Yeah, the setting you’re looking for is “can the Plex pass” and just use software transcoding like I did.
It’s clear that they don’t give a f… about Hw transcoding.
Edit:
I have no clue why it still says Plex Pass next to my username. I dropped it a month ago.
Well since i’m having the same issue I suppose I should chime in as well. Plex VM with passthrough-ed GTX1060, 16GB Ram and 6 E5-2620 2.0ghz cores.
Not sure the driver patch is working for me as I run BlueIris on the VM as well for security cameras and I have HW Acceleration turned on so it can also use the GPU. Yesterday I was doing some testing on this issue that i’ve tried to ignore… spun up an 10bit HEVC HDR movie and the CPU was maxed out and it barely played. GPU Usage was basically zero so it obviously wasn’t properly transcoding. Closed blue-iris to make sure the transcode limit wasn’t an issue on the GPU and restarted the stream and sure enough my GPU usage went up to about 8% each for decode/encode and CPU usage was good, so it seems my driver patch isn’t working. This was testing from my browser on a machine with a GTX1080 in it. Plex Media Player/Plex app from windows store didn’t even work at all when trying to stream this film.
Like others here, HEVC files play for around 30 seconds and then hiccups and buffers or does whatever it does for a few seconds despite CPU/MEM/GPU being far from maxed. I’ve also noticed that I have issues with H264 movies as well, just watched one last night and I have the picture freeze 4-5 times over the course of the movie while audio continues playing, it wasn’t just that one film either it happens on all of my movies
My normal client is my Samsung UN65KS8000 TV which direct streams everything. Normally plays it all seamlessly but I believe on both HEVC and H264 films I get that same issue where the picture freezes for a few seconds but audio continues normally.
I love PLEX but it is quite frustrating to spend a bunch of money on good hardware and try to share your investment with friends/family just to have issues like this. I am choosing to have faith that the devs are working on this with priority and hope to hear an update from them soon. I suspect its a royal pain of an issue or I think we’d have a resolution. I think that rather than bashing the devs we should just be asking for better updates on the issue so that we know a fix is coming, waiting sucks of course but it seems like the biggest issue is we don’t have any timeline or recent updates from anyone on if this is getting progress/attention.
I agree wholeheartedly jowoo919,
I think the biggest thing we are after apart from a resolution, is answers…
- Are the Devs aware of the issue? (I think this is a yes)
- Do the Devs know what is causing this?
- Are the Devs currently working to resolve this issue, and what priority does it have?
- Are the Devs working to resolve this on a per OS basis, or as a global fix?
- What is the expected timeline for the fix?
I think, if we can get some more detailed communication from Plex/Devs, the general unhappiness we have may subside a little…
Have you tried explicitly changing the subtitle burn-in mode to “Only image formats”?
Well guys. I’m testing out Emby.
They seem to have a solid platform that was very quick and easy to setup. Like Plex, its not menu rich for people who like to see a bunch of buttons we can push, just kind of short and to the point like Plex is. However, they do offer a number of transcoding options, showing the available hardware for transcoding and allowing you to prioritize what kind of encode/decode gets done on what available device. They also have THEMES. I get excited about changing the look of things to keep it fresh…
And more than anything related to this discussion the Devs are very active in the forums. I know this because i’ve been reading about transcoding issues there as unfortunately my problems haven’t magically gone away but things do seem to be working much better overall. The fact that the devs are very active in troubleshooting with the users makes me feel really good about their platform.
From some research before I installed it, it sounds like Emby used to be kind of weak but now has every bit as good a platform as Plex and the Devs are active in the forums. I paid for the lifetime pass years ago so I will keep Plex installed as an option. I think i’m going to bite off on Emby Lifetime and go ahead and have both platforms available to use, but for now i’m continuing to test.
Honestly it seems like HDR/HEVC is a very tricky thing right now for transcoding…like many have said you almost just have to have a direct-play capable client. Devs provided some very interesting information in Emby forums though regarding zero-copy and hardware transcoding and how 8bit/SDR/HEVC files are easier as there is no tone-mapping to be done where-as that poses a problem with 10or12bit/HDR/HEVC files.
Whats clear though is we definitely have technical users on both ends who are able to provide logs and properly test both virtualized and bare-metal servers, but only one platform has Devs actively working with them.
Yes we are aware of the issue.
Yes we understand what is causing the issue, and what work is required to improve the performance when dealing with 4K source content.
We have had some other efforts that required development resources but we are now again working again on this effort. I myself am working on the testing side of our improved transcoder work which includes HW transcoding performance and offical Nvidia NVDEC support on Linux.
This does require both Linux and Windows specific work, along with testing.
As I am not the developer working on the solution, cannot provide an ETA. What I can say is that I am involved in the testing. Right now we are working through some issues with zero-copy support for Nvidia (Windows/Linux) and Intel (Windows) This allows to to have the GPU do the video scaling, and not having the GPU decoded frame copied to the CPU to scale, and then back to the GPU to encode which has a big perf hit with higher resolution content.
Once we have these pieces in place we will be able to open up a forum preview for users to play with and provide feedback on.
Thanks @chrisallen , I think many of us were waiting for an official anouncement. The popular view is that you’re adding features when the Plex “core” features are far from being finished/updated ( transcoding performance, linux problems with NVDEC, etc ). We know that’s a lot of work but people needs to know you are focusing in what we consider a “core” feature (more than Tidal ) and what make us love Plex.
I’m waiting for this fixes to decide if I upgrade my server with Plex o try another software. I hope we will recieve good news soon.
I have been having this issue starting 5 releases ago. The only difference is every 12 hours Plex causes a kernal Power failure on my server 2019 machine using a P2000 video card and locks it right up. No Blue screens nothing. If I disable hardware transcoding on Plex, I have no issues, but I am not utilizing my video card. I have made multiple posts and no response.Plex Media Server Logs_2019-07-30_09-48-39.zip (8.0 MB)
Thanks @chrisallen , and I also agree with @Kanashii though regarding core features
edit: and by core features, I mean the “corest of the core” … playing media which, if I’m not mistaken, is the primary purpose of plex…
@tmchow I didn’t know about that option and am now not sure if that affects the Plex app on my NVidia SHIELDs but I enabled it and it didn’t seem to help though I didn’t do any extensive testing beyond enabling subtitles and starting a 4K movie once and it paused/buffered within 20 seconds of starting.
However, last night I noticed the Android Pie 9.0 upgrade available for my SHIELDS so I patched everything and then upgraded all my apps and I tried playing a 4K movie (Alita: Battle Angel) with subtitles on two of my TVs+Shields and it played flawlessly. I don’t know if it was the Plex app upgrade, Android update or something the server setting that took affect after the reboot/restart. I sure hope it isn’t a fluke.
The UI of the Plex app definitely changed. It took a second for me to figure out how to customize it, but I really like it.
I’m curious if others have a similar experience.
When you do these tests, what does the Plex dashboard say about what is being transcoded and direct playing? For me, I noticed that when i changed the subtitle option to “Image only formats”, that it made more things direct play when I toggled subtitles. This was confirmed by looking realtime at the Plex dashboard while something was playing and toggling subtitles on and off.
Skimming through this thread it seems that the P2000 is a common failure point. I also have a P2000 in my Plex rig and noticed it really doesn’t do much. Some of you, however, say that a P4000 worked well. I’ve been tempted to just drop the hammer on an RTX 4000 Quadro for the server instead.
Has anyone had any luck with those?
Or, is this just money out the window until Plex is more ‘equipped’ for NVDEC?
My p400 worked fine (for me) and now I have been using gtx 1650 for a few months with no issues.
That said, I would not spend any money until plex officially supports linux nvdec, because they are obviously moving to a newer ffmpeg which may resolve a lot of other issues aside from supporting nvdec.
The RTX Quadro series is better, but IMO is kinda a waste right now. Pascal should be more than capable of ~10 4k transcodes, possibly more.
Use that site, there is no performance different between cards in the same generation, unless they have multiple NVENC chips (P5000). The P2000 and up support VM passthrough and unlimited transcodes natively, but both of those can be unlocked with some driver modifications. If you’re ok with 30 mins of screwing with the driver, just grab a P400.
The Turing cards (RTX) have been reported to have about double the NVENC (not sure about NVDEC) performance of Pascal, but Pascal should still be performing MUCH better than it is currently. Video memory is also somewhat important, but even my P400 seems to have no issue with 10 concurrent streams as far as video memory goes.
Its good to see that the devs are aware of the issue, aware of what is required, and actively working on it. I will definitely be willing to test out any beta/alpha versions that are available. Looking forward to a fix guys, keep up the good work!
Don’t know if anything changed… Updated to latest version. I can transcode 1-2 4K -> 1080P streams as long as subtitles aren’t on. Previously it seemed to struggle with just playing 1 with no subtitles.
With subtitles on can’t keep up…
Anymore movement?
From my experience, there appear to be several potential issues. I have an older GTX 970 and a P2000 in my Windows 10 machine.
-
Windows Media Player* is able to play back 4k HEVC HDR content without an issue using software decode. Windows Media Player never has to buffer or wait for the decoder to catch up.
-
Plex is unable to transcode 4k HEVC HDR content without buffering. 1 core is consistently maxed out (this is with only encode offloaded to the GPU). Even when I use the Nvidia control panel to assign only the P2000 to Plex, Plex can’t seem to use it for 4k HEVC HDR content.
-
Once I plug my monitor into my P2000 instead, I am able to use hardware decoding for 4k HEVC HDR content in both Windows Media Player*and Plex.
-
However, even with hardware decode, the stream constantly buffers in Plex (but once again, is fine in Windows Media Player). Once again, there is a CPU core maxed out at 100%.
tl;dr: if it doesn’t say “(hw)” by “4K (HEVC Main 10 HDR)”, make sure a display is connected to the P2000. However, doing that won’t fix everything, since Plex is maxing out a core at 100%.
*Playing HEVC in Windows Media Player requires installing “HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer” from MIcrosoft in the App Store. Note that despite Microsoft’s best attempts to make people think otherwise, no login is required to download and install this.
Edit: did some more experimenting. Looks like maxing a CPU core only happens if Plex needs to burn subtitles.
I haven’t seen an improvement here… still hovering around 0.7x-0.9x
EDIT: Version 1.16.5.1488 Windows
Well I did try out Emby, and while I think it has some very nice things that I wish would come to Plex, I find myself having not even used Emby, i’m still using Plex. What I did do was begrudgingly and frustratingly take the advice of the more seasoned users who have commented on this issue and simply separated my 4K/HDR/H265 Content into a separate library. I play 4K Content to my 4K TV with native Plex app and keep an another version in H264 in my normal library.
I still get to enjoy 4K Content and CAN share it with other users who have newer TVs with native support, and everyone else including me can watch any of my h264 content anywhere I want since hardware encoding actually works with my 1050ti on that content with no issue.
As frustrating as it may be, this issue has been around and will likely be around for a while and barring those of us who have a few grand lying around to build servers with 16K+ passmarks, I think you will be happier to suck it up and seperate it as I have.
FWIW, Its not an issue with HW transcoding working for me, both in Emby and Plex the HW decode and encode of H265 content is working, but the stream still buffers/pauses every so often inexplicably as others have mentioned. So there is something amiss causing it. Its not storage/cache as Plex lives on NVMe storage, its not CPU as I upgraded to E5-2643v2 with six vcpus at ~3.5ghz on Plex VM, and storage is 7 drives in a freenas pool on the same physical host with 10GB VMXnet3 between Freenas and Plex and a solid 48GB or so of ram on freenas. I suspect its something about zerocopy support and tone mapping among other things, but i’m not a dev or video content guru.
It doesn’t matter how many cores you have if Plex is maxing out one core when it burns image subtitles. Check if one of your cores is maxed at 100% utilization.
Our transcoder update is now live here:
Please test and let us know how things go
