Plex, this is a much needed addition as the market for AMD is growing fast. Please please please add support.
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Please please please too!
Yes I would like to build a new system with AMD but I guess I am stuck with Intel. Please add support.
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Strongly support this request.
Plex as an ecosystem sounds great to most people. But then, when they try it, how slick and smooth it works is paramount. If they can direct play everything, they’ll be happy. If transcoding is needed - and they don’t have Plex Pass - it’s only a matter of time before they run in to stuttering. And they won’t run into it with Netflix, so they’ll assume that Plex is the issue and just give it up. I know people who did exactly that.
The problem here is that I can’t just tell people “just pay for Plex Pass it will fix your issue”. Because that’s only the case if they use a system with an Intel iGPU with QSV or a discrete Nvidia card with NVENC. There’s a good chance that will be true, but the past few years have meant that AMD are more competitive and lots more people are buying systems with their chips. And these people are going to be un-impressed with Plex Pass if they don’t have hardware support for transcoding.
I understand that this will require a degree of work. But you can’t expect paying customers to go do research on what CPU or GPU they should buy. Plex is no longer a nimble young startup so optics matter. Add VCN support so that hardware encoding for Plex Pass customers just works.
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No official response.
It looks like they will ignore ud untill we leave and we should just stop supporting them by cancelling our plexpass, since we pay for nothing anyway.
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Was looking forward to ditching a Zen 2 CPU for one of AMD’s recent Zen 3 APUs but with Plex’s lack of VCN or AMF support, my Plex Pass subscription is looking rather useless. One day…
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What a joke, I won’t be renewing my subscription.
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3 years now, what a joke
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I just forked FFmpeg on GitHub and sidestepped it to Plex’s latest fork:
I will be working on updating the code for the Windows version of Plex Media Server to conform to the latest release of FFmpeg which implements fixes for Video Core Next. For what I can see currently, based on their fork’s RELEASE file, they are still on FFmpeg 4.1 which dates back to late 2018, back when Ryzen APUs were still in their infancy and in the process of getting supported by the open source community. So between three years of commits and now, there is quite a bit of work cut out for me! I will keep you guys posted on my developments and progress. 
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I gave up on waiting and no longer need this capability.
However…
I downloaded a copy of ffmpeg with AC4 support, also from roughly 3 years ago, and I’m also looking to streamline the AC4 code pieces into ffmpeg head; but… if I get it works, at the very least, it’d be great if we can get that code forked into plex’s ffmpeg port, because it will currently take the ATSC3.0 (Nextgen TV) broadcast from HD HomeRun and record it beautifully, but with no sound, because it doesn’t know how to parse AC4.
So, please let me know if I can help?
On a related note, we should confirm if there are any licensing concerns for either piece, although most likely for ac4… (for instance, maybe AC4 is supportable, but only as a loadable module, which can be separately licensed)?
I am not aware of the ramifications of licensing for specific codecs so I am sorry I cannot speak to that. I know AC-4 is highly requested (particularly due to ATSC 3.0 and tuners such as the HDHomeRun 4K) and I also know that there is currently an open ticket with the FFmpeg team with a good deal of Plex-related chatter in the comments. This link for that ticket might be helpful for your specific needs:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/8349
As for the VCN bug in Windows, I am currently parsing the code starting with the most obvious starting point of combing over the DXVA 2.0 bits and seeing what differences pop out if any have been made between the current release and the Plex fork. Presently, I am not seeing anything obvious in searching textually for explicit “dxva” mentions in the code, so I will need to diagram out the video stream path to see where the breakdown is occurring.
Very positive news! I just did some further testing and it appears that I am no longer seeing issues on my Ryzen 7 5700G in the Windows version of Plex Media Server. I ran my typical battery of tests with the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and Jack Jack Attack test scenarios and neither exhibit the pixel distortion that I had reported just over a year ago.
The fantastic news here is the issue appears to have been fixed at least for Windows users, meaning Ryzen APUs are fair game for a Plex server that is running on Windows. I am not sure if this is thanks to the Radeon team or Plex team, but my hat goes off to each for their ongoing efforts.
That said, things are not all hunky dory in Linux-land. I do, however, see that there is quite a bit attention now coming down the pipeline for VAAPI there thanks to the newfound efforts from Plex employee @ChuckPa here:
I will keep my eye on my 5700G build to ensure this bug is completely squashed but up through even 4K streams seems to be playing flawlessly now. I will report back (you can guarantee it!) if I see anything unusual rear its head.
tl;dr: Video Core Next, particularly Video Core Next 2.0 and above (meaning Ryzen 4000 APUs and later and 1st Gen Navi/RDNA 1 discrete GPUs and later) that were impacted by a pixel cloud issue are tentatively all good in Windows for hardware encoding.
EDIT: Removed images with personal server information.
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Nice to see it working in Windows, I wish Plex would care a little bit more about AMD users in Linux…
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Linux AMDers, you know who you are. Until official support comes, this is what you need:
HW accelerated transcoding on AMD APUs and GPUs working again in 1.24.4.5081 : PleX (reddit.com)
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Not to mention NTFS is horrible compared to ZFS or EXT4/BTRFS
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You mean anyone running Linux with common sense? Nvidia drivers for Linux are crap?
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I love it that it’s the users making the delopment ATM. So you PAY for software you have to FIX YOURSELF. That’s just beyond any kind of understanding.
While some progress is being made, I noticed that there are still a few issues, at least on Windows.
If you have a headless server (or even one with a display attached) and you RDP into it, disconnecting from RDP prevents future transcoding sessions from using hardware acceleration. You have to have the RDP session reconnect to the console session after disconnecting.
You can do this, for example, using the following command:
tscon.exe 1 /dest:console
Alternately, as a batch file that can be schedule to run on RDP disconnect:
for /f "tokens=2" %%i in ('qwinsta ^| findstr /r /I /C:"^ [ ]*[^ ][^ ]* [ ]*[0-9][0-9]* Disc"') do (
tscon %%i /dest:console /v
)
I don’t know if this is an ffmpeg issue or a Plex implementation issue, but I don’t believe this should be necessary.
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Voted, like a month ago i build my first home server.
Seeying the performance and small formfactor off the Asrock Deskmini x300 i decided to put a 5700G in there.
Setup plex as some people told me how good it is for content management, bought a lifetimepass to now find out after a week of many hours trying to get HW transcoding working on a Ubuntu Proxmox LXC.
Men this is bad, how can a big compamy like plex ignore the AMD/Linux camp so badly🙄
Seeing plex implement anything around their core offering of a media server seems to be getting less and less likely as the years go by
Still no AV1 codec support, No AMD VCN Support.
I’m probably being naive, but the changes listed here in the latest changelog I am hoping refer to AMD NAS devices, but it’s Plex so it’s probably some obscure TI chip.
- (Transcoder) Architectural changes to provide future support for hardware transcoding on additional NAS devices
- (Transcoder) Architectural changes to provide improved support for remuxing some HDR formats
Unfortunately this is starting to smell like the Matlab/Intel AVX2 scenario.
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