On Linux, hardware-accelerated decoding is not supported on NVIDIA GPUs. Intel Quick Sync is required for hardware-accelerated decoding.
Hardware-accelerated HEVC 8-bit decoding on Windows and Linux requires a 6th-generation Intel Core (Skylake, 2015) or newer.
Hardware-accelerated HEVC 10-bit decoding on Windows and Linux requires a 7th-generation Intel Core (Kabylake, 2016) or newer.
Does this mean that to get hardware accelerated streaming support for HEVC 10-Bit I need a Kabylake in addition to my gtx 970? Or will gtx 970 with an older (Sandy-bridge) CPU allow me to do hardware transcoding?
@OttoKerner Thanks. I’m not very familiar with the technology. Out of curiosity could you ELI5 why quicksync is mandatory even when offloading the transcoding to dedicated GPU that supports the format?
The GTX 970 is a hybrid hardware decoder (from what I understand) so there is that. This means you’ll be using software as well as hardware to decode HEVC. I don’t think it supports 10bit HEVC, either.
Cards that support HEVC hardware 8bit and 10bit from nvidia include:
@Paradox55 Ah ok thanks. I had incorrectly assumed that the 970 supported 8 and 10 bit HEVC not just baseline. Good to know that even if I had a supported CPU I couldn’t use the gtx 970 for those formats.
I did some more digging as well. This thread suggests that dedicated gpus are only useful for playback directly on the device anyway if I’m reading it correctly. I will have to look into getting kaby rig going for just plex.
Until then I’ll just avoid playing h265 files on clients that don’t support the format natively. Is it possible to disable payback of specifically h265 files only when transcoding is required? Id like to make my server idiot proof for other users and It’s not great for my power bill when I’ve got 16 cores pinned at 100% usage all the time.
Just to confirm that point - my GTX 1050Ti doesn’t do hardware assisted encoding/decoding on the fly for transcoding, and so i’m also looking at building a kaby/coffee lake PMS machine.
My experience has been different. I have a Windows system based on a 4th Gen Intel i7 CPU. When I added an Nvidia GTX 1050Ti to my system the transcoding became MUCH faster than it was previously for HEVC video. My video collection is almost exclusively 10-Bit HEVC.
Note too that the Nvidia Web Site states that the 1050Ti has “feature set H” which, like all other 10 series cards, includes HEVC encode/decode.
Interesting… and that’s transcoding when watching from another device than the PMS is running on?
I have a haswell i7-4770k and cannot transcode 4k 10bit hevc OTF - it just maxes my CPU out, and the GPU makes zero difference. It’s not utilised at all, and i’ve always been told and read you need Intel QSV to utilise 10bit HEVC transcoding. This is under Windows 10.
This is with 40+ Mbps MKV - i assume you’re using about the same?
Then only success i’ve had is to direct stream to an Nvidia Shield or play directly back on a monitor connected to the machine with PMS.
Maybe I’m judging the transcoding in a little bit differently. I watching a few TV series on an Android tablet. I would sync several episodes at a time to the tablet which always involved transcoding the original HEVC episodes first. Then I would watch them, then sync a few more episodes. As soon as I installed the 1050Ti the transcoding speeds jumped dramatically.
I may have some time to do a real life test this weekend. I’ll sync a few movies or TV shows to the tablet and time the transcoding both with and without the Nvidia card installed.
