I was wondering if a Plex Media Server does a better job transcoding if it has the assistance of a videocard or if the transcoding is handled completely by the CPU
No. At least not for now. There is something about hardware transcoding that is supposed to be in development (or maybe in beta) but I do not know if that means hardware on a video card or something else entirely.
@JAnwyl said:
I was wondering if a Plex Media Server does a better job transcoding if it has the assistance of a videocard or if the transcoding is handled completely by the CPU
Intel cards only supported
There is a version in preview right now that does hardware transcoding. Works very well, but seems to be somewhat of a hassle to get working in certain environments (easy on windows and mac. Nvidia and and cards are supported as is quicksync on Intel igpu, but Nvidia cards limit it to 2 concurrent transcode. should be publically available within a few weeks or months.
I’m running this plex pass BETA version with hardware encoding under Windows (server 2016). Thus far I’ve tried it with QSV which is built into most of the latest Intel CPUs.
I’ve also been testing it on a Windows 2016 server with a 1st gen CPU at 2.80GHz that doesn’t have QSV support. On this box I’ve tested hardware transcoding with nVidia GTX-750TI and with an AMD 280. Both of these cards are a couple of years old. Both worked just fine.
The consumer nVidia video cards are limited to TWO streams at a time max while the pro version of nVidia cards don’t have this limit. There is no limit on the number of streams supported on the AMD cards.
With that said if your CPU doesn’t support QSV then an AMD video card is the way to go.
Hope that helps,
Carlo
@cayars said:
I’m running this plex pass BETA version with hardware encoding under Windows (server 2016). Thus far I’ve tried it with QSV which is built into most of the latest Intel CPUs.I’ve also been testing it on a Windows 2016 server with a 1st gen CPU at 2.80GHz that doesn’t have QSV support. On this box I’ve tested hardware transcoding with nVidia GTX-750TI and with an AMD 280. Both of these cards are a couple of years old. Both worked just fine.
The consumer nVidia video cards are limited to TWO streams at a time max while the pro version of nVidia cards don’t have this limit. There is no limit on the number of streams supported on the AMD cards.
With that said if your CPU doesn’t support QSV then an AMD video card is the way to go.
Hope that helps,
Carlo
I have an old computer lying around doing nothing. I considered it not powerful enough to run a PMS instance, but if I can transcodes with an AMD card that’d make it more than good enough. I guess the only limitation would be that the original file NEEDS to be h264/h265 right?
I don’t know if I’d say it needs to be h.264 but it will certainly help. The older AMD card don’t support h.265 decode or encode functions but do suppoet h.264.
For me all my media is h.264 to start with so I have know problem with it.
I’m also running the DVR beta on another computer mapped to my my main Plex server. All the recorded video gets processed through comskip then FFMPEG (my scripts) to convert to h.264/AAC and is added to my main plex server.
I’m really liking both BETAs right now.
@KarlDag said:
I have an old computer lying around doing nothing. I considered it not powerful enough to run a PMS instance, but if I can transcodes with an AMD card that’d make it more than good enough. I guess the only limitation would be that the original file NEEDS to be h264/h265 right?
My thought process is that if it helps a server with a stream, I will go and get one of the 1gb cards when my nephew or one of his friends upgrades their gaming system to a 2gb card.
@cayars said:
I don’t know if I’d say it needs to be h.264 but it will certainly help. The older AMD card don’t support h.265 decode or encode functions but do suppoet h.264.For me all my media is h.264 to start with so I have know problem with it.
I’m also running the DVR beta on another computer mapped to my my main Plex server. All the recorded video gets processed through comskip then FFMPEG (my scripts) to convert to h.264/AAC and is added to my main plex server.
I’m really liking both BETAs right now.
Yeah, I only have a few vc1 rips and a few old xvid files, I just haven’t taken the time to format them to the current standard codecs yet.
DVR isn’t very useful to me because I can’t grab many OTA streams where I live, but I can definitely see the appeal for others.
HW transcoding is going to give new life to lots of older PMS servers out there, I’m very glad they’re finally doing this.
@cayars said:
I’m running this plex pass BETA version with hardware encoding under Windows (server 2016). Thus far I’ve tried it with QSV which is built into most of the latest Intel CPUs.I’ve also been testing it on a Windows 2016 server with a 1st gen CPU at 2.80GHz that doesn’t have QSV support. On this box I’ve tested hardware transcoding with nVidia GTX-750TI and with an AMD 280. Both of these cards are a couple of years old. Both worked just fine.
The consumer nVidia video cards are limited to TWO streams at a time max while the pro version of nVidia cards don’t have this limit. There is no limit on the number of streams supported on the AMD cards.
With that said if your CPU doesn’t support QSV then an AMD video card is the way to go.
Hope that helps,
Carlo
Do you have to be invited to use this beta code or is it available to any plex pass user? If the latter, where can the code be obtained?
Thanks in advance.
@almontef said:
@cayars said:
I’m running this plex pass BETA version with hardware encoding under Windows (server 2016). Thus far I’ve tried it with QSV which is built into most of the latest Intel CPUs.I’ve also been testing it on a Windows 2016 server with a 1st gen CPU at 2.80GHz that doesn’t have QSV support. On this box I’ve tested hardware transcoding with nVidia GTX-750TI and with an AMD 280. Both of these cards are a couple of years old. Both worked just fine.
The consumer nVidia video cards are limited to TWO streams at a time max while the pro version of nVidia cards don’t have this limit. There is no limit on the number of streams supported on the AMD cards.
With that said if your CPU doesn’t support QSV then an AMD video card is the way to go.
Hope that helps,
CarloDo you have to be invited to use this beta code or is it available to any plex pass user? If the latter, where can the code be obtained?
Thanks in advance.
@KarlDag said:
@almontef said:
@cayars said:
I’m running this plex pass BETA version with hardware encoding under Windows (server 2016). Thus far I’ve tried it with QSV which is built into most of the latest Intel CPUs.I’ve also been testing it on a Windows 2016 server with a 1st gen CPU at 2.80GHz that doesn’t have QSV support. On this box I’ve tested hardware transcoding with nVidia GTX-750TI and with an AMD 280. Both of these cards are a couple of years old. Both worked just fine.
The consumer nVidia video cards are limited to TWO streams at a time max while the pro version of nVidia cards don’t have this limit. There is no limit on the number of streams supported on the AMD cards.
With that said if your CPU doesn’t support QSV then an AMD video card is the way to go.
Hope that helps,
CarloDo you have to be invited to use this beta code or is it available to any plex pass user? If the latter, where can the code be obtained?
Thanks in advance.
Thanks much!
