Hardware Transcoding on a QNAP TVS-673

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Server Version#:1.19.3.2852
Player Version#:

I’ve been trying to get hardware transcoding working on my TVS-673 for some time. It isn’t supported using Plex because it uses an AMD Ryzen CPU.
I recently experimented with fitting an NVidia GPU (GeForce GT 730). QNAP doesn’t officially support any GPU PCIE cards on this device. After fitting, the card was visible in QTS but it wasn’t assignable to QTS in the hardware expansion settings. With the latest firmware (4.4.2.1310) now allows it to be selected, which I have done. Hardware transcoding is enabled in PMS, but Plex appears not to be using the card to transcode as I can see CPU usage go high, but CPU usage for the graphics card does not.

I’m seeing the following in the PMS activity log…

Message
XML: Unsupported encoding gbk

Is there something else I should be doing to get this to work on my TVS-673?

1 Like
2

Hi,

Did QNAP finally implement the new QTS-mode controls I’ve been working with them on?

Regarding your logs, May I see a DEBUG log session (ZIP file of all logs), which captures the start and first 20 seconds of playback?

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Hello ChuckPa, thank you for looking at this.
I updated to QTS 4.4.2 a few months back, the option to enable QTS mode for the graphics card wasn’t available. It showed up after I installed 4.4.2.1310.
I’ve attached debug logs here. I hope they are what you needed.Plex Media Server Logs_2020-05-26_18-05-36.zip (3.0 MB)

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In case this helps…

Annotation 2020-05-26 181334
Annotation 2020-05-26 1813341114×162 15.5 KB

The card I used doesn’t have a fan, just a heatsink, so the fan speed reported isn’t true.

5

Thanks for the logs.

From what I can see:

  1. The card doesn’t support HEVC decode which, given its age and performance, is appropriate.
  2. The card does support H.264 encoding.
May 26, 2020 11:53:36.525 [0x7fbe8545b700] DEBUG - Starting a transcode session 468i5grm4bj7cik92ton93pc at offset -1.0 (state=3)
May 26, 2020 11:53:36.526 [0x7fbe8545b700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: enabled, but no hardware decode accelerator found
May 26, 2020 11:53:36.526 [0x7fbe8545b700] DEBUG - [Universal] Using local file path instead of URL: /share/Multimedia/Movies/Apollo 11 (2019).mkv
May 26, 2020 11:53:36.526 [0x7fbe8545b700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support not present
May 26, 2020 11:53:36.526 [0x7fbe8545b700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder: nvenc
May 26, 2020 11:53:36.527 [0x7fbe8545b700] DEBUG - Job running: EAE_ROOT='/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/tmp/pms-d1eb4d16-c220-4dbf-b31c-92b81d986b1a/EasyAudioEncoder' FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS='/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/99c90e0-3095-linux-x86_64/' XDG_CACHE_HOME='/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/Plex Media Server/Cache' XDG_DATA_HOME='/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Resources' X_PLEX_TOKEN='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' '/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Plex Transcoder' '-codec:0' 'hevc' '-codec:1' 'dca' '-analyzeduration' '20000000' '-probesize' '20000000' '-i' '/share/Multimedia/Movies/Apollo 11 (2019).mkv' '-filter_complex' '[0:0]scale=w=1920:h=1080[0];[0]format=pix_fmts=yuv420p|nv12[1]' '-filter_complex' '[0:1] aresample=async=1:ocl='\''5.1'\'':osr=48000[2]' '-map' '[1]' '-metadata:s:0' 'language=eng' '-codec:0' 'h264_nvenc' '-b:0' '63316k' '-maxrate:0' '84422k' '-bufsize:0' '168844k' '-forced-idr:0' '1' '-r:0' '23.975999999999999' '-force_key_frames:0' 'expr:gte(t,0+n_forced*1)' '-map' '[2]' '-metadata:s:1' 'language=eng' '-codec:1' 'aac' '-strict:1' 'experimental' '-aac_coder:1' 'fast' '-q:1' '0' '-segment_format' 'mpegts' '-f' 'ssegment' '-individual_header_trailer' '0' '-segment_time' '1' '-segment_start_number' '0' '-segment_copyts' '1' '-segment_time_delta' '0.0625' '-segment_list' 'http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/468i5grm4bj7cik92ton93pc/377aedb0-2011-44e6-91cb-57a7e7934db0/seglist?X-Plex-Http-Pipeline=infinite' '-segment_list_type' 'csv' '-segment_list_size' '5' '-segment_list_separate_stream_times' '1' '-segment_list_unfinished' '1' '-max_delay' '5000000' '-avoid_negative_ts' 'disabled' '-map_metadata' '-1' '-map_chapters' '-1' 'media-%05d.ts' '-start_at_zero' '-copyts' '-vsync' 'cfr' '-y' '-nostats' '-loglevel' 'quiet' '-loglevel_plex' 'error' '-progressurl' 'http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/468i5grm4bj7cik92ton93pc/377aedb0-2011-44e6-91cb-57a7e7934db0/progress'
May 26, 2020 11:53:36.527 [0x7fbe8545b700] DEBUG - Jobs: Starting child process with pid 14941
May 26, 2020 11:53:36.531 [0x7fbe86eb9700] DEBUG - Request: [127.0.0.1:39878 (Loopback)] PUT /video/:/transcode/session/468i5grm4bj7cik92ton93pc/377aedb0-2011-44e6-91cb-57a7e7934db0/progress?status=startup (7 live) Signed-in Token (dillspooch) (range: bytes=0-)

We test with a GTX-1050 & 1060 and it has the capability.

6

On a separate note:

I see you’re using the Multimedia share.

Be advised, we urge folks to migrate away from this.
We do so because, should you ever install Codec Pack and change versions, Plex will lose track of your media. Codex Pack creates artificial links for media.

You’re far better off having PMS directly reference the shares which contain the media and be independent of Multimedia.

There is no limit to how many shared folders you can add to Plex for a Library section.
Once you’ve added all the appropriate shares, and you see everything has a duplicate (2) flag, you can remove the /share/Multimedia reference .

You won’t lose history or metadata doing it this way.

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Thank you so much ChuckPa.
With the TVS-673 I’m limited to a PCI Express 2.0 x8 card, so I’m probably going to run out of luck finding the right card. I shall keep looking!
Thanks for your advise on the multimedia shares too. I will sort that out.
Cheers

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