I’m attempting to reencode a few files using FFmpeg. I installed a copy of FFmpeg on my computer and it works fine as long as PMS isn’t active. But if someone starts streaming from the PMS Windows 10 crashes and reboots. Seeing how plex uses FFmpeg in the background I figure it’s some conflict between the two instances. Is there a possible way to avoid the crash? Where does Plex store the version of FFmpeg it uses and would it be better for me to try and encode my files using that?
Does it happen if you use Handbrake?
ffmpeg still, but more ‘self contained’ I imagine…
(I have Handbrake working pretty much all day - and night…lol).
AFAIK, the Plex Transcoder command is just a wrapper for FFmpeg.
This is what I get when running the command with the help flag on CentOS:
$ /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Transcode -h
ffmpeg version 1.6-99c90e0bc7-1 Copyright (c) 2000-2019 the FFmpeg developers
built with Plex clang version 8.0.1 (revision: 102) (based on LLVM 8.0.1)
So, you could try just replacing your ffmpeg call with a call to the Plex Transcoder and see if that works.
I don’t know the specs of the system you’re using, or if the machine crashes as seen as a Plex transcode starts, but my guess would be that running two transcodes might just be overworking your machine and causing it to crash/shutdown before frying.
After some toying around I think I figured out the problem. The combination of the encodings between ffmpeg (CPU) and plex (HW) stressed the system enough that my overclock was no longer stable. After adjusting the CPU voltages and a few minor tweaks to the bios it seems to be working fine but I’ll know for sure after the next round of stress testing.
