FreeBSD GPU transcoding?

General Discussions
1

Apologies if this has been asked before, but are there plans to enable hardware transcoding on FreeBSD-based platforms?
I did a search but didn’t find anything - but I’m new to the forum here

2

its freebsd doesnt have support (yet?) so far support got linux,mac,windows only currently plus NVIDIA SHIELD,WD My Cloud Pro PR2100,WD My Cloud Pro PR4100

3

Hi, I’m interested too.
I’ve a xeon cpu that have a video card onboard which support:

Intel® Quick Sync Video, Intel® InTru™ 3D,Intel® Flexible Display Interface (Intel® FDI), Tecnologia Intel® Clear Video HD, Intel® Clear Video

I’m running Plex on freebsd(freenas) and currently there’s no option for hw acceleration and most probably it is not used (also the options in server>advanced>transcoding it is not present).

There’s any plan for the implementation?
thanks,
cheers
a

4

Heh - well I’m guessing the answer is no based on the lack of response. I suppose I should ask officially as a trouble ticket since I have plexpass

5

Are you asking for out of the box support or have you tried installing the intel drivers? What does vainfo output for you?

6

Looks like they just announced support! No details anywhere yet, but it’s finally looking promising!

7

https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/?utm_source=Plex&utm_medium=email&utm_content=hardware_bsd_button&utm_campaign=Newsletter+November+8+2018+PP#modal-devices-smart-tv

FreeBSD-specific Notes

Compatible FreeBSD servers require Plex Media Server 1.13.9 or newer.

8

Yes, but do you have any idea the configuration of it? The drivers? The document has very little and was the same link that was in the announcement email. Just excited and letting people know that there is something to expect!

9

You might find this helpful: Enable Hardware acceleration support for BSD based Plex Servers

Apparently, it is possible, but may require a more recent kernel?

10

I noticed I can select it to hardware transcode and my system currently has an Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1225 v3 @ 3.20GHz in it, which supports QuickSync. I am contemplating adding an Nvidia graphics card if I KNEW that it could offload transcoding onto the GPUs. I have had quite a few buffering errors recently, which seems to have gotten worse since enabling hardware transcoding.

11

Without having any specific knowledge about this use case, my guess is there would be a library for transcoding using NVidia CUDA that would be separate from Plex somewhere else in the userspace, or perhaps a transcoding port you could flag to compile to make use of CUDA cores. Don’t most OS (FreeBSD or otherwise) use ffmpeg for encoding/transcoding? Or x264/x265? Libav?

A quick Google turned up what I suspected: https://developer.nvidia.com/ffmpeg

Also this is useful (link from bottom of last page I sent): https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk#NVENCFeatures

I was wrong though, the newer cards have dedicated encoders and decoders, not necessitating the CUDA cores (although there might be a way you could use those too, sounds like it’d be unnecessary for most use cases)