Hi all,
Got a new Mac Mini (i7, 32GB ram) and I know that apple’s t2 chips includes hardware HEVC support. ffmpeg can use it by specifying -c:v hevc_videotoolbox instead of -c:v x265 . I also needed -vtag hvc1 for the output MP4s with either codec to be playable on macOS.
Does plex support the T2 chip for hardware encoding of HEVC?
Following this. I’m considering a new mac mini to use a plex server. Curious about the HEVC transcoding.
Same here, it would be great as then the lower model (i3) would be easily sufficient as a server.
Also interested to know this. It would be a fabulous feature for a great little Plex server.
Plex doesn’t support hardware or software encoding to HEVC on any platform to my knowledge, which includes Apple, Linux and Windows. They only support hardware HEVC decoding. All encoding is AVC even if your playback device supports HEVC. I’ve never heard a timeframe where they might enable it some day, but you might try searching the forums.
Looking to do the exact same thing. Hopefully this will be something the developers can enable and help get around the platform limitation of only 1 hardware accelerated transcode stream on macOS at a time.
Bumping this thread as I’m for sure interested as well. I nearly pulled the trigger on the B&H deal on the i3 this past weekend but held off a bit.
As an aside, @dklein How are you finding the i7 working for you so far, and did you do the RAM upgrade yourself?
My late 2012 mini is still working hard, but I’m itching to upgrade to properly serve 4k content.
I updated from a 2012 unit myself (had 16GB Ram, i7, and a 1TB SSD). Overall I’m noticing a big improvement with performance for multiple transcodes with the 2018 i7. There’s virtually no lag for many of the clients now, and media is being pulled from a NAS (unRaid unit). It’s also a heck of a lot quieter then my 2012 was. Digitizing me media is also faster, especially if I’m going to HEVC. I will also note that many of my clients were iOS/AppleTV and the new experimental player for those clients has virtually eliminated the need to transcode, so that’s also been a big improvement.
I ended up not doing the RAM myself as I was able to get a good deal from MelroseMac at the time, but from what I hear it’s not too difficult. Depending on my needs over the next few years I may kick it up to 64GB. I’m a video editor, so I’ve been debating grabbing an external GPU and seeing how it handles Avid and FCPX.
smart man. I picked up the i7 however I decided to be cheap with the ram and not upgrade it. My thought was I would put 32G in myself. We’ll see how long it takes me to actually follow through with this.
I was also running the 2012 mini for PMS (purchased it new and ran PMS on it for 5+ years straight). Other than my questionable RAM decision, very happy with the new mini.
You can happily server 4K content on any Mac in recent memory. A 2012 mini is more than powerful to do it - direct play. For transcoding, even the 2018 minis are SLOW since Plex doesn’t take advantage of the hardware properly. It’s kind of embarrassing, really.
I’ve an i5 6-core 16/500 2018 mini that lacks the hyper threading the i7 does but does well enough for me as my video editing needs are minimal.
I don’t know if Plex has incorporated Apple’s HEVC VideoToolBox into the server but my limited experience with serving 1080p x265 files to an AppleTV4K which requires transcoding back to x264 shows a minimal load on the CPU as it varies between 3% and 5% load.
The big disappointment for me is that Apple’s codec doesn’t have the variables available the x265 codec has. But then the only product they support is Apple’s Compressor. I’ve not spent the money to find out how efficient it is with it.
With HandBreak’s latest daily version, transcoding x264 to x265 with the original H.265 codec my mini nearly pegs the CPU load at 97%. Using the H.265 VideoToolbox drops the CPU load down to around 60% and finishes the task much quicker compared to the older codec but with nothing like the compression I’ve been used to.
I’ve also tried FFmpeg directly with a great front-end called ff•Works (it can install it for you if you don’t want to use HomeBrew) and can readily see that there are very few options available and the compression yields vary all over the map. I’ve yet discovered why some files are larger than the original, some are 30% smaller, etc.
As an example using FFmpeg a 720p 702.1 MB x264 was compressed to 720p 369.6 MB x265 mkv in 3:40 minutes with a CPU load of mostly at between 13 to 16% with occasional bursts to 24%. I even managed to do 2 files in parallel with double the load but have no idea what triggered the two at once. This was before I learned how to use the queue with ff•Works.
I’ll probably use it on batches of similar files such as a series after I’ve tested the first one. Otherwise I can hope that Apple improves its efficiency.
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