[Feature Request] Add support for AMD's Video Core Next encoding

Feature Suggestions
143

Was trying to resolve this issue and it seems that RDP would no longer impact hw acceleration if you enable the “Use the hardware default graphics adapter for all Remote Desktop Services sessions” group policy. This would make the RDP session use the hardware GPU for rendering.

Step-by-step:

  1. Run (win+r) “gpedit.msc”
  2. Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Remote Session Environment
  3. Double click “Use the hardware default graphics adapter for all Remote Desktop Services sessions”
  4. Enable the policy
  5. Confirm and reboot
2 Likes
144

Guess this will never come as official supported.
Money down the drain, to bad i didnt research properly before buying AMD hardware.
Shame that a company of this size cant even support both camps (AMD and Intel) properly.

2 Likes
145

This doesn’t seem to work. Disconnecting from an RDP session with this policy enabled prevents Plex from using hardware transcoding, just like before.

146

Just checking - did you enable the policy on the Plex server machine? It would not work if you enable the policy on the client machine from which you initiate the RDP connections.

Also adding some context here if this has anything to do with Windows versions etc:
My Plex runs on a Windows Server 2019 (1809) machine which has a 5700G installed. The driver is not natively supported on Windows Server and I had to do some modifications to get it to work.
I make RDP connections from various running Windows 10, iOS, and macOS.

The aforementioned policy change definitely worked for me and I have just tested again following the below steps -

  1. Play a 4k video on my iOS device using the Plex app, select 480p 2Mb quality
  2. Remote Desktop to the Plex machine and check the web UI, it shows hw is being used for transcoding
  3. Disconnect from remote session and close the Plex app on the iOS device
  4. Open the Plex app again on my iOS device and play a different 4k video, and select 480p 2Mb quality
  5. Remote Desktop to the Plex machine again and check the web UI, it still shows hw is being used for transcoding for the video that is currently being played
147

Seems that I clicked the wrong Reply button, please see above post.

148

I did, the policy is enabled on the RD host, which is the same machine that runs Plex Server. It’s possible it’s related to Windows versions - my host is running Windows 10 21H2. Instead of a 5700G like you, I’m using a 5750G, though I doubt that matters.

Tested a scenario similar to what you outlined above:

  1. From a separate machine, played a 4K video via Chrome, which caused the video to transcode to 1080p using hardware transcoding. This was verified via the Plex web interface since you can minimize the web player (having the video continue playing) then view the server dashboard
  2. Stopped the playback by closing the minimized player
  3. Established a RD connection to the Plex Server host
  4. Repeated step #1, verified hardware transcoding was being used
  5. Repeated step #2
  6. Disconnected the RD connection
  7. Repeated step #1, verified hardware transcoding was no longer being used

I would have liked for the GPO to fix this, but the only workaround I’ve found is using the tscon.exe paired with a scheduled task that’s triggered on RD disconnect.

1 Like
149

Just checking, is Plex still stuck at 264 and not amd linux support? OF COURSE. Bye

2 Likes
150

sad that it seems none of the voted feature requests are anything but a black hole for complaints :frowning:

2 Likes
151

Another call to please implement hardware transcoding with the amdgpu driver in Linux. My 5700XT is just sitting in a system, waiting to be used.

This card has 4k H.264 and H.265 encode and decode. It is more than capable.

There are many who would greatly appreciate it.

2 Likes
152

I seriously do not understand why this isnt working yet.
Had some spare time today and played a bit with Jellyfin.
Setup a LXC container on my Proxmox server and within a hour i had the entire LXC setup with working Hardware transcoding to the APU of the 5700G thats in there.
If a free version can make this happen one would expect the org like Plex who actually uses a paid model can get some engineers to fix this in Plex.
Its ashame the Jellyfin app isnt there yet for LG TV’s but its in the workings.
When thats done i guess i will say goodbey to Plex.

2 Likes
153

Seconding the last poster. Even running HW transcoding in Jellyfin on slow, the integrated graphics keep up with the transcode job without breaking a sweat. Having this capability on Plex would help to retain a lot of us AMD users looking for this capability.

2 Likes
154

Chiming in because I want this as well. Those AMD chips are awesome.

1 Like
155

I signed up to the forum to show my support for this request.
I am a prospective customer that would like to set up a home server and would want to use the paid plex pass subscription

I want my server to be low power (no gpu and low power cpu), have ECC memory (for storage) and be able to use hardware transcoding for plex

On a budget, there aren’t so many options. Since plex only supports quicksync, I would need to get a low power intel cpu with quicksync and ECC support. There around 20 or so options from xeon and i3, BUT, there are very few motherboard options (basically only the C246)

All of these problems would be void if I could use hardware encoding on and AMD CPU since there are many more budget options with ECC support. Otherwise I would have to use jellyfin, which generally doesn’t have apps available on smart tv’s

Also the newly announced AM5 CPUs are set to have inbuilt graphics as a standard and support ECC (through DDR5 RAM). Sure, Intel’s DDR5 options would then be valid too but AMD continue to best them in price per performance and lower power consumption

In summary, please add this support so I can give you my money :sweat_smile:

1 Like
156

Adding my support, hope this becomes a thing if it isn’t yet!

2 Likes
157

I don’t want to buy an Nvidia GPU just because I chose an AMD CPU for my server :pensive:

Please Plex, help me not to turn green :cry:

4 Likes
158

Out of curiosity, is your server otherwise headless?

My GPU(s) predate Navi so I never ran into the discoloration bug, but I did used to have issues with RDP and Plex.

My solution was to plug an HDMI “dummy plug” into the desired GPU, and always make my initial session log in to the server after it boots (Windows Server 2019) “physical” - whether it’s an actual physical log-in, or via IPMI - and then launch Plex.

After that, it doesn’t matter if I have an active RDP session, had one but no longer do, etc. - Plex will always HW de/encode on the right GPU (Radeon Pro) even though the monitor that lights up when I make my physical or IPMI log-in is connected to the onboard Matrox VGA port.

1 Like
159

Like you, I have a dummy HDMI device that’s always plugged in. The initial session is logged in automatically via a Windows setting so I’m not physically logging in the console session.

I wonder if the difference stems from the fact that you have two display adapters, one of which never reinitializes/changes (your Radeon Pro) when RDPing. I can’t think of it off the top of my head but I’m confident there’s some utility we can run to see what adapter is used, when.

1 Like
160

@elan : For the leading mediaserver software, which plex is from my perspective, this is quite an important topic. Also for user of the new Synology NAS generation, this topic become more and more important as Synology is switching to AMD.

Is this feature planed for the next releases?

161

ChannelsDVR supports AMD hardware transcoding and works amazingly well. Not sure why Plex is so far behind the ball on this one. Seems like it is a fairly easy implementation

h264_amf
[Parsed_color_0 @ 0000000000ee88c0] size:640x480 rate:25/1 duration:-1.000000 sar:1/1
Input #0, lavfi, from ‘color=black:640x480’:
Duration: N/A, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
Stream #0:0: Video: rawvideo, 1 reference frame (I420 / 0x30323449), yuv420p, 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], 25 tbr, 25 tbn, 25 tbc
Stream mapping:
Stream #0:0 → #0:0 (rawvideo (native) → h264 (h264_amf))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
[graph 0 input from stream 0:0 @ 0000000004870800] w:640 h:480 pixfmt:yuv420p tb:1/25 fr:25/1 sar:1/1 sws_param:flags=2
[h264_amf @ 0000000000eb9c80] AMF initialisation succeeded via D3D11.
Output #0, null, to ‘nul’:
Metadata:
encoder : Lavf58.29.100
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (h264_amf), 1 reference frame, yuv420p, 640x480 [SAR 1:1 DAR 4:3], q=-1–1, 400 kb/s, 25 fps, 25 tbn, 25 tbc
Metadata:
encoder : Lavc58.54.100 h264_amf
No more output streams to write to, finishing.
frame= 3 fps=0.0 q=-0.0 Lsize=N/A time=00:00:00.12 bitrate=N/A speed=0.144x
video:0kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: unknown
Input file #0 (color=black:640x480):
Input stream #0:0 (video): 4 packets read (1843200 bytes); 4 frames decoded;
Total: 4 packets (1843200 bytes) demuxed
Output file #0 (nul):
Output stream #0:0 (video): 3 frames encoded; 3 packets muxed (190 bytes);
Total: 3 packets (190 bytes) muxed

1 Like
162

FYI, the AMD embedded CPUs currently used by Synology, v1500B and R1600, do not have GPUs.

1 Like