Hardware Transcoding on Server with IPMI Video

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
1

I have an Intel E3-1275 v6 CPU running on an ASRock E3C236D2I motherboard. The CPU supports Quicksync and as far as I can tell should work with hardware transcoding. The motherboard has IPMI which includes an onboard video card that drives a VGA header. This is the only video connector on the motherboard.

Is it possible for me to use hardware transcoding with my setup? I can’t seem to make it work. I am running Ubuntu 16.04 with PMS 1.9.3.4290.

Link to CPU: https://ark.intel.com/products/97478/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1275-v6-8M-Cache-3_80-GHz
Link to Motherboard: http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C236D2I

2

The CPU does support Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV).

To see what PMS is seeing, I will need the log files (Debug mode only), captured immediately after attempting to play something which you think should work . I will also need to see the XML for your selection because some codecs are not HW-enabled/supported yet

3

Great, please see attached.

4

Thanks… The video is H.264 which is supported for HW transcode.
When the transcoder starts, it does not see the GPU

Oct 06, 2017 22:01:11.168 [0x7fc143ffe700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support not present
Oct 06, 2017 22:01:11.168 [0x7fc143ffe700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder:

Please do a ls -la /dev/dri . I suspect you won’t have that device directory. If you did, you should see the GPU devices. It will look like this when recognized by the kernel.

[~] # cd /dev/dri
[/dev/dri] # ls -la
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    2 admin    administ       100 Oct  5 19:47 ./
drwxr-xr-x   20 admin    administ     22120 Oct  6 23:15 ../
crw-------    1 admin    administ  226,   0 Oct  5 19:47 card0
crw-------    1 admin    administ  226,  64 Oct  5 19:47 controlD64
crw-------    1 admin    administ  226, 128 Oct  5 19:47 renderD128
[/dev/dri] #

There are users who have upgraded their Ubuntu kernel to include support . Since they did not provide details, I cannot advise you further other than search through the other threads. Look for HWE kernel (HardWare Enabled)

5

@des said:
I have an Intel E3-1275 v6 CPU running on an ASRock E3C236D2I motherboard. The CPU supports Quicksync and as far as I can tell should work with hardware transcoding. The motherboard has IPMI which includes an onboard video card that drives a VGA header. This is the only video connector on the motherboard.

Is it possible for me to use hardware transcoding with my setup? I can’t seem to make it work. I am running Ubuntu 16.04 with PMS 1.9.3.4290.

Link to CPU: https://ark.intel.com/products/97478/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1275-v6-8M-Cache-3_80-GHz
Link to Motherboard: http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C236D2I

you need the bios ver referenced in here → http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=5160&PN=3&title=igfx-e3c236d2i

(which doesnt look like it has been publicly released yet)

6

I have the bios file if needed. Went through the same stuff with them trying to get it. Unfortunately I’m not sure the quicksync is working correctly.

7

have you tried Intel_gpu_top while it’s transcoding?

8

Well, I gave up and replaced the motherboard with one without IPMI…hardware transcoding works like a dream.

intel_gpu_top is a great tool!

9

it mean that the IPMI was disabled?