ASUSTOR 5304T: Hardware Transcoding is slower than software transcoding

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#: 1.24.5.5173
Player Version#: 4.63.0 , Firefox

Hello!
I just recently got Plex Premium for my ASUSTOR 5304T. I have been successfully running it for a while, but I just enabled hardware accelerated transcoding and now shows actually stream slower than before. They are unwatchable, pausing every ten seconds or so.

I checked the compatibility spreadsheet, and from what I can tell, this device should be fully supported and support hardware transcoding.

I am running Plex in a docker container on the NAS. What should I do to make sure hardware transcoding works correctly? Additionally, I am not sure why it is has decided it needs to transcode - H264 should be the proper format to avoid that in most cases, correct?

I have attached server logs after a fresh reboot. All of my media files are affected and slowed down. I am viewing from Firefox web player.

Plex Media Server Logs_2021-10-28_06-52-09.zip (1.5 MB)

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Looks like you have subtitles enabled and they are being burned in. Subtitles cause the transcoding to go from hardware back to cpu to handle the subtitle, then back to gpu for final encoding. On slower system like your NAS, this could be slower than if it was all done in the cpu.

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I have difficulty hearing, and like to have subtitles on everything.
Is there any way of having subtitles without burning them in and transcoding everything? When I was searching around, people said the subtitle format mattered, and maybe I could use subtitles from OpenSubtitles.org?

When I manually set the subtitle track to the OpenSubtitles one, it works perfectly and transcodes extremely fast. How do I make this the default for all of my media?

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Browsers don’t support subtitles. You’ll need to use another client if you don’t want subtitles burned in. If this is on a Mac or Windows, try the standalone Plex for Mac/Windows client.

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In what way do browsers not support subtitles?

Everything works perfectly if I select an SRT subtitle file, or download one from online using Plex. I just want it to do that automatically.

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They cannot play them natively. Enabling subtitles will burn them in to the video.

Having the subtitles automatically enabled when you play a video is controlled by your account settings. Using Plex Web:

  • Click on your avatar in the top right, select account
  • find audio and subtitle settings
  • enable Automatically select audio and subtitles tracks
  • set preferred subtitle language to English (or whatever language you want)
  • set Auto-select subtitle mode to Always enabled

The subtitle (if available) will now automatically get enabled unless you’ve already selected a subtitle manually in the past for that video.

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