HEVC Hardware Transcoding No Longer Working

General Discussions
1

Hello fellow Plexers,

I bought myself a GTX 1050 Ti a few month back to transcode 4K files to my friends / family that do not have the sufficient hardware or bandwidth to watch my 4K files.
It’s been working great up until very recently (not exactly sure when as I always direct play these myself).
I just noticed today when someone was trying to watch a 4K file that it was transcoding anywhere between 0.3 - 0.8x and causing buffering issues.

I have found that locally when I try and force a transcode that it buffers / does not start playing for me either.
So I spent the day updating Plex, trying different nVidia drivers, disabling and reinstalling the GPU to no avail.

It seems to not want to work no matter what I do. Here is a log excerpt:

`Job running: EAE_ROOT='\\?\C:	emp\PMS\Transcode\Sessions\EasyAudioEncoder' FFMPEG_EXTERNAL_LIBS='C\:\\Users\\Dejh0n\\AppData\\Local\\Plex\ Media\ Server\\Codecs\\4b51335-1293-windows-i386\\' XDG_CACHE_HOME='C:\Users\Dejh0n\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server\Cache\' XDG_DATA_HOME='C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\Resources\' X_PLEX_TOKEN='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server\PlexTranscoder.exe -codec:0 hevc -hwaccel:0 dxva2 -hwaccel_fallback_threshold:0 10 -codec:2 ac3 -ss 12.010665666666668 -i \\NAS-F6-75-66\media\Movies\Kingsman.The.Golden.Circle.2017.2160p.UHD.BluRay.REMUX.HDR.HEVC.Atmos.mkv -filter_complex [0:3]scale=3840:2160[0];[0:0][0]overlay[1];[1]scale=w=1920:h=1080[2];[2]format=pix_fmts=nv12[3];[3]select=gte(t\,11.970303)[4] -filter_complex "[0:2] aresample=async=1:ocl='stereo':osr=48000[5]" -map [4] -metadata:s:0 language=eng -codec:0 h264_mf -b:0 18683k -hw_encoding:0 1 -r:0 23.975999999999999 -force_key_frames:0 expr:gte(t,12+n_forced*3) -map [5] -metadata:s:1 language=eng -codec:1 aac_mf -b:1 233k -bsf:1 framedrop=count=1 -f dash -min_seg_duration 3000000 -skip_to_segment 5 -time_delta 0.0625 -manifest_name http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/3bbt0o822huzu9d6a16hpsxj/61a64ad8-9fa9-4cd5-9873-ec8a59cf3cda/manifest -avoid_negative_ts disabled -map_metadata -1 -map_chapters -1 dash -start_at_zero -copyts -y -nostats -loglevel quiet -loglevel_plex error -progressurl http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/3bbt0o822huzu9d6a16hpsxj/61a64ad8-9fa9-4cd5-9873-ec8a59cf3cda/progress`

Hardware is:
i3-3220
GTX 1050 Ti
500GB 860EVO Samsung SSD
PMS version: 1.13.1.5063
CAT6 cabling internally/locally (no WiFi)

Any help would be hugely appreciated

2

As a follow up to this I tried playing another 4K file and these are the logs:

! May 20, 2018 10:08:43.739 WARN Timed out waiting for segment.
! May 20, 2018 10:08:43.739 WARN Timed out waiting for segment.
! May 20, 2018 10:08:43.638 WARN Transcode runner appears to have died.
! May 20, 2018 10:08:43.638 WARN Transcode runner appears to have died.
! May 20, 2018 10:08:22.971 ERROR [Transcoder] Error initializing output stream 0:0 – Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
! May 20, 2018 10:08:22.942 ERROR [Transcoder] [h264_nvenc @ 040d5fc0] InitializeEncoder failed: invalid param (8)
! May 20, 2018 10:08:16.045 ERROR [Transcoder] Error initializing output stream 0:0 – Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
! May 20, 2018 10:08:16.007 ERROR [Transcoder] [h264_nvenc @ 04118080] InitializeEncoder failed: invalid param (8)

4

Thanks for your follow up trumpy81.

It was not doing this for all my HEVC files but was for my h264 files as I have hardware transcoding on my old i3-3220 has that hardware encoding onboard.

I believe I have managed to fix the issue. It was caused by a ‘clean installation / update’ of the nVidia drivers which wiped out the Plex preferences / settings in the nVidia control panel.
After re-adding the PMS folder in the control panel Program settings it has come right and is working again.