@sa2000 Is the development team aware of the artifacting resulting from using hardware acceleration transcoding with integrated intel graphics? I have a bunch of anime content that has subtitles. With the the TVDB scraping set to stop working as of 1/31, this has forced me to upgrade to v1.18.4.2171. Here’s several examples below. I might add when I was on an older version of Plex Media Server (I believe 1.16.xxxx) this was not an issue. This has only started recently when the new transcoder was introduced.
I’m running an i5-7600k w/ Intel HD Graphics 630 using drivers v26.20.100.7584. (I’ve also downgraded and tried with other their older drivers… Same results)
Edit: I might add this streaming over my local network.
I will move this to a new forum topic as it has nothing to do with crashes.
Do you still have the version of Plex Media Server that you believe did not exhibit the problem? If not, I can try and send one to you. I need evidence of difference in outcome using same intel drivers but on different versions of Plex Media Server with logs from both.
I will have a look - could we get a 5 minute clip of the file and .ass that exhibit the problem with 1.18.x and not 1.16.5 - you may need to upload to dropbox or google drive etc and share a link
So per your request, I’ve provided a 5 min copy of the MKV video itself:
General
Unique ID : 206247596884522965059346547144513109809 (0x9B29D79FA5D1A0E69A20BED0E5CD3F31)
Complete name : C:\Users\mitalis\Desktop\drstone-sample.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 158 MiB
Duration : 5 min 2 s
Overall bit rate : 4 388 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2020-01-24 04:16:20
Writing application : mkvmerge v36.0.0 ('Is That Jazz?') 64-bit
Writing library : libebml v1.3.9 + libmatroska v1.5.2
Attachments : OpenSans-Semibold.ttf
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 6 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, RefFrames : 6 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 5 min 0 s
Bit rate : 4 276 kb/s
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.194
Stream size : 153 MiB (97%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC LC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID : A_AAC-2
Duration : 5 min 0 s
Bit rate : 128 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate : 43.066 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : 3 ms
Stream size : 4.58 MiB (3%)
Language : Japanese
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Text
ID : 3
Format : ASS
Codec ID : S_TEXT/ASS
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Sub Station Alpha
Duration : 4 min 57 s
Bit rate : 162 b/s
Count of elements : 78
Compression mode : Lossless
Stream size : 5.88 KiB (0%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Thank you for the comprehensive diagnostics and clip. I have referred this to our development team. Please leave the 5-minute clip upload available at the provided link as that is how I shared the sample with the development team
Sure thing. Just for the record, this isn’t exclusive to just these types of videos either. The artifacting happens on ANY video video being transcoded (subtitles or not).
The artifacting happens in any scenario that requires any video to be transcoded. Whether this be due to remote playback on a phone with a slower data connection, or with enabling subtitles.
If I go into the PMS Transcoder settings and uncheck: “Use hardware acceleration when available” and ”Use hardware-accelerated video encoding” the video artifacting goes away, but this obviously isn’t the ideal solution pegging my CPU to 100% just to playback video (either locally or remotely)
If I disable the subtitles, then the video will then playback directly and there’s no issue. But in the case of watching anything needing subtitles, or any scenario that requires transcoding on the video, then the artifacting occurs.
I can confirm the exact same issue with my intel NUC running a coffee lake CPU. I have tried the new releases of Plex when they have come out to see if it is fixed so I can stay on the current version, but all recent releases (anything from 1.18 onwards) all exhibit the same issue and just destroys the video quality when transcoded using hardware acceleration. Rolling back to 1.17 fixes this issue, but now with the tvdb required update things have become a little more complicated.
@sa2000 sorry for the late reply. The version I rolled back to was 1.17.0.1841 and this problem is not there. But any of the 1.18’s that I have tried (and I am pretty sure I have tried them all) absolutely destroys the video quality and makes it unwatachle for me. Gets really blocky every few seconds when transcoding using hardware acceleration.
@sa2000 Hello, following up on this. Both @Catalyst08 and myself have confirmed the 1.17x versions of PMS do not exhibit the artifacting using Integrated Intel graphics. Has this issue been forwarded to the developers? I’ve seen a new PMS version 1.18.5.2309 was released, but I don’t see anything in the changelog indicating any fix as to this issue.
Logs were also provided both PMS versions: v1.18.4.2171 & v1.16.5.1554
I just spun up a VM that is using iGPU 630 (Coffee Lake based E3) and am going to try to test this out this evening so I can add further confirmation to this thread.
