If you don’t have the Radeon card yet, I would probably recommend getting one of the Nvidia GTX series. With the upcoming 4.3.4 release, QNAP has said they will support both Nvidia & AMD for GPU passthrough for VS, but ONLY Nvidia for GPU passthrough for things like QTS, HD Station, etc. which I am assuming will also mean Plex.
I’m sorry I don’t understand this.
Presumably VS means Virtualization Station and your talking about graphics passthrough use for it.
Are you saying that if there are PCIe slots in the NAS you can add in a graphics card which overrides the on-board graphics?
I didn’t think you could even get graphics cards for these PCIe slots.
In any case the TVS-463 and the other models referred to in the subject have on-board Radeon graphics so there’s no issue with getting a Radeon graphics card, the device already have Radeon graphics. And I would like Plex to be able to use hardware transcoding with it as it does with the Intel based on-board graphics of a good number of other QNAP NAS models.
It is also an OR scenario… you can have GPU passthrough to VS OR to QTS basically, but not both simultaneous. My assumption is this is due to different driver/kernel requirements. VS leverages KVM’s VFIO model, where QTS would be using the /dev/dri functionality.
I hadn’t considered these limitations but they must be present for the existing Plex hardware transcoding implementation (and unavoidable) that use the Intel GPU so that probably doesn’t change the scope of what I’d like to be able to do.
Ian
I am sorry IAN, I was thinking of the Radeon as a stand-along GPU, not the embedded Radeon in the x73/x63.
I get it Chuck. I was just clarifying that the card has zero to do with Live TV or DVR function. Explaining what the actual card function is. Hardware that bridges QAM to IP x6.
I had a look at the the Plex DVR FAQ and a quick look at the card kernel driver source.
I can see it does appear to register a network interface but I don’t think the kernel driver implements either of the two interfaces Plex DVR will talk to.
So not much point in working on getting the kernel module to build for QNAP unless someone else that knows the interfaces can look at the kernel source and work out if I’m mistaken.
sigh, so I had a go at building the shared libraries for Radeon hardware transcoding on my QNAP.
AFAICS this is a bit of a waste of time.
In the end I got the error message:
ERROR - [FFMPEG] - B frames are not supported (0x1).
which appears to be true from what I can gather from a web search.
It turned out that my NAS wanted the r600_drv_video.so shared library (and its dependencies), not the radeonsi_drv_video.so as I originally thought, maybe there’s a mistake there too.
I think B frames are pretty common in peoples encodes so not greatly useful, unless I’m mistaken and this can be sorted out with an update or patch to the drivers.
So if anyone is familiar with the hardware transcoding sub-systems and can help then I’d appreciate hearing about it.
I’ve avoided cross development for a long time even though I’ve needed to use it from time to time.
This little excursion has been interesting though, there’s an awful lot I don’t know about toolchains and cross development!
I have made several comments about HW transcoding (using external GPUs) in throughout the forum.
I have it working. I am working with QNAP to resolve a problem with the new NVIDIA driver update. Something broke the VAAPI interface. It might be QTS itself. We’re on it.
Otherwise, I have all the support ready in PMS to use the card once we have the drivers resolved.
I was testing with a GTX 1060 and it did a great job until I updated everything (QTS / GPU DRV) to current revision.
Will do. I have requested, and likely granted, permission to have a forum-preview/testing thread before taking such a creature mainstream.
I’m having an issue at present with QNAP (again). I’m in direct contact with QNAP engineering. I’ve requested a couple files from them. I should have them early this coming week. With them, I will be able to determine where the problem is rooted.
@zarbybeta The Nvidia/QNAP HW transcoding is now live in the latest plex pass version. I’m using an Add In Card (Quadro P2000) so I’m not sure if the new integration fits your use case.
Plex Version 1.15.0.659
I’ve been using it over the pass week without any issues.
Just to confirm/clarify though Chuck, this only applies to systems where Nvidia cards are detected in QTS, and NOT the embedded AMD GPU’s in the x73 family. Correct??
i usually have 3-5 people nightly using my plex server remotely so the more hardware trans coding the better. Likewise, even if the internal GPU on the ryzen chips are enabled for hardware trans coding, would there be any limitation?
TVS-x73 family doesn’t support AFAIK option for adding graphics card via PCIe, only the TS-x73 family does. Also it is NOT a Ryzen based CPU in it either.
Sorry yes, just a R series. The problem with QNAP Australia in its marketing shows the TVS-873 as Plex compatible and ability to hardware encode and real time transcoding . Its a bit of a misleading advertisement.
Is there any reason technically why a graphics card wont work in the unit?
