I installed the Plex alpha version 1.15.0.573 today and I have been experimenting much more with the Plex Transcoder binary. This version of the Plex Media Server ships with a newer version of FFMpeg compiled with Clang instead of GCC:
ffmpeg version 1.4-a15abb0-22 Copyright © 2000-2018 the FFmpeg developers
built with clang version 5.0.1 (tags/RELEASE_501/final)
Most interstingly:
This version actually supports the “-hwaccel nvdec” option!
I have been able to successfully launch and transcode on my own with the “Plex Transcoder” binary by setting these environment variables:
FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS=’/config/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/a15abb0-2009-linux-x86_64/’ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/ /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex\ Transcoder
I have been trying to replicate all the arguments that Plex Media server sends to this binary and I’ve been running it outside of Plex. Unfortunately Plex Media Server still doesn’t send the “-hwaccel nvdec” option to it so the decode still isn’t accellerated within Plex. But while the “Plex Transcoder” binary that shipped with Plex 1.14 just seemed to ignore the “-hwaccel nvdec” argument this one shipped with Plex 1.15 doesn’t!
When I added the “-hwaccel nvdec” option to this new binary I achieved a speed of ~x6 with -hwaccel nvdec without pegging my CPU at 100% when trying it on a video from my Plex library.
Without it the speed was only ~x2 with both my poor CPU cores pegged at 100%.
So while there hasn’t been much word from the devs about this maybe supporting it is not that far off? All that’s required now is that Plex Media Server sends the argument “-hwaccel nvdec” to the Plex Transcoder binary included in Plex 1.15. Can we please have that in the final release?
I will gladly beta-test further alpha releases if they start enabling nvdec which is now fully possible with the newest transcoder binary (Plex ffmpeg fork).
