriously, a huge increase in encoding power would make a big difference for a ton of users. Weighed against a small increase in ease of use for a few users who NEED subtitles, I think it’s pretty obvious which is more pressing.

Are you really trying to sell me on the fact that there are few people who needs subtitles? There are a couple of billion people in the world that does not speak English. And quite a hefty bunch of them (me included) do almost solely watch movies and episodes produced in English speaking countries. For me it is very clear that not even a tenth of those who needs subtitles even have heard of something called GPU assisted transcoding. They just want to watch movies and understand what is being said. And they do not want to troll incredibly annoying metadata sites to download subtitles that fits a specific version of a movie. A little like if you were forced to manually copy and paste the summary of each episode from a site which has many versions of the summary, but you could not see the summary until you have started the episode and only then would you realize the summary was not for that episode. It was for another episode. But this comparison lacks in so many ways, because in the case of the subtitles you could not even watch the episode until you have found the correct one. I think that you would find that more than slightly annoying if you were only watching things in your non-native tongue.

It’s not lack of ability. They just don’t care. It won’t sell any more apps, because its a server side improvement and PMS is free. The technology is clearly there already but they have no motivation to include it.

There are quite a few features in PMS that only work if you are a PP subscriber, so I am unsure how this would differ from that if they really wanted to lock that in. Which I am not sure they would do, but IF they wanted to, they could.

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As much as I want to see GPU support in Plex I’d have to support @atrus in what he’s saying.

To the Plex community at large what atrus has been campaigning for concerning subtitles is much more important. Not just the brief parts he has mentioned here but the whole thing to get subtitles working better across the board.

As a native English speaker who really never uses subtitles it’s hard to understand this as being important. But if English isn’t your first language or you don’t speak English at all, subtitles might be the only thing enabling you to watch/enjoy the large majority of movies/shows made. Ponder that thought for a moment before making a response.

Like atrus, I have what I’d consider more important items on my list (https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/202647/wish-list-for-2016/p1) as well.

When we get new stuff that really no one has been asking for nor cares much about and we have a long list of items that need work that is acknowledged by the user base that is frustrating. When we see other software adopt new features and technologies and steadily improve on them while we see nothing happening on our own front it’s frustrating. When we hear they want it to be a near “perfect” solution before they begin working on it but then to the user base it feels only half done correct, it’s frustrating. It’s the old communication thing, or lack of.

Don’t want to harp or derail this thread with that subject as it’s been very well stated in other threads. :slight_smile:
But it’s a pattern and this whole thread has been pretty much that type of “out of control thread based on speculation and unknowns” due to lack of information from the team.

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@atrus said:
Are you really trying to sell me on the fact that there are few people who needs subtitles? There are a couple of billion people in the world that does not speak English. And quite a hefty bunch of them (me included) do almost solely watch movies and episodes produced in English speaking countries. For me it is very clear that not even a tenth of those who needs subtitles even have heard of something called GPU assisted transcoding. They just want to watch movies and understand what is being said. And they do not want to troll incredibly annoying metadata sites to download subtitles that fits a specific version of a movie. A little like if you were forced to manually copy and paste the summary of each episode from a site which has many versions of the summary, but you could not see the summary until you have started the episode and only then would you realize the summary was not for that episode. It was for another episode. But this comparison lacks in so many ways, because in the case of the subtitles you could not even watch the episode until you have found the correct one. I think that you would find that more than slightly annoying if you were only watching things in your non-native tongue.

Atrus,

For someone that has a hearing loss I appreciate you advocating subtitles. ( I use these all the time). First of all your elongated discussion about why subtitles are important is an insult to most peoples intelligence. We don’t need to be talked down to like we are babies. Even I can see you are clearly defending and making any excuse possible for the reason as to why this is not even explored as a “plex pass only” or beta testing issue.

I can work around the lack of this. I really don’t care if Plex does GPU anytime soon. But as I indicated before, Plex has to take this seriously, in light of other starting on this, especially QNAP. Explain to me why Plex is no longer on their current product spec sheets as a banner picture? Because it does not support their built in HW assisted transcoding. All their new products push this as a feature and this does not include Plex in the picture. IT SHOULD! Don’t you see that? What are you saying a company as large as QNAP is just tinkering with something that nobody cares about? This is some minor feature? Look at their ads and feature lists for their newest products!

Here are a few examples:
The TVS-871T allows you to smoothly play 4K videos on an HDTV with Kodi™ through HDMI without heavily consuming system resources. Featuring Intel® HD Graphics, the TVS-871T delivers superior real-time 4K (H.264) and 1080p video transcoding to convert videos to universal formats that can be smoothly played on PCs, mobile devices and Smart TVs.
Why cant this say Plex instead of Kodi?

The below is another, yes in this example it’s assuming you use Qnap’s own media manager to organize and play videos and use the QNAP apps on TV’s, Phones and other applications to play up to 5 at a time due to the fact that it supports hardware transcoding, Why can’t Plex be an option here? :

The TS-853 Pro delivers superior real-time Full HD video transcoding to convert videos to formats that can be smoothly played on PCs, mobile devices and Smart TVs. It allows for up to 5 devices to simultaneously view different videos stored on the TS-853 Pro with on-the-fly hardware accelerated transcoding. The TS-853 Pro allows you to enjoy instant videos on multiple devices - even those that lack computing power or have limited file format support - without the need for complicated and time-consuming file conversion.

Look I understand you are defending Plex and want to maintain your Ninja status. But I don’t know how to spell it out to you that this is something that should be look at with more attention in light of the fact that all others are. Please stop with excuses.

One can only assume that Plex has something up their sleeve, some Ace card that we are not aware of. But short of that, to hear that is something nobody heard of is a joke. Maybe it’s you Atrus that didn’t hear about this?

Even the Plex dev acknowledged that this is important. Yes not at top of list but something on the list. I am glad he responded and appreciate the response. I hope the bugs can get worked out and this pushed up the list.

Here, Synology are getting in on this too:
https://www.synology.com/en-us/solution/play_series_campaign/transcode

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@AlexDua said:

@atrus said:
Are you really trying to sell me on the fact that there are few people who needs subtitles? There are a couple of billion people in the world that does not speak English. And quite a hefty bunch of them (me included) do almost solely watch movies and episodes produced in English speaking countries. For me it is very clear that not even a tenth of those who needs subtitles even have heard of something called GPU assisted transcoding. They just want to watch movies and understand what is being said. And they do not want to troll incredibly annoying metadata sites to download subtitles that fits a specific version of a movie. A little like if you were forced to manually copy and paste the summary of each episode from a site which has many versions of the summary, but you could not see the summary until you have started the episode and only then would you realize the summary was not for that episode. It was for another episode. But this comparison lacks in so many ways, because in the case of the subtitles you could not even watch the episode until you have found the correct one. I think that you would find that more than slightly annoying if you were only watching things in your non-native tongue.

Atrus,

For someone that has a hearing loss I appreciate you advocating subtitles. ( I use these all the time). First of all your elongated discussion about why subtitles are important is an insult to most peoples intelligence. We don’t need to be talked down to like we are babies. Even I can see you are clearly defending and making any excuse possible for the reason as to why this is not even explored as a “plex pass only” or beta testing issue.

I can work around the lack of this. I really don’t care if Plex does GPU anytime soon. But as I indicated before, Plex has to take this seriously, in light of other starting on this, especially QNAP. Explain to me why Plex is no longer on their current product spec sheets as a banner picture? Because it does not support their built in HW assisted transcoding. All their new products push this as a feature and this does not include Plex in the picture. IT SHOULD! Don’t you see that? What are you saying a company as large as QNAP is just tinkering with something that nobody cares about? This is some minor feature? Look at their ads and feature lists for their newest products!

Here are a few examples:
The TVS-871T allows you to smoothly play 4K videos on an HDTV with Kodi™ through HDMI without heavily consuming system resources. Featuring Intel® HD Graphics, the TVS-871T delivers superior real-time 4K (H.264) and 1080p video transcoding to convert videos to universal formats that can be smoothly played on PCs, mobile devices and Smart TVs.
Why cant this say Plex instead of Kodi?

The below is another, yes in this example it’s assuming you use Qnap’s own media manager to organize and play videos and use the QNAP apps on TV’s, Phones and other applications to play up to 5 at a time due to the fact that it supports hardware transcoding, Why can’t Plex be an option here? :

The TS-853 Pro delivers superior real-time Full HD video transcoding to convert videos to formats that can be smoothly played on PCs, mobile devices and Smart TVs. It allows for up to 5 devices to simultaneously view different videos stored on the TS-853 Pro with on-the-fly hardware accelerated transcoding. The TS-853 Pro allows you to enjoy instant videos on multiple devices - even those that lack computing power or have limited file format support - without the need for complicated and time-consuming file conversion.

Look I understand you are defending Plex and want to maintain your Ninja status. But I don’t know how to spell it out to you that this is something that should be look at with more attention in light of the fact that all others are. Please stop with excuses.

One can only assume that Plex has something up their sleeve, some Ace card that we are not aware of. But short of that, to hear that is something nobody heard of is a joke. Maybe it’s you Atrus that didn’t hear about this?

Even the Plex dev acknowledged that this is important. Yes not at top of list but something on the list. I am glad he responded and appreciate the response. I hope the bugs can get worked out and this pushed up the list.

Here, Synology are getting in on this too:
https://www.synology.com/en-us/solution/play_series_campaign/transcode

I (try) to follow the rule that if I can’t make my point across without swearing a lot, and calling people words that are not suitable… then I have to delete what I have written and then start over. I have written a reply to you 3 times already, and deleted them all. Your reply is occupying that sweet spot were it really infuriates me.
And it makes me ashamed that I do not have the power to reply to you without stooping to a 12-year-old-gamer. I will therefore be practical about it (well I will try at least) before I leave this thread to you guys to sit and stew in your anger awaiting something that has been stated quite a few times that it will likely come:

  • The only reason I even brought up subtitles is because I wanted to make it absolutely clear that there are features that are waaaaay more important for some/many people. As important as QSV is to you.
  • After I had stated that, someone came in and told me, literally: Weighed against a small increase in ease of use for a **few users who NEED subtitles**, I think it's pretty obvious which is more pressing. That reponse infuriated me even more than your reply did. Sure I could have brushed it off and leaving the discussion without addressing the hyperbole/misconception/lie/whatever it was. But as this is a forum that is being indexed by search engines every day (not to talk about all the users that are already on this forum lurking) it is important that we do not leave none-truths unanswered. I know this because I have left them unanswered before, and those times it quite often ended up with people spreading things that were not true leading to none-optimal situations. I am sorry if I sounded like I talked down to a child. That was not what I tried to do. I just wanted to be clear, and I may have overdone the “clearness”. A classic error I make at times due to English not being my mother tongue. Trying to better myself about that, but clearly not being proficient in it yet.
  • I maintain my Ninja status not by kissing someones ass. I maintain it by actually doing some work testing the products, and helping out in the forum. Ironically I was the one who brought this thread to the attention of the employee back in November (after this being left alone for a long time due to it not being “possible” in many ways). The person that you are accusing of ass-kissing has made himself a pain in the ass behind the scenes fighting for what he believe is important. Even though I find things not important for me, I still do my “job” by bringing highly-voted topics to the attention of the developers or CTO (Elan). I have made it my mission in life to not leave this ship until I have gotten the HTPC application I believe it could be. But to be able to do that (by being a pain in the ass behind the scenes) I have to actually do my “job” and alert the company to highly-rated feature requests. Like this one. I understand you can’t possibly know this as you do not have the extreme privilege that I have actually being able to read the GHI´s (and making them). I am at an unfair advantage. But you insinuating things like you did without knowing is equally a big crime to me. Well, in the state of mind I am now at least. Too tired. Too easily irritated.
  • If I got a dime for every time someone has written “but X company is doing it, why are you not?”. That is not such a bad question. Often the answer is (as has been answered in this thread already): “We are looking into it” or “it is of interest but it will take time”. The answer is that because they are really looking into it, but do not know when/if it will come to fruition. Due to a couple of the other 5200 feature requests (yes, that is the actual number of feature requests. And yes, there are duplicates in there as well of course.) is being worked on, in combination with something being kind of a deal-breaker. For example the lack of ffmpeg support made this particular issue a non-starter for all these years. Together with the fact that some things that are being worked on are a closely guarded secret due to this being a company, but it has to take precedence over other things. Which is a fact in this scenario. Other things are more important than QSV at this particular moment in time. That does not make this feature request bad, or unimportant. It will just take more time than what some deem ok. There is just no other way to put this.
  • There were a few things you said that really really made me angry but I want to mention this one particularly Even I can see you are clearly defending and making any excuse possible for the reason as to why this is not even explored as a "plex pass only" or beta testing issue.
    In my view it is clearly stated why they are not doing it at the moment. Even if rcombs is wrong about the fact that this feature causes no scaling, no interlacing, no subtitle burning, and QSV actually only working on Windows (which I believe he is at least 3 out of 4 spot on the money) it is actually a response to why it is not being done (eve as plex pass only or beta testing feature). Even if he is wrong, that is why the this has not been done as he is the one that is an expert at this. The one doing the grunt of the work for things like this. Spending dev time (no one in here can possibly know how much dev time is needed) on something that will be so limited is a huge waste of money when there is 5200 other feature requests to deal with. Many of them being actionable to the degree that the end product can actually be used by the masses.
    You accusing me of making stuff up to hide the fact of a… conspiracy (?) is boggling my mind. Any excuse possible? What? The actual reason is stated. In black and white. With examples given. And you still continue on accusing Plex and me with this kind of hyperbole.
  • I would not be surprised if a feature like this would be introduced in 3-6 months. It is far from impossible. It is something that is very much an area of interest for Plex as people have low-powered devices, and Plex loves the people that are willing to use its product and support the development. What you guys will not get now is a vague promise that it will happen when the possibility about this not happening soon is so big due to the obvious drawbacks for this multi-platform media solution. Sure, there has been one introduction of a feature not working on a platform which has some users (Gracenote), but it was on a platform which has low usage and I am not sure the drawback was fully known before the work was well under way. In this case Plex has known that this does not work for any platforms up till half a year ago. Quite a few projects actually are taking at least half a year to complete. So even if this was deemed to be the first thing to do after a project completed, there is a good chance that a project that started before QSV even was possible in ffmpeg is not done yet. Making it impossible to start working on this without cancelling/stalling the other project where hundreds of thousands of dollars already has been utilized on.
    Anyways, after that it was known it only worked on one platform. Hardly something that will make the company stall any other projects over. And now it is being stated that it works on one more platform. If QSV now works on all platforms (which I still do not believe it does) it is something that brings this feature closer to being worked upon.

As you can see I have a hard time keeping my cool in this discussion, myself falling into the trap of something dangerously close to hyperbole, and wiser minds have taught me to stop participating in discussions which make me angry to a the degree which jeopardize a good quality exchange of differences. I am sorry that I am making a response and then leaving the thread which I will do now. That is also a bad practice, but I will for sure say things I will regret if I do not (but I assume at least a few in this thread will not be sorry to see my butt out of here :slight_smile: ). If you want to continue this discussion with me in private, please PM me and we can continue there. Hopefully that venue will lead to us using less big words and more understanding. In here I find it impossible at the moment. If I do not answer directly I will do it after I have cooled myself down from the forums for a couple of days/weeks.

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@atrus. 4th time was the charm.

Your post was a good read with a lot of information people might not be aware of. It gives a good perspective from the “other” side. Good job on that post!

Carlo

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While I appreciate that you need subtitles, @atrus, it’s kinda sad that my suggestion that it isn’t the most important issue at hand is so upsetting that you need to take a long break from the forums. You’re definitely on to something there, but it’s off-topic for this thread. I’m glad you’re here to advocate for and explain these things, but I would advise getting a thicker skin in the future.

@AlexDua Hopefully you are right that they have an ace up their sleeve. Plex is falling behind on this front, even though it excels in many other areas, and I would love to see them stay ahead of the curve. Plex is my one-stop-shop for media streaming right now and I don’t want to change that, but if the features are falling behind other programs there’s no reason not to move on!

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I take no pleasure in seeing Atrus leave the ring. Was not my goal. I suppose he doesn’t bluff well in a seven card stud game. Hope he can come back refreshed and ready for the next fight.

I don’t think we need to agree on everything that is said. But at least “see” the other persons point and acknowledge it and not shoot it down as not important and ridicule it. None of my direct questions were even acknowledged, in terms of “oh yea I see your point” or “yea that makes sense”.

Oh course none of us here are saying F subtitles, nobody needs them. And I made it clear I use them all the time. But I am willing to take the bitter pill and test out the hardware transcoding without them as things progress and bugs are worked out. It could be a switch in the options screen, enable and disable GPU support. I don’t think people expect this feature to come in with all the bells and whistles working like a charm with no glitches at all. Let’s start the process, as we are the best “beta testers”. This is what I meant by Plex Pass only or Beta testing. We are here to help.

I am truly advocating for Plex, support Plex and waste me energies on here on behalf of Plex. Even criticism, moaning and demanding is healthy in that respect. I don’t think I am wrong to say that even the ones that say F Plex, I am moving to Emby are saying it to get WTF or Like votes on here. I think they truly want to rattle the cage so this is done because they too feel this could spell a future problem for Plex. Not that Plex will burn and die if GPU transcoding is not done. But Plex could benefit from having that feature in place as an option for those that can use it.

So with that in mind I leave this topic in other peoples hands. I think I said all I can about this. Yes this should not be at the top of the list of 5200 other items. But should be up there and at least have a few man hours allocated to it. As I feel this isn’t just some cosmetic feature regarding how a window shows up or a font looks. It’s more key to future proofing Plex.

I hope my rant and frustration is heard at Plex and it’s at least discussed and not swept under the rug for another year.

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@AlexDua said:
I take no pleasure in seeing Atrus leave the ring. Was not my goal. I suppose he doesn’t bluff well in a seven card stud game. Hope he can come back refreshed and ready for the next fight.

I don’t think we need to agree on everything that is said. But at least “see” the other persons point and acknowledge it and not shoot it down as not important and ridicule it. None of my direct questions were even acknowledged, in terms of “oh yea I see your point” or “yea that makes sense”.

Oh course none of us here are saying F subtitles, nobody needs them. And I made it clear I use them all the time. But I am willing to take the bitter pill and test out the hardware transcoding without them as things progress and bugs are worked out. It could be a switch in the options screen, enable and disable GPU support. I don’t think people expect this feature to come in with all the bells and whistles working like a charm with no glitches at all. Let’s start the process, as we are the best “beta testers”. This is what I meant by Plex Pass only or Beta testing. We are here to help.

I am truly advocating for Plex, support Plex and waste me energies on here on behalf of Plex. Even criticism, moaning and demanding is healthy in that respect. I don’t think I am wrong to say that even the ones that say F Plex, I am moving to Emby are saying it to get WTF or Like votes on here. I think they truly want to rattle the cage so this is done because they too feel this could spell a future problem for Plex. Not that Plex will burn and die if GPU transcoding is not done. But Plex could benefit from having that feature in place as an option for those that can use it.

So with that in mind I leave this topic in other peoples hands. I think I said all I can about this. Yes this should not be at the top of the list of 5200 other items. But should be up there and at least have a few man hours allocated to it. As I feel this isn’t just some cosmetic feature regarding how a window shows up or a font looks. It’s more key to future proofing Plex.

I hope my rant and frustration is heard at Plex and it’s at least discussed and not swept under the rug for another year.

Thank you for saying this. You’re spot on. I really want to see this finally get some attention, which it has so far failed to do. It’s very disappointing that an issue which has been on the radar for such a long time hasn’t even had ANY progress.

I love Plex and want to see it succeed. But if they can’t make any progress on a feature that has been asked after as long as this one has, then I don’t have much faith in the Plex team’s response to user requests. I don’t want to say f*** Plex, but right now this is really bothering me and clearly it’s on a few other people’s minds as well.

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@AlexDua said:
Yes this should not be at the top of the list of 5200 other items. But should be up there and at least have a few man hours allocated to it.

That is not how software development works. You do not spend a couple of hours on unprioritized/down prioritized tracked issues/user stories. If you would do that then nothing would ever be released due to the sheer amount of issues that always are present in a project backlog.

@RedSocks157 said:
Thank you for saying this. You’re spot on. I really want to see this finally get some attention, which it has so far failed to do. It’s very disappointing that an issue which has been on the radar for such a long time hasn’t even had ANY progress.

I agree. Disappointing is the word as I would like to see QSV support as well. Any other use of a superlative (many of them in this thread) is however unnecessary.

@RedSocks157 said:
I love Plex and want to see it succeed. But if they can’t make any progress on a feature that has been asked after as long as this one has, then I don’t have much faith in the Plex team’s response to user requests. I don’t want to say f*** Plex, but right now this is really bothering me and clearly it’s on a few other people’s minds as well.

I do not understand what you mean to be honest. Are you saying that Plex are not churning out features that is in the feature request forum? As I am not a Plex pass subscriber at the moment so I can’t check, but I saw a list in this forum a few months ago listing many deployed features that originated as a feature request. That list was far from pathetic. Even if I agree with you that QSV is interesting to say the least, I think you are letting your feelings guide you into exaggeration here.

//A scrum master by trade

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@Bashin said:

@AlexDua said:
Yes this should not be at the top of the list of 5200 other items. But should be up there and at least have a few man hours allocated to it.

That is not how software development works. You do not spend a couple of hours on unprioritized/down prioritized tracked issues/user stories. If you would do that then nothing would ever be released due to the sheer amount of issues that always are present in a project backlog.

@RedSocks157 said:
Thank you for saying this. You’re spot on. I really want to see this finally get some attention, which it has so far failed to do. It’s very disappointing that an issue which has been on the radar for such a long time hasn’t even had ANY progress.

I agree. Disappointing is the word as I would like to see QSV support as well. Any other use of a superlative (many of them in this thread) is however unnecessary.

@RedSocks157 said:
I love Plex and want to see it succeed. But if they can’t make any progress on a feature that has been asked after as long as this one has, then I don’t have much faith in the Plex team’s response to user requests. I don’t want to say f*** Plex, but right now this is really bothering me and clearly it’s on a few other people’s minds as well.

I do not understand what you mean to be honest. Are you saying that Plex are not churning out features that is in the feature request forum? As I am not a Plex pass subscriber at the moment so I can’t check, but I saw a list in this forum a few months ago listing many deployed features that originated as a feature request. That list was far from pathetic. Even if I agree with you that QSV is interesting to say the least, I think you are letting your feelings guide you into exaggeration here.

//A scrum master by trade

The thing that grinds my gears about is that it would open a whole new level of performance. I have a tiny APU, for example. If Plex could take advantage of the graphics portion of that chip via VCE, imagine the performance gain! Right now it struggles to transcode anything above 6ish mbps for uninterrupted streaming. If that graphics portion could be utilized, transcoding would be crazy fast (try enabling QSV in Handbrake and see the difference hardware encoding can make vs software-only) and it would take that chip from the bottom of the barrel to just about a perfect Plex server chip. So what if hardware-encoded video might be a tiny bit lower quality - when I’m watching things off my local network (when they need transcoded) I don’t really care if the quality goes down slightly if that’s the difference between watching a smooth video and watching buffering every 15 seconds!

232

10 days later, still not so much as a peep. A timetable would be nice, or at least a “we are working on it”. This is getting pretty pathetic.

233

I suddenly woke up to the option to optimize media, and sudenly care a bit less about this :stuck_out_tongue:

You do need like… double the storage space, but it is something…

234

@rcocchiararo said:
I suddenly woke up to the option to optimize media, and sudenly care a bit less about this :stuck_out_tongue:

You do need like… double the storage space, but it is something…

I have been using emby to convert with intel quicksync and it is great. Instead of 100% cpu use I get about 20-25% which means less power and a conversion time is cut in half. i3 only I get about 100fps but with quicksync I get over 250fps.

235

@Deihmos said:

@rcocchiararo said:
I suddenly woke up to the option to optimize media, and sudenly care a bit less about this :stuck_out_tongue:

You do need like… double the storage space, but it is something…

I have been using emby to convert with intel quicksync and it is great. Instead of 100% cpu use I get about 20-25% which means less power and a conversion time is cut in half. i3 only I get about 100fps but with quicksync I get over 250fps.

I am talking about plex “optimize media” (it is converted beforehand, so that no transcoding is needed ,but you keep 2 or more copies of the media)

Are you talking about emby transcoding usinc quicksync, or is emby also able to optimize beforehand AND use quicksync for that?

236

@rcocchiararo said:

@Deihmos said:

@rcocchiararo said:
I suddenly woke up to the option to optimize media, and sudenly care a bit less about this :stuck_out_tongue:

You do need like… double the storage space, but it is something…

I have been using emby to convert with intel quicksync and it is great. Instead of 100% cpu use I get about 20-25% which means less power and a conversion time is cut in half. i3 only I get about 100fps but with quicksync I get over 250fps.

I am talking about plex “optimize media” (it is converted beforehand, so that no transcoding is needed ,but you keep 2 or more copies of the media)

Are you talking about emby transcoding usinc quicksync, or is emby also able to optimize beforehand AND use quicksync for that?

That is exactly the same thing emby does with folder sync that was introduced over a year ago. Yes the optimize process is using quicksync. I just started to keep a direct playable copy of some of my media.

237

@Deihmos said:

@rcocchiararo said:

@Deihmos said:

@rcocchiararo said:
I suddenly woke up to the option to optimize media, and sudenly care a bit less about this :stuck_out_tongue:

You do need like… double the storage space, but it is something…

I have been using emby to convert with intel quicksync and it is great. Instead of 100% cpu use I get about 20-25% which means less power and a conversion time is cut in half. i3 only I get about 100fps but with quicksync I get over 250fps.

I am talking about plex “optimize media” (it is converted beforehand, so that no transcoding is needed ,but you keep 2 or more copies of the media)

Are you talking about emby transcoding usinc quicksync, or is emby also able to optimize beforehand AND use quicksync for that?

That is exactly the same thing emby does with folder sync that was introduced over a year ago. Yes the optimize process is using quicksync. I just started to keep a direct playable copy of some of my media.

but, don’t you need to actually “sync” stuff with emby? I mean, i can’t sync to my chromecast (and don’t want to sync as much stuff as i want to keep optimized to my phone)

238

@rcocchiararo said:

@Deihmos said:

@rcocchiararo said:

@Deihmos said:

@rcocchiararo said:
I suddenly woke up to the option to optimize media, and sudenly care a bit less about this :stuck_out_tongue:

You do need like… double the storage space, but it is something…

I have been using emby to convert with intel quicksync and it is great. Instead of 100% cpu use I get about 20-25% which means less power and a conversion time is cut in half. i3 only I get about 100fps but with quicksync I get over 250fps.

I am talking about plex “optimize media” (it is converted beforehand, so that no transcoding is needed ,but you keep 2 or more copies of the media)

Are you talking about emby transcoding usinc quicksync, or is emby also able to optimize beforehand AND use quicksync for that?

That is exactly the same thing emby does with folder sync that was introduced over a year ago. Yes the optimize process is using quicksync. I just started to keep a direct playable copy of some of my media.

but, don’t you need to actually “sync” stuff with emby? I mean, i can’t sync to my chromecast (and don’t want to sync as much stuff as i want to keep optimized to my phone)

I sync to a folder.

239

Ok, i went to EMBY for a while, i like to test things (i took the oportinity, since i got a mini pc to act as a server for sickrage + couchpotato + deluge daemon + media server).

This mini pc, has a dual core celeron with quicksync, and this procesor, as far as i know, is UNABLE to transcode 720p/1080p media without using quicksync (hence, no go on my chromecast).

Things i have found:

  1. The android app is only a remote control if you do not pay for premium, and is way clunckier than the plex one (my plex app tends to disconnect and when i reconnect it sometimes restarts playback, but the emby one disconects and then i can’t reconect).

  2. Transcoding with quicksync kicks plex’s in the rear, and has cero issues (And as far as i know, zeranoe now distributes windows binaries for ffmpeg with this feature, and has been doing it for a while, EMBY has quicksync out of the box).

  3. Can’t test emby’s “optimize” feature, cause it is a paid feature, and my trial expired accidently when i installed it and waited for the new pc

  4. Emby lacks a good (and free) client for PC. Plex has the HT one, and for plex pass a new one that seems really cool. You need to setup kodi, and after a lot of work, it is OK, but not as good as plex.

Unless plex implements quicksync, or allows the optimization process to have more options (replace original, change name of the “version”, since now i have issues with “original” vs “original quality” {i just want plex to net me compatible version, original resolution and bitrate are fine for me}), my new “server” can’t handle the chromecast.

I am looking into using ffmpeg to convert all my current files, and to install an addon that will auto convert stuff that sickrage and couchpotato download.

I like what i see over the green side, but having paid for plex, and the superior android/windows clients, might keep me over here.

I do encourage plex developers to start testing (plex pass only?) quicksync and maybe also improove optimization options (using quicksync in the optimization process sounds inteligent too).

240

@rcocchiararo said:
Ok, i went to EMBY for a while, i like to test things (i took the oportinity, since i got a mini pc to act as a server for sickrage + couchpotato + deluge daemon + media server).

  1. The android app is only a remote control if you do not pay for premium, and is way clunckier than the plex one (my plex app tends to disconnect and when i reconnect it sometimes restarts playback, but the emby one disconects and then i can’t reconect).

  2. Transcoding with quicksync kicks plex’s in the rear, and has cero issues (And as far as i know, zeranoe now distributes windows binaries for ffmpeg with this feature, and has been doing it for a while, EMBY has quicksync out of the box).

  3. Can’t test emby’s “optimize” feature, cause it is a paid feature, and my trial expired accidently when i installed it and waited for the new pc

  4. Emby lacks a good (and free) client for PC. Plex has the HT one, and for plex pass a new one that seems really cool. You need to setup kodi, and after a lot of work, it is OK, but not as good as plex.

I do encourage plex developers to start testing (plex pass only?) quicksync and maybe also improove optimization options (using quicksync in the optimization process sounds inteligent too).

I fully agree with everything you’ve said.

Plex really needs to get Quicksync working. ALL the COTS NAS boxes are coming out with Quicksync-enabled CPUs - Synology, QNAP, Asustor all have Celeron N3100-series chips in their new boxes, and that’s not counting the existing C-series and J-series chips they already had.

I tried Emby on Windows, and while the server component was great for transcoding, everything else leaves a lot to be desired. It works great on my i3-6100T and equally great on a J1900 Celeron.

Plex would make a killing if they supported Quicksync on these COTS NAS units…