Hello,
Can you please add hardware transcoding for Raspberry Pi 4 plex media server?
All the best,
P.
1 Like
AFAIK, the RasPi only has a video hardware decoder, but not an encoder.
So, even if the hardware decoder was supported by Plex, the computing load from encoding the video stream would still be too much for this “phone cpu”.
quote from https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/specifications/
Technical specifications:
H.265 (4kp60 decode), H264 (1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode)
Emby and Jellyfin does support HW transcode on Raspberry Pi.
14 Likes
Then my information was outdated. Sorry about that.
But I’ve seen reports that the hw encoder doesn’t produce a very good quality.
1 Like
Most peole, as I believe, would use transcoding for watching on phone or tablet. Superb quality is not needed. Smooth playback is.
16 Likes
Emby like Plex use ffmpeg to transcode. So it should be possible (easily?) to implement HW transcode for Plex.
I tried with Emby and that work well (openMAX or V4L2). Just need some additional packages (libva2 vainfo libyami-utils). So that allow hevc 1080p transcoding to my Google Chromecast !
Hope the same for Plex because I prefer it
2 Likes
I would also like to see hardware transcoding support for RPi4 - since early February, Raspbian added full support and decode now runs correctly for VLC and Kodi packages without patches, I assume encode would also now function out the box. Would be nice to see the RPi4 added alongside Nvidia Shield.
1 Like
Add me to the list! I use my rpi4 with my Drobo 5N as a media server and though I am reasonably satisfied with the 720p CPU based transcodes, it sure would be nice if the base PMS package would leverage this hardware correctly! It pains me every time I update the PMS package and see the output of the upgrade saying “HW Acceleration: Not Supported” (or something like that).
Please consider supporting this! rpi4 is already a terrific host for PMS, with HW transcoding it would be AMAZING. $35-$60 (because you really need a case with a fan for this currently) dedicated PMS servers would probably bring in a lot of happy customers!
3 Likes
i would love very much to see this happening
as neither the pi nor the iphone app transcode my movies so im stuck with the web browser and the â– â– â– â– â– â– kodi app
Currently VLC + PMS on Pi4 works good on Rasbian and Ubuntu 20.04. PMP + PMS not so much.
Transcode and Encode addition would be a great addition for Pi platforms even if its only on the arm64 versions for full 4k use.
Would love to see this too. I’ve actually seen my Pi be able to handle transcoding h.265 1080p on a single stream, but not without cooking the CPU at 100%. Would love to be able to do this with 4k or 1080 more easily.
I also want to express my interest in that feature.
Yes yes! --and make it work in Docker also.
“The circle would be complete” and my 3 node RPI4 cluster could rule them all! 
2 Likes
Yes please! It would be awesome.
Even tho it would not be able to transcode multiple videos in parallel, is not needed for home use. My phone suports direct play, my tv, and so on…, but from.time to time i just want to be able to play from web or some old device and right now it kills my pi 4, the biggher issue is that I also have pihole on it, meaning that all my internet traffic gets laggy if I tranacode one video. Not to mentione that i also control the temperature/humidity and other automatizations with the same pi as central unit.
In my case, it would be a game changer to be able to transcode videos with gpu hardware support.
If you need transcoding and not direct play on a device, you do not need best quality…
Yes, and probably more people will buy subscription (plex pass).
1 Like
Yeah, this would be a huge win for me. Especially so I don’t have to worry about the stream going sideways if I accidentally use VOBSUB subtitles instead of SRTs when I Chromecast.
1 Like
hw-transcoding cannot deal with subtitles… if the client requires Plex to burn your subtitles into the main video, this will be done by your CPU
Ok, that definitely makes this a lower priority for me then. Would still be a nice-to-have feature though.
Another plus 1 for using the RPI4 Encoder! even if it was only Plex Pass, that would nudge the needle for me to purchase one!
Also, haven’t done a lot of work on video encode/decode, but am I right in thinking that the way it works is it has to decode the file first, then encode it?
At which point, since there’s both a 1080p60(h.264) and a 2160p30(HEVC), wouldn’t that allow for fairly decent performance leveraging both hardware encoders? Assuming that would hit the cache pretty hard (might be fixable via overclock), but with the higher ram units (8gb unit?) we wouldn’t have to swap to disk to be able to support this.
Also, worth notting that you can now boot the Rpi4 via usb3 Ssd’s.I’m using an NVMe ->usb3 adapter to enable the use of optane on rpi for the latency benefits and performance has been phenomenal.
1 Like
