Using windows desktop player in a Lenovo laptop with a 4K LCD screen and using Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 adapter on Win 10. I cannot get descent frame rate at 4k native desktop screen resolution, (even tried 2K), have to change desktop to 1080 resolution to get good video playback frame rate. And turning on or off hardware decoding in the player settings menu changes nothing.
I’m sure it’s an issue with the system scaling video from lower resolution to 4K 2K etc. If I use the web browser Plex player video frame rate in 4K is allot better.
Play with the “Playback Quality” selector in the settings.
With a UHD Graphics 620 is a very low power GPU. See this other thread with suggestions that worked for that user: New plex HTPC app, 4k video jerky/unwatchable - #6 by gbooker02
From my testing, when playing standard H264 1080p video on the Windows Plex app, my GPU and CPU (i5-1135G7 with Intel Iris Xe) utilization shoot up to around 30%-35%. Playing 4K HEVC video maxes out the GPU and the video stutters. Toggling client side hardware acceleration off and on doesn’t change anything. When inspecting Task Manager during video playback I noticed the GPU was using only the “3D” render component instead of “Video Decode” as one would expect when playing video. It’s probably being software decoded.
Using Plex web player fixes this as hardware acceleration engages properly and the same basic H264 1080p video only utilizes about 4% GPU and in Task Manager shows the Video Decode component being used.
My testing leads me to conclude the hardware acceleration in the Plex Windows app is broken for some integrated graphics. I’ll have to stick with the web player for now. Can’t have the app killing my laptop battery.
Tested with Plex for Windows Version 1.51.1.3185-700af1eb
Intel Iris Xe Drivers Version 31.0.101.3222
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Tried that, no help.
Your conclusion is incorrect.
The Web app supports limited codecs so the Server is doing the hard work of transcoding 4K HEVC to 1080 H264. The more capable Plex for Windows is direct play/stream so it handles the decode and scale of 4k to 1080.
Why it matters, if you had a server that couldn’t do the transcode.
I can’t find the mpv.conf file only a mpv.conf.md file.
Do I have to make a new one and where should it go?
Sorry, maybe mentioning the 4K example made things more complicated. All my examples ware Direct Play, none ware transcoded.
Anyway, I’ve done some more testing. By coincidence the TV show I was using to test was encoded in Hi10P. For some reason playing this media doesn’t register as hardware decoding in the Task Manager. All other media H264/HEVC show up as being hardware decoded. This lead me to believe it was done in software. Which it most likely wasn’t since the GPU utilization stayed the same across all 1080p media including the Hi10P batch.
Nonetheless, playing anything on the Windows app uses at least 30-40% of my integrated GPU. So my issue wasn’t hardware decoding not working but the inefficient overlay rendering used in the app. This also needs to be fixed…
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