@johnnycole said:
I don’t believe in optimizing my media to work across different hardware platforms, I want the file as compressed as it can be while being as close to lossless as possible.
Why can’t you do both at the same time?
or watching 1300 miles away on my Mom’s 5.1 Bose system on a 65 inch 1080p tv in her living room, I want the best experience.
That’s the thing. If you want the absolute best video you can’t transcode it on the fly. You have to encode it up front in the format that will be needed. Any time you transcode on the fly (CPU or HW) you ARE loosing detail.
You can have A or B, pick one because the moment you start dropping bits on the floor, they’re gone. Drives and network are a lot cheaper than monster processors. Why not just rip it and be done.? Keep the master pristine and then transcode down as needed per client. That’s what most of us do
I’m just wondering has anyone been able to get better than software transcoding results using hardware (in a virtual environment would be a plus, since that’s my topology)? Has the (hardware) transcoding engine been optimized where it can utilize the advanced hardware features of high end video cards that are availabe to the consumer (and enterprise) customers today? If not, is there a timeline…or is hardware transcoding just a gimmick that will be used occocianally (while compromising the quality of the file)?
I understand (but still a bit confused) Imagine telling that to someone rendering UHD video with Adobe Premier that dropped 1000/3000+ dollars on a video card(s). They stopped using the software rendering engine many ( many) years ago. I kinda got the hint back in December, when we were testing the initial beta, and the Nvidia chipset was limited to only 2 hardware transcoded streams. Hopefully we’ll get some progress in the near future…
*And please let’s not get into the Transcoding vs Rendering debate…thanks
If you want more threads from the nvidia chipset, you are welcome to take that up with the nvidia support team. Maybe Adobe stopped using software rendering but Plex isn’t Adobe.
I hear ya…it took Adobe many versions of their hardware rendering engine to finally get it right (NVIDIA’s major breakthrough was when they introduced their CUDA technology). Now that Plex is offering a checkbox that states “Hardware Trasncoding (when available)” it will also take time to iron out the wrinkles. Personally, I was looking at a AMD solution (utilizing OpenCl). I’m optimimistic that one day the Plex engine will be able to run better utilizing a pure hardware (GPU) transcoding solution vs software (think software raid vs on chip controller raid…both work, but which technology is now the norm, both consumer and enterprise alike).
@johnnycole said:
I’m just wondering has anyone been able to get better than software transcoding results using hardware (in a virtual environment would be a plus, since that’s my topology)? Has the (hardware) transcoding engine been optimized where it can utilize the advanced hardware features of high end video cards that are availabe to the consumer (and enterprise) customers today?
Within the context of realtime hardware transcoding by PMS—No.
If not, is there a timeline…or is hardware transcoding just a gimmick that will be used occocianally (while compromising the quality of the file)?
Not a gimmick for users that want to use QSV for more concurrent streams than the CPU can perform in SW.
Thanks Achilles…I can see that it’s clearly targeting the users that are trying to get the most out of their hosting platform, aka the masses (and not so much for the extremists like myself). I can apppreciate that.
@johnnycole said:
(think software raid vs on chip controller raid…both work, but which technology is now the norm, both consumer and enterprise alike).
The norm is actually software raid in homes and in the enterprise market RAID has outlived it usefulness. Real enterprises like mine use object based storage. RAID is inefficient and not scalable. Maybe you have heard of the terms: SDI (Infrastructure), SDN (Networking), SDS (Storage) and SDC (Compute). Hardware is comodity now in the enterprise space and this trend will trickle down to the SMB and SoHo market in time. I have been involved in building out some of the largest infrastructures that you most likely know about or use.
Ok…let’s just end this here…no need to get into any contests in IT familiarity. If you must know, I have deployed over a ? Servers over ? Continents…worked for the ? IT company in the world…got my first puter in 79…had the c64 four months before it went to market. Go yell at Gigabyte, MSI, ASUS, etc and tell them to remove their on chip raid controllers (I’m not saying people use raid, I’m just saying who the hell uses software raid anymore if they do)? I just had a simple question about hardware transcoding…no need to break out our CSV’s, bro.
PS- I was in Homdel NJ at Bell Labs, as a kid (where my Grandfather worked for 46 years) and got to see them roll out UNIX…pretty neat, huh (the first OS)?!
Yeah, best not hose down the deck any further with CV’s. It was fun building CPUs in the 70s. I actually miss it. I don’t miss being on 24 hour on-station call 365 days a year (I worked for ‘that’ customer).
Now I sit back, look at what I was a part of helping build, and seeing it go out into the public is really rewarding.
@johnnycole said:
Ok…let’s just end this here…no need to get into any contests in IT familiarity. If you must know, I have deployed over a ? Servers over ? Continents…worked for the ? IT company in the world…got my first puter in 79…had the c64 four months before it went to market.
Well I work for one of the big three and not Plex. Ninjas are forum volunteers. Glad to hear you deployed as many if possibly not more than I have globally.
Go yell at Gigabyte, MSI, ASUS, etc and tell them to remove their on chip raid controllers (I’m not saying people use raid, I’m just saying who the hell uses software raid anymore if they do)?
Plenty of people do with NAS boxes.
I just had a simple question about hardware transcoding…no need to break out our CSV’s, bro.
I believe several of us have already answered your various questions on the topic. You missed my points entirely. The pendulum has swung over to the software side at the moment. Future hardware may eventually provide the quality of software decode/encode for h264. As of today is does not across all platforms.
PS- I was in Homdel NJ at Bell Labs, as a kid (where my Grandfather worked for 46 years) and got to see them roll out UNIX version 1…pretty neat, huh (the first OS)?!
Awesome that your family heritage contributed to our Matrix but saying it is the first OS is misinformation. There were several other OSes before it.
Unfortunately, Microsoft recently removed the RemoteFX feature in the latest version of their hypervisor (Server 2019). Which makes my original question (thread) irrelevant. I’m still interested in true on-chip (video card) hardware transcoding…but will wait this one out. I’ll remain a happy camper, as long as my PMS beast keeps on trucking and doesn’t choke on my numerous H.265 streams.
I have since replaced my Skull Canyon with a Hades Canyon running Ubuntu. It is happily transcoding HEVC 10-bit in HW with acceptable quality for remote streams. Plex still needs to update PMS to support certain codecs like VC1 for HW transcoding. They also need to add tone-mapping for HDR->SDR to the transcoder.
