Right now the main way to run a plex server is with an Intel CPU that support Quicksync. This results in the best performance and especially price/performance ratio. It would be very nice if plex also supported AMD’s processors with built in graphics for transcoding. As an example, here is the performance capability of the Ryzen5 2400G processor:
That is about seven 1080p movies it could encode when used as a plex server cpu, or two 4k movies too. Quite a lot for a little $170 processor.
This uses AMD’s “Video Core Next” hardware within their APU style processors. VCN is the evolution of both the VCE and UVD units, now combined into a new, next gen hardware block within the processor. Adding support for AMD’s “APU” type processors would be a great addition to the capabilities and support that plex can do.
It looks like ffmpeg supports AMD’s API. Pretty sure I saw that plex uses ffmpeg for encoding. I am not sure if the “AMF” support includes support for “Video Core Next” though, or if it is just the VCE support.
I like Plex, but my NAS couldnt handle the 4k. I moved to Emby ,which supports both NVIDIA and AMD and im using the 2200G on my PC and its working great. With CES around the corner and new GPUS, it be awesome if i could move back to Plex using the new AMD GPUS .
I appears the AMD GPU related hardware acceleration requests are redirected here, at least for linux servers (AMDGPU transcoding?). My understanding, this feature is for the AMD CPU processor core in general. If linux AMD GPU support comes with it, fantastic! But mods please clarify if it will support linux AMD GPU processing as this is specific to the Video Core Next support. Regardless, you have my vote.
I have seen some say VCN is supported. Since the new Ryzen 5 3400G is now out, I was thinking of building a little “inexpensive” system to see if it will do hardware transcoding.
VCN is definitely supported. I’ve been using it since 2400g was released. That said it was actually a downgrade from UHD630. I haven’t seen anything in the way of updates to do VCN for 3400g. I suspect its just a node improvement and nothing more.
Finally got to do some stress testing today. My new 3400G setup could only reliably transcode four 1080p to 720p streams before it became unstable. I’m not sure if it was the VCN processor or my 2GB of allocated shared video RAM. GPUz was reporting both were maxed out. The motherboard I have only allows of 2GB to be allocated to VRAM. I’ve seen mention of other boards going as high as 4GB.
Anyway, I had 7 streams going at one point but within seconds 3 of the turned into a blank green screen while the audio was still playing. One of them just stopped and said “your server isn’t powerful enough to smoothly play this video”
Anyway, that’s my experience. Maybe things will improve in the future.
As far as the video quality, it looked great to me.
Really hope that Plex will add this feature! Hardware transcoding would be the main reason for me to buy the Plex Pass, but I have a NAS running on Linux, so right now Plex is not viable.
I’d like to understand what is the hold up on this? Is it fmmpeg? Is it the reliance on DirectX and Metal that makes it work on Windows and Mac?
I am really curious. Right now I am having the hassle to setup a Windows VM at home only for plex. All the rest of my home server is based on Linux + Docker.
they are more bussy making features with more backing, i gues
I have an 3400G amd server its windows now, but i would like to make it a linux based box with soemthing like free nas or ubuntu server
baremetal hypervisors wont let me passtrough the apus gpu side otherwise it would have been something line unraid or proxmox
as long als ubuntu or cent os wont support the amd apu gpus theright way plex wont do it either
Just bought Plex Pass today hoping to use hardware transcoding on my Unraid server with a 3200g, sadly discovered that this still isn’t added. Are there any plans in the works to do this? It sounds like a no-brainer to me to support all commonly available hardware options.
A couple of questions if anyone has knowledge about this:
If I am using an AMD 5 Ryzen 3600 (with no dedicated GPU, 16 GB RAM), am I impacted by the lack of this feature? (or is it just the APU folks?)
Whether I am impacted or not, would I expect better performance (in particular, for streaming and transcoding 720p or 1080p content) with an Intel i3-4130 (has quick sync), AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (no integrated graphics, no GPU), or AMD Ryzen 5 3200G (integrated graphics)? All other specs constant.
What if the Intel i3-4130 was paired with only 4 GB of memory versus the other 2 with 16 GB?
