HW transcoding not working reliably

Plex Media Server Desktops & Laptops
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1

Server Version#: 1.24.2.4973
Player Version#: Roku 6.9.1

Hardware/software of server:
Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Celeron G4900
Intel HD Graphics 610

Settings:
Use hardware acceleration when available is on
Use hardware-accelerated video encoding is on
Lifetime Plex Pass

Troubleshooting:
Updated chipset, BIOS, and Intel graphics drivers
Unchecked Enable HDR tone mapping, does nothing
Plugged in a monitor

Files:
Most advanced codec is HEVC x265 10-bit
No HDR

I am having trouble with hw transcoding. It seems sometimes it wants to work, sometimes it does not.

Some examples:

These are files that are encoded the same exact way. One plays with both hw transcoding, other does not.

What other settings or changes am I missing? Does hw transcoding just not work sometimes? Is there a bug on Windows and Linux would work better?

Thanks for any insight, and I can upload any logs if requested.

2

From the looks of it, both videos are being transcoded using the iGPU’s hw-acceleration.
The only difference appears to be that the 2nd video is not decoded by the iGPU.

For specifics of why that is you’ll need to look into your server logs (or share them so somebody from the forum can take a look).

3

I am having the exact same issues and this worked NP last week. WTF?

4

I have the logs here.

And yes, I should have specified it doesn’t decode, which takes the most CPU and makes my dual-core hurt.

Other times it doesn’t do either, it seems very random.Plex Media Server Logs_2021-09-14_19-03-43.zip (1.3 MB)

5

Yes, same thing is happening to me, it work sometimes, but not all the times.

6

Please go to Settings > [Server Name] > General and enable Enable Plex Media Server debug logging (but keep Enable Plex Media Server verbose logging disabled!!).

Reproduce the issue and upload a new set of logs.
Your current set shows a number of driver errors but don’t have the necessary debug details.

7

Sorry about that, here is the logs after I enabled that and got a show to only encode.Plex Media Server Logs_2021-09-14_19-39-02.zip (1.4 MB)

8

Does your Plex server have an active Nvidia GPU?
Based on your logs the server is trying to use that GPU and fails to do so. It’s not using the iGPU of your Celeron.
As a consequence there’s e.g. messages like this:

Sep 14, 2021 19:37:38.393 [2868] DEBUG - [Transcode] TPU: hardware transcoding: enabled, but no hardware decode accelerator found

PS: you seriously need to rethink your file naming…

TV Shows
  Marvel's Spider-Man
    Marvel's Spider-Man Specials
      Marvel's Spider-Man - 0x01 & 0x02 & 0x03 & 0x04 & 0x05 & 0x06 - Origin Shorts Introduction! & Origin Shorts Observation! & Origin Shorts Hypothesis! & Origin Shorts Prediction! & Origin Shorts Experimentation! & Origin Shorts Conclusion!.mkv

should be

TV Shows
  Marvel's Spider-Man
    Specials
      Marvel's Spider-Man - s00e01-e06.mkv
               -- OR --
      Marvel's Spider-Man - s00e01-e06 - Origin Shorts Introduction! & Origin Shorts Observation! & Origin Shorts Hypothesis! & Origin Shorts Prediction! & Origin Shorts Experimentation! & Origin Shorts Conclusion!.mkv
9

I did just swap the drive from my old server which used to have an AMD GPU. I’ll run Display Driver Uninstaller for both AMD and Nvidia, haven’t tried that yet. But definitely no other GPU.

Would having an active Microsoft Remote Desktop session affect hw transcoding at all? It shows up under display drivers as “Microsoft Remote Desktop Adapter.”

Thanks for the heads up on those files, probably the only ones left that are named like that, everything else should be the correct format.

10

Driver uninstall did nothing, still not using hw transcoding. I’m thinking my next step is reinstalling Windows, any other things to try before that?

11

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