Battlemage Support

[popc0rnx]

Migrated my system away from Quicksync hardware and got a B580 before reading this thread Glad to hear it’s not too far away

[srattee21]

I almost did the same thing. Glad I found this thread before I pulled the trigger on a b580.

[ChuckPa]

FFMPEG 6.1 transcoder upgrade is now in forum preview.

Transcoder Upgrade Forum Preview

Announcing the Transcoder Upgrade forum preview! Plex’s transcoder is a highly customized version of FFMPEG which has been accumulating bugfixes and features since it was forked back in 2012. With such a large number of differences, upgrading from the upstream repository became increasingly more difficult and took up more and more time. We decided it was time to clear out the bloat and start over, creating a brand new fork from ffmpeg 6.1 and only bringing over features necessary for the funct…

[rumblefrog]

This is great news! Anyone tried the preview build with a B580 yet?

[FordGuy61]

See Chuck’s prior post. ICR & IMD still have to be updated.

Battlemage Support

As previously stated: FFMPEG must first be updated (6.1 will be forum preview shortly) Intel Compute Runtime must be updated Intel Media Driver (which supports the card) must be updated ICR and IMD will be updated after FFMPEG is production status. I’ve no information from Engineering whether they’ll be updated together or separately. ( ICR and IMD updates always break something for the older systems, which will need a custom patch applied )

[rumblefrog]

ah gotcha

[squishy]

But FFmpeg is at stable 7.1…
Does Plex use a different server?

[Proddy3]

It was mentioned in the forum preview thread that they wanted a more stable base to use, however the new system would make updating to 7.X a much easier process in the future

Transcoder Upgrade Forum Preview

With starting from scratch it was more important to have a stable base from which to start than to get all the shiny new features. At the time this work was started 7.1 was still very much in active development, and to some extent that is still the case. I believe it is unfair to say that 6.1 is 2 years old as it is still getting bugfixes as little as 2 weeks ago. The changelog was also examined and the small number of features of 7.x we were interested in were easily backported. As @ChuckPa …

[ChuckPa]

@Proddy3

It was mentioned in the forum preview thread that they wanted a more stable base to use, however the new system would make updating to 7.X a much easier process in the future

I will somewhat disagree with it being ‘much easier’.

Given that 7.1 has native Dolby support, we would be obligated (per our contract with Dolby) to remove all FFMPEG-provided Dolby support and use only what we are licensed for.

That’s a fair amount of work and, after stripping all those features, one must ask what’s left that warrants upgrading and can’t be backported to 6.x ?

[Proddy3]

Hey I just based that off what you said about future upgrades

Transcoder Upgrade Forum Preview

We selected 6.1 for the stability. At the time we started this project, FFMPEG 7.x was unstable. With the new source code organization (as previously discussed here in the forum), we are able to upgrade , yes, even to 7.1, much more easily. ps: naysayers be stoned lol

[ChuckPa]

@Proddy3

It was mentioned in the forum preview thread that they wanted a more stable base to use, however the new system would make updating to 7.X a much easier process in the future

I understand what you’re saying..

1. Upgrading to a newer FFMPEG base WOULD BE easier than what we previously had
2. Upgrading to the current 7.x base would require a significant amount of work to remove that code and insert all the Dolby we use.

So we both are right. Yes easier but probably not worth the effort (Chris and I discussed this at length before picking the 6.1 baseline)

[squishy]

@ChuckPa

I will somewhat disagree with it being ‘much easier’.

Given that 7.1 has native Dolby support, we would be obligated (per our contract with Dolby) to remove all FFMPEG-provided Dolby support and use only what we are licensed for.

That’s a fair amount of work and, after stripping all those features, one must ask what’s left that warrants upgrading and can’t be backported to 6.x ?

OK but this is going to be a problem in the future either way, right? Or are you going to use 6.1 as a baseline forever? I assume you will have to upgrade at some point and I also assume Dolby is going to be integrated in FFmpeg moving forward?

[ChuckPa]

@squishy

I don’t know Chris’s long term plans.

The thing to concern ourselves with now is:

1. Completing the FFMPEG forum preview
2. FFMPEG 6.1 going live
3. ICR & IMD upgrades (which gives the Battlemage / other GPU support)

[rumblefrog]

@ChuckPa

ICR and IMD updates always break something for the older systems, which will need a custom patch applied

Is Chris also the one working on the ICR and IMD update? How old of a system does Plex need to support?

[ChuckPa]

Chris is in charge of all things “Transcoder”.

Plex supports

• all CPUs as supported by Intel Compute Runtime and Intel Media Driver, and
• all Nvidia GPUs as supported by Nvidia supported GPUs

[Shades228]

Wrong thread

[ForneusBrandt]

I’m in the market for a transcoding GPU, has there been any recent updates since July 18th regarding this? Would love to be able to grab a B580.

[FordGuy61]

@ForneusBrandt

has there been any recent updates since July 18th regarding this?

@ChuckPa

The thing to concern ourselves with now is:

1. Completing the FFMPEG forum preview
2. FFMPEG 6.1 going live
3. ICR & IMD upgrades (which gives the Battlemage / other GPU support)

The transcoder upgrade is still a forum preview.

You can follow its thread to see progress: Transcoder Upgrade Forum Preview

[chris_decker08]

I will likely be posting a test build sometime in october (tentative timeframe) which includes updated drivers for you guys to start hammering on.

[ForneusBrandt]

Real nice! I appreciate the swift reply! Might even get Arc B50 Pro that just released, I presume that would be no issue since it’d the same architecture/same drivers or am I jumping the gun with that?

Also if I’m running my plex using the official plex docker image on unraid, how do I get the test build?

Never had to use a test build before, so sorry if that’s a super basic thing to get going with