Hardware transcoding only failing in browser and PMP

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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1

Server Version#: 1.19.4.2902
Player Version#: Web 4.30.2 / Android 8.1.2.18135 / PMP 2.58

I´m experiencing a strange error where playing back files in the Browser (Chrome 83.0.4103.97) or PlexMediaPlayer and let it transcode cause the video to stop playing and error out. In Plex Web, it stops without any error message, however, PMP shows “An error occurred trying to play “name of the movie”.” But when playing a movie in the android plex app (and let it transcode) everything works fine… The movies are encoded in h264.

The server is running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and equipped with an Nvidia M2000 with driver 440.64 and an old Xeon (X3320).
I already deleted the Codecs folder and reinstalled the nvidia headless driver for ubuntu (with libnvidia-encode and libnvidia-decode) with no success.

The log shows two issues "Codecs: hardware transcoding: opening hw device failed - probably not supported by this system, error: Input/output error" or
"[TranscodeOutputStream] Streaming Session appears to have died from under us"

Does anyone have an idea what could be wrong?

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DEBUG log files please, capturing the playback failure (the ZIP file please) are needed.
There are too many possibilities to guess what might be happening.

The error: “opening hw device failed” error also occurs when there is no QSV support (which most xeon CPUs don’t have )

3

My bad I even prepared a Debug Log but forgot to attach it. I´ve deleted older files as they were quite old (2016 to 2019, Nvidia M2000 was installed two weeks ago) and masked out my username, mail and movies. (I hope thats fine)

Server_logs2.zip (738,7 KB)

Thanks!

4

Thanks for the logs

Here, you can see it testing for QSV (vaapi) and not finding it (I/O error) then finding and proceeding with the Nvidia.

Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.680 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - Audio Stream: 15425, Subtitle Stream: -1
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.683 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - Codecs: testing h264_vaapi (encoder)
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.683 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API vaapi
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.683 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - Codecs: hardware transcoding: opening hw device failed - probably not supported by this system, error: Input/output error
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.683 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - Codecs: testing h264_nvenc (encoder)
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.684 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API nvenc
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.685 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded lib: libcuda.so.1
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.685 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded sym: cuInit
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.685 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded sym: cuDeviceGetCount
Jun 11, 2020 12:01:59.685 [0x7fc7bcff9700] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded sym: cuDeviceGet

Here, we can see the segments transcoding but we also see them dropping off with no indication why.

The client logs would be needed (which I’m not the best at reading in all cases) to find out why the sessions ended.

Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.905 [0x7fc7be7fc700] DEBUG - Asked for segment 23 from session.
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.906 [0x7fc7be7fc700] DEBUG - Returning segment 23 from session
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.906 [0x7fc7be7fc700] DEBUG - Content-Length of /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode/Sessions/plex-transcode-b761097350bc033e-com-plexapp-android-2816a994-531c-4d1e-815c-42686ae80818/media-00023.ts is 488352 (of total: 488352).
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.913 [0x7fc79f7fe700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.1.102:40338 (Subnet)] GET /video/:/transcode/universal/session/b761097350bc033e-com-plexapp-android/base/00024.ts (17 live) TLS Signed-in
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.913 [0x7fc79f7fe700] DEBUG - Asked for segment 24 from session.
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.913 [0x7fc79f7fe700] DEBUG - Returning segment 24 from session
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.913 [0x7fc79f7fe700] DEBUG - Content-Length of /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Cache/Transcode/Sessions/plex-transcode-b761097350bc033e-com-plexapp-android-2816a994-531c-4d1e-815c-42686ae80818/media-00024.ts is 566086 (of total: 566086).
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.914 [0x7fc7e6ffd700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.1.102:40340] 200 GET /video/:/transcode/universal/session/b761097350bc033e-com-plexapp-android/base/00023.ts (17 live) TLS 8ms 488352 bytes (pipelined: 8)
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.914 [0x7fc7e6ffd700] DEBUG - Removed transcode data consumer, active count 2 => 1
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.921 [0x7fc7e67fc700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.1.102:40338] 200 GET /video/:/transcode/universal/session/b761097350bc033e-com-plexapp-android/base/00024.ts (17 live) TLS 8ms 566086 bytes (pipelined: 9)
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:15.921 [0x7fc7e67fc700] DEBUG - Removed transcode data consumer, active count 1 => 0
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:16.212 [0x7fc7e6ffd700] DEBUG - Auth: authenticated user 1 as my_username
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:16.212 [0x7fc7beffd700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.1.251:56767 (Subnet)] GET /statistics/bandwidth?timespan=6 (17 live) TLS GZIP Signed-in Token (my_username)
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:16.216 [0x7fc7e67fc700] DEBUG - Completed: [192.168.1.251:56767] 200 GET /statistics/bandwidth?timespan=6 (17 live) TLS GZIP 3ms 1515 bytes (pipelined: 43)
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:16.323 [0x7fc79f7fe700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.1.102:40340 (Subnet)] GET /video/:/transcode/universal/session/b761097350bc033e-com-plexapp-android/base/00025.ts (17 live) TLS Signed-in
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:16.323 [0x7fc79f7fe700] DEBUG - Asked for segment 25 from session.
Jun 11, 2020 12:02:16.324 [0x7fc79f7fe700] DEBUG - Returning segment 25 from session
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Many thanks for your help! (and sorry for my late reply)
Well, I tried nearly everything again… reinstalling plex, the Nvidia driver … no luck. But I think I found the culprit. The Quadro M2000 is only sitting in a tiny x4 slot and I think that’s why nearly everything fails. Could be luck transcoding works with the mobile app, who knows…
I´ll try it in a different system with a proper x16 slot and let you know!

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Did you ever get to the bottom of this? it sounds a whole lot like the issue myself and another user are experiencing here: Converting to a lower quality fails with Hardware-Accelerated Streaming in Plex Web

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EDIT: I solved all my issues by installing the nvidia-450 driver as suggested here Converting to a lower quality fails with Hardware-Accelerated Streaming in Plex Web

Well. I tried the M2000 on a different board (with x16 and ubuntu 20.04) as I said and it works as it should, also the lower resolution options work fine. So I need to upgrade my server, no problem on the plex server-side.

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