Hardware transcoding for more platforms (RPI, Synlogy, etc)

Feature Suggestions
1

The humble Raspberry Pi has hardware encoding/decoding for H264, via openmax/MMAL - it’s crucial for twitch streaming, etc, and is enough for 1080p. Imagine if plex implemented this (and an official RPI PMS version) - a $30 (well, closer to $100 with all the required bits) plex box capable (?) of single 1080p transcodes would sell so many passes!

Also, I have a Synology DS214play which again is capable of HW transcoding. Emby have implemented this for both the DS214play and the DS415play (evansport architecture, using VA API): https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/43282-hw-transcoding-on-evansport-ds415playds214play-machines/. It’s also available on Synology’s built in plex equivalent. could plex consider doing the same? they’re not current machines but there are loads on ebay, and in use - these being capable of transcoding would be such an awesome entry-level PMS.

Thanks <3

2

rpi not built to transcodes multiple videos, but it’s surely does capable of being a server in feeding Plex clients of movies thru direct play as I used it for portable media server when I’m on the road. And even Plex devs support rpi’s hardware decoding/encoding, probably it can only transcode 1 HD 720p or 1-2 SD movies max out. It’s kinda pointless to make it your dedicated Plex server serving multiple users because rpi will starve to death transcoding, but I think it will serve it’s purpose if you only wanted 1 or 2 transcode only if hardware decoding is supported, but right now Plex on rpi is great for directly play not transcode.

3

with the pi4’s release, it now supports hardware h265 4k decode, along with the hardware h264 encode in previous pis, along with a 3-4x better CPU.

time to revisit plex hardware transcoding on these devices? <3

4

Is there VAAPI support for ARMv8 yet? This will be the gating factor.

5

given that VAAPI appears to be an intel initiative, that seems unlikley, no? https://01.org/vaapi

what about using openmax instead? i’ve no idea if they are equivalent, but openmax seems to support everything.

6

Emby Server provides hardware acceleration on the Rock64, which is ARMv8. It also will direct play from the HDHomeRun Extend to the Apple TV 4 which Plex doesn’t support. Plex loves to transcode EVERYTHING and it brings ARM devices to their knees making Plex unusable. This is a deal breaker for me. I prefer Plex but until they can either provide hardware acceleration, or direct play for Live TV on Apple TV 4, I will give my money to Emby.

2 Likes
7

+1 for the armv8 rockchip. the RK3399 supports hardware accelerated 4Kp60 decoding and 1080p30 encoding.

$ dmesg | grep dev/video
[    8.151696] rockchip-rga ff680000.rga: Registered rockchip-rga as /dev/video0
[    8.183954] hantro-vpu ff650000.video-codec: registered rockchip,rk3399-vpu-enc as /dev/video2
[    8.184163] hantro-vpu ff650000.video-codec: registered rockchip,rk3399-vpu-dec as /dev/video3
8

Early 2021 clean-up:

Please open a dedicated thread if there’s specific requests for not-supported Synology platforms.