I’m not entirely clear on this based on what is listed as requirements. I have been unable to get QuickSync working on Server 2016 properly so I got a GPU…
I only see (HW) on the encoding side. If I check the requirements, it seems like decoding would require QuickSync as well.
Is that true? Seems pointless to have the GPU since it seems like the CPU still being hit a bit.
I’m also assuming that the GPU is working properly since I don’t really have a way to confirm otherwise. I did install Open Hardware Monitor but that doesn’t show the GPU being utilized a lot.
I’m pretty sure QuickSync is not working but I could be wrong. I wasn’t able to find proper information on how to get this working properly but from what I can tell it seems like 1) You need to make some multi monitor adjustment in BIOS 2) you need to create a virtual monitor. The latter I could never do because it would never give me an option for additional monitors like I’ve seen online. I made sure I installed proper Intel GPU drivers, though.
So you have added an Nvidia graphics card?
I get the feeling that you are using the term QuickSync to include both QuickSync (Intel) and NVENC (Nvidia).
I’m pretty sure that you can only use one or the other.
I don’t know what you mean by Virtual Monitor, all I had to do was plug in a HDMI Dummy plug as I don’t have a monitor attached to my Plex server.
I don’t know why you aren’t getting hardware decode, but if were to make a guess I’d be looking at what might be missing from the server OS which is available on the desktop OS, such as codecs.
In regards to codecs, are you saying codecs need to be installed for proper support? I have not dealt with codecs for a very long time so didnt think it was necessary anymore.
I guess I’m ultimately trying to confirm what is actually doing the transcoding. For now, I still see the CPU hit above 60% so I’m guessing it is QuickSync which perplexes me why the GPU would not be used.
cpu 4440k - this is an old cpu. if you are trying to hardware transcode 4k, this won’t do it. but it looks like regular 264 is supported. whether or not that is supported by plex, is another question. performance/quality is another.
gpu 1050ti - should support most codecs, but not all;
the nvidia being much newer I would expect much better performance/quality over the intel gpu. but don’t forget the nvidia gaming cards are limited to 2 encoding streams.
to get the nvidia transcoding working, you may need to disable the intel gpu in the bios and remove the intel video drivers.
Jan 25, 2019 20:55:02.150 [11652] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: enabled, but no hardware decode accelerator found
Jan 25, 2019 20:55:02.150 [11652] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support not present
Jan 25, 2019 20:55:02.150 [11652] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder: nvenc
Does this mean that the video may have a codec that the NVIDIA card does not support?
Might be because of straight Bluray rips from MakeMKV - VC1 and maybe not supported. I was trying to test if GPU was at all working (without realizing the logs would actually say “nvenc”). Kind of hard to simulate something that would be transcoding on my setup but I’ll see.
Oh I tried many different movies but couldn’t get it not direct stream.
In the end, the logs helped the most with knowing what codecs are supported. It’s transcoding via GPU now … not sure if the hack is working properly but that’s out of scope for here
