Hardware transcoding issues

Plex Media Server
1

Server Version#: 1.41.9.9961
Player Version#: 4.148.0

Additional version info:
OS Version (Server)#: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS (Kernel: 5.4.0-216-generic)
NVIDIA Driver Version (Server)#: 575.57.08 (CUDA: 12.9)
OS Version (Client)#: Windows 24H2 (OS Build 26100.4652)
Chrome Version (Client)#: 138.0.7204.102
Edge Version (Client)#: 138.0.3351.83
Plex Desktop app Version (Client)#: 1.109.0.329-ea562b95

Background:
I just acquired an NVIDIA Quadro P2000 and followed these instructions when installing it. I am having some weird issues when transcoding however. Issues occur both in Chrome, Edge and the Plex Desktop app on Windows 11. For some reasons issues seem to be sort of intermittent, it has worked once or twice but in the majority of cases the issue occurs as described below.

I’ve run watch -n0.1 nvidia-smi and can tell that the GPU is definitely working during transcodes.

Issue (steps to recreate):

  1. Start playing 4K movie

  2. Decrease quality to 1080p, 480p or any lower resolution

  3. Transcoding starts and file starts playing again, only for a few seconds

  4. Error s3016 is thrown, but quickly changes to s3014 (see image below)

    image
    image479×235 3.87 KB

  5. If Retry is pressed it intermittently seems to be able to resume playing

Thankful in advance for any help in finding the issues. If more information is needed (like timestamps etc.) please let me know!

Plex Media Server Logs_2025-07-16_16-34-24.zip (2.3 MB)

2

Oh, and in the Plex Desktop app it throws the following error instead:

An unknown error occurred (4294967283)

4

Also, there is a known problem in Plex Web when trying to reduce quality after starting playback.

The workaround is to do so before starting playback.

Plex is aware of the problem. It will be fixed in a rewrite of Plex Web. Work is underway. Date TBD.

1 Like
5

Haven’t tried that. NVIDIAs instructions and a comment on the Reddit post seemed to confirm the instructions from the post were still valid, but I might be wrong.

6

Oh, I did not know that. Thank you, I will try setting quality before playing and verify that that’s the issue I’m having!

7

Is there a way to change the quality before starting playback other than the settings below?

image
image816×613 48.7 KB

Anyway, changing the settings above I was able to confirm that my issue seems to stem from the bug you’ve described. I am guessing that the Plex Desktop app is simply a wrapper for Plex Web then, seeing as I am seeing the same issue there?

8

That is the only direct way to do so.

If streaming remotely, you could change the remote stream bitrate setting in Settings → Remote Access, but that would affect all remote streams.

You might also want to disable Auto Adjust Quality, as that feature changes the quality/bitrate while transcoding.

It is not a wrapper, but they are closely related, so not a surprise that the problem exists in Plex Desktop as well.

Plex Desktop uses mpv.io as its video player. That’s why it can direct play video/audio/subtitle formats that transcode when using Plex Web.

1 Like
9

Thank you @FordGuy61 for the detailed answer and workaround to my issue!

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