Here’s an idea, name an excellent rip/release and I’ll get my hands on it for comparison. 
You misunderstood. Both are of the same 4K video being played on a 2K screen.
One is hardware transcoding and one is software transcoding.
I’m sorry I couldn’t catch the same frame in both.
I don’t know what’s out there for you to find.
I rip all my own discs. Before I got the QNAP, I did have to process them to some degree. Now, I only rip and remove those streams I don’t want (e.g. Subtitles / foreign audio tracks )
Edit: For example:
Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'Passengers (2016).mkv':
Metadata:
encoder : libebml v1.3.5 + libmatroska v1.4.8
creation_time : 2018-02-11T04:04:18.000000Z
Duration: 01:56:10.98, start: 0.008000, bitrate: 57637 kb/s
Here’s the above movie. HW or SW transcoding? >:)
Right, given a good source (and reasonable hardware) the difference shouldn’t be that obvious (like in my case).
Kids are sleeping, so I’m going to play around with versions.
@uglymagoo
Ok, so now I have:
- Upgraded to the version you provided.
- Downgraded to the two previous versions to the current.
Unfortunately for me, none of them work. 
Which means that it’s likely one of the other packages that was updated at the same time that caused this regression for me.
Worth noting is that the Failed to wrapper hybrid_drv_video.so issue/error is present in all the versions.
I’m missing something here…
What’s the kernel version?
And most importantly, what got updated to what? Linux? Plex?
@ChuckPA said:
I’m missing something here…What’s the kernel version?
And most importantly, what got updated to what? Linux? Plex?
kernel-3.10.0-693.21.1.el7.x86_64
And the kernel was one of the things that was updated (I think).
Here’s the contents of the yum.log from the latest yum update: yum.log · GitHub
You know you can attach the file here and not use gist? (Attach document ^^ or Drag & Drop)
Check the permissions on /dev/dri/* If udev changed in any way, I’ll bet the PMS rules definition was removed or not reapplied.
@ChuckPA said:
You know you can attach the file here and not use gist? (Attach document ^^ or Drag & Drop)
lol, yes. But then I first have to scp the file from the server to my Mac. Just easier to cut’n’paste from the ssh-session. 
Check the permissions on
/dev/dri/*If udev changed in any way, I’ll bet the PMS rules definition was removed or not reapplied.
Not sure what I’m looking for… here’s the result of ls -la
[root@pms ~]# ls -la /dev/dri/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Mar 18 22:41 .
drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 3380 Mar 18 22:41 …
crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 0 Mar 18 22:41 card0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 128 Mar 18 22:41 renderD128
And this is plex’s override.conf
[root@pms /]# cat /etc/systemd/system/plexmediaserver.service.d/override.conf
[Service]
User=plex
Group=usenet
UMask=0002
that looks ok.
if udev isn’t operating correctly, it would be root:root
Verify user plex is still a member of the video group.
If not, uninstall and re-install the binary. that will put it back.
Your override will remain intact.
@ChuckPA said:
that looks ok.if
udevisn’t operating correctly, it would beroot:rootVerify user
plexis still a member of thevideogroup.
video:x:39:plex
To make matters worse, just now, watching a Parks and Recs episode, plex complained about the (sw) transcoding. Messages similar to “the server is to weak”, “connection is not good enough” etc… 
Any thoughts on why I have to always burn in subtitles for the ATV (which is wired) but not for any of the other clients (which are all wireless)?
XML and Logs please?
If it’s falling back, I want to see it.
Image subtitles (Vobsub, PGS, etc) must always be burned in. Nature of the beast
@ChuckPA said:
XML and Logs please?
Included.
Image subtitles (Vobsub, PGS, etc) must always be burned in. Nature of the beast
But…
Regardless if the subtitles are embedded or separate (.srt handled by Sub-Zero bundle/agent/channel) they’re only out-of-sync on the ATV. But the same file (movie/episode) is fine on my other clients.
…so what you said doesn’t make sense.
Hey, did you ever get a chance to look at the files?
I saw this thread: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/311221/why-isnt-hardware-transcoding-working-for-me#latest
So I connected the mac mini to my receiver with an HDMI cable, but unfortunately that didn’t help.
Also, regarding the subtitles “issue”, did you see my response?
Any insights from you @uglymagoo ?
@BeyondEvil said:
Regardless if the subtitles are embedded or separate (.srt handled by Sub-Zero bundle/agent/channel) they’re only out-of-sync on the ATV. But the same file (movie/episode) is fine on my other clients.
This Apple TV Plex client bug is openly discussed in the Apple TV category of the forum and apparently this has not been fixed, yet. Just your workaround does help 
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/309416/subtitles-out-of-sync
The bad hw transcoding quality has to be an issue with the old Centos kernel / the old i965-va-driver not working correctly with the libva library bundled with Plex. I suppose you need a more recent Linux distribution to get this working OK.
Thanks for getting back to me!
Funny how “my” workaround to the ATV subtitle issue, is what lead me to the HW acceleration issue. :lol:
Interesting about the kernel. I’m not to keen on starting over with a different distro, especially since a lot of people are reporting that CentOS is working well with Plex. But I found some guides on how to get the latest kernel and upgrade it within the distro. I’ll also do some digging around i965/libva and see what I can come up with.
Thanks again, I’ll report back with my findings.
@BeyondEvil said:
Interesting about the kernel. I’m not to keen on starting over with a different distro, especially since a lot of people are reporting that CentOS is working well with Plex. But I found some guides on how to get the latest kernel and upgrade it within the distro. I’ll also do some digging around i965/libva and see what I can come up with.
I wouldn’t hack with the official Centos kernel if I were you. Moreover, another thread just popped up about the some issue with Ubuntu 16.04 with a much newer kernel. So, please just keep your current setup for now. Let’s see what CPU the other user has.
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/315871/horrible-video-quality
@uglymagoo said:
I wouldn’t hack with the official Centos kernel if I were you. Moreover, another thread just popped up about the some issue with Ubuntu 16.04 with a much newer kernel. So, please just keep your current setup for now. Let’s see what CPU the other user has.
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/315871/horrible-video-quality
hmm… I see. From what I understood about my bootloader (rEFInd) and the way kernels work, adding yet another one to the three I already have to choose from and trying out a new one should basically be zero-risk to the integrity of the overall system. Should the new one not work, reverting to the older one should be trivial and mitigate any issues caused by the new one. As long as you don’t do any updates or config changes, I guess.
But, seeing how I managed to bork my SABnzbd installation the other day, I’ll take the cautious route and hold off on any kernel-experimentation. 
“Good” to see that someone else has the same/similar problem.
@BeyondEvil said:
“Good” to see that someone else has the same/similar problem.
The other user also has a Sandy Bridge CPU. Unfortunately, my oldest CPU at hand is an Ivy Bridge with a completely different GPU implementation, so I am unable to recreate this problem myself
