I’ve had a talk with Synology about opening up hardware transcoding on their platform to Plex. This was their response.
“Regarding hardware transcoding through Plex, we have actually been communicating with Plex for a long time about whether they can implement this. However, it might be because Plex supports too many types of devices and it’ll take up a lot of their resources to optimise the software for each device (I’m not 100% sure), this just hasn’t happened yet. There are other third-part app that has utilised hardware trascoding on Synology NAS, so we are not hiding the secret from anyone, especially not Plex.”
The DS415+, the new DS916+ support hardware offloading of transcoding tasks on the NAS. To give you some idea of the benefits, currently doing a low bandwidth 1080p transcode on the 916+ uses about %90 CPU. The same video in the Synology video station uses %30 CPU. This is a massive difference in performance.
There literally a hundred thousand people who would benefit from having this feature supported in Plex. I realise it may not be a road you want to travel but if you change your mind. Please let Synology be your testing platform. I for one would only be too happy to use my DS415+ as a test platform for code. I am chasing up Synology for more information on how to utilise the hardware in the current version of disk station manager (DSM). In fact I signed up to PlexPass just so I could make this post. I have been looking closely at the PMS early releases and hope that one day we will see a feature like this pop up for testing.
“We have different hardware transcoding APIs for different models (i.e. CPU platforms), which makes things a little complicated - that’s why they’re not on our website However, if Plex is interested in implementing this feature after your suggestion, feel free to give them my e-mail and we’ll send the APIs over immediately. We actually have a product manager who is in regular contact with Plex, so they’ll be able to contact him for any request as well.”
Moore’s Law is going to solve this from being an issue at some point.
But I don’t see why there couldn’t be a setting to manually override the check that determines if the CPU can transcode up to Plex’s recommended specs.
It would be easier for the user to make the determination than it would for the Devs to keep up on all the various versions of NAS’ that can and can’t transcode properly.
To some degree, every NAS user were being forced to learn how to utilize their devices, even they have to start without the knowledge and skill (like me). It is quite a big disappointment when I realized PLEX have chosen not to support transcode (or whatever not ready) on my NAS (unfortunately PLEX is not working on my newly bought DS216+II, it was for something else…). Why don’t PLEX consider to offer that particular beta-test to those who have already bought PLEX pass?
In fact I signed up to PlexPass just so I could make this post. I have been looking closely at the PMS early releases and hope that one day we will see a feature like this pop up for testing.
@rtfmoz, Same here, but I just found you did!
I hope one day they would start doing a math on how many Synology users & devices out there…
It would suffice, if Plex would enable Intel Quick-Sync for certain models (which apparently, they already have implemented for a WD drive). So, I vote, hoping it will be included, in one if the future version.
This would be great. I’ve read elsewhere on the forums and that the WD transcode picture quality (Quick Sync) isn’t as good as what a CPU or Shield TV (NVENC) transcode would offer, but it would be far better than nothing.
However, if Plex is interested in implementing this feature after your suggestion, feel free to give them my e-mail and we’ll send the APIs over immediately. We actually have a product manager who is in regular contact with Plex, so they’ll be able to contact him for any request as well.”
