How to enable hardware acceleration on linux and why transcoding strip HDR?

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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Server Version#: 1.18.4.2171
Player Version#: xbox one latest/ plex web4.12.3 / iOS latest
CPU: AMD Ryzen™ 5 3400G with Radeon™ RX Vega 11 Graphics
Plex Media Server Logs_2020-04-05_16-33-13.zip (1.4 MB)

I have checked Use hardware acceleration when available and add user to video group.
System has renderD128 and card0 under /dev/dri:
➜ ll /dev/dri
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Apr 5 16:16 by-path
crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 0 Apr 5 16:16 card0
crw-rw-rw- 1 root render 226, 128 Apr 5 16:16 renderD128

What did I miss? I still can’t get hardware acceleration.

And why transcoding strip HDR? HDR is a very important part. Without it the video looks like total different! I don’t even want to watch the videos without HDR.

BTW, why can’t we just don’t transcoding videos? I have tried latest docker plex server. When I checked disable trancoding options, the player says I don’t have enough CPU?

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You have the wrong CPU vendor, hardware transcoding only works with Intel CPUs currently.

Regarding HDR transcoding you need to supply more details. In general Plex transcodes if the client cannot decide the video or audio or subtitle stream itself. So you have to take care that your client is able to do this.

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I think you also could use certain NVIDIA GPUs for hardware transcoding. But as Coxeroni said, CPU hardware transcoding requires INTEL CPUs. To be more specific, CPU must have QuickSync.

Not certain if Plex strips HDR content when transcoding in general. I actually dont think so. But regarding QuickSync, only Apollo Lake and newer are technically capable of 10 bit streams.

See:


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If the video is transcoded, HDR info is lost. If only audio is transcoded, this should remain untouched.

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So AMD user not a user? Looks like a joke to me. PLEX really should increase support for AMD.

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It is not my decision, just a publicly known fact.

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Yeah, thank you for your replay. Just me complained Plex.

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Thanks. But I think Plex should add support for AMD. There will be more and more AMD users.

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Hi everyone,
Just a bit of what I know as well to add here as well.

  1. Quick Sync Video is an Intel-only capability and was the first thing Plex supported.
  2. Nvidia was the next hardware acceleration supported.
  3. HDR content isn’t tone mapped yet via libva (the vaapi)
  4. Late 2019, Engineering had told us they’d consider adding AMD (Mesa) support. We’ve not heard either way what was decided.
  5. They might be working on it now. They don’t tell us their roadmap nor do they tell us when they’re working on somehing big. This would be a “Something big”.

Is there good reason to add AMD? - Yes.
Is the AMD market share growing? - Yes.
Can you install the AMD drivers in your Linux system and have PMS use them for HW acceleration? No. libmesa support is not yet there. :frowning:

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Thanks. It’s good to know. Hope plex support AMD soon.

1 Like
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I totally agree that AMD support would be a good thing. But nevertheless, Plex requirements for hardware transcoding are documented very well and of course one should check those requirements important for a use case prior to building a brand new server.

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