The issue is rooted with the incompatibility between the CPU’s ASIC and what the Intel i965 driver understands. This is why they migrated to the new iHD family.
Hopefully we will have a fix soon!
Any updates on a fix?
The upcoming transcoder update will include the necessary changes (updated Intel driver for the -9xxx processor). Intel changed to a different video driver series. PMS had to change to utilize it and be compatible with the older.
Are we talking months? Years? Weeks? 
Thanks for the update and great work.
It’s being tested now (full regression tested).
It’s not long. Staff is now assisting in the ‘shake down’ as well. We are all trying to break it.
Not long.
2 Likes
Yayayayayayay!
I can always see to it you don’t get the update
LOLOLOL
When this is released Plex will use the iHD driver from then on to do HW transcoding right? So that could mean that other errors with the i915 / i965 drivers are also solved? My GPU randomly locks up which means HW transcoding doesn’t work until I restart the box.
I have no insight what Engineering is doing but it would make sense to migrate to the newer iHD driver which is supposed to support all generations.
Yeah I would assume Plex would start using the iHD drivers. Asking because I got issues with the buggy i915 drivers which randomly hangs the iGPU, hope to see the new version soon.
Apologies for replying to a 2 week old thread but have there been any more rumblings about this? I’ve been keeping an eye on release logs and nothing there, so assuming this is still in testing?
Got an i7 9900k waiting to test out hw trasncoding 
Thanks in advance!
I can only say “It’s ready to test/use when they give it to us.”
Folks like to know dates & roadmaps.
But when an effort takes longer, then everyone gets edgy.
This is why Plex doesn’t give us dates. It’s a double-edged sword.
Sucks, doesn’t it? I hate not knowing either.
Nah I’m of the opinion if you’re gonna do something do it right, no matter how long it takes.
I was just making a rain check that’s all, not getting edgy about the lack of news:)
I hope they push them out soon… I just got the pi4 as a client, and I can’t do HDR “due to pending kernel updates”. BUT the latest LibrElec/Kodi did allow for hardware acceleration on the raspberry PI’s Broadcom CPU. To my surprise… It worked very well doing 4K content (HEVC)!
I also purchased the latest Intel NUC8, with hopes of swapping out my really old rack mounted server for something more powerfull (that also supports hardware acceleration) and much lower power costs. My NUC8 came with corrupted BIO’s config though, so after a 2 hour call with Intel we finally got it fixed. During our conversation, the rep confirmed that they only “officially” support windows at this time on the NUC8. (Very sad, I hate windows… it is a hog with resources…)
For kicks… I installed Windows 10 on the NUC8 (i5-8259U processor)… set it up to run the Plex media player from Plex’s site and enabled hardware acceleration. And it worked! It went from %100 CPU usage, fans full speed… to about %40 CPU and %70 GPU usage. (Really says something about how a $45 raspberry pi 4 can out perform a $600 Intel NUC8…) Keep in mind, this was client side, direct playing, decoding using hardware acceleration (not the server side transcoding it). So if anyone is waiting on drivers… and willing to switch to windows to get them. Your chances are likely to be very good.
I too am having the exact same problem as Agster though I’m running Fedora 30 server. & PMS v1.15.6.1079. Does PMS v1.16.2.1321 fix this issue? My logs look pretty much exactly the same (see below). I sure hope tp see a new PMS version soon
Jul 21, 2019 21:44:44.870 [0x7fc1b5d15700] INFO - Plex Media Server v1.15.6.1079-78232c603 - Fedora PC x86_64 - build: linux-x86_64 redhat - GMT -07:00
Jul 21, 2019 21:44:44.870 [0x7fc1b5d15700] INFO - Linux version: 30 (Server Edition), language: en-US
Jul 21, 2019 21:44:44.871 [0x7fc1b5d15700] INFO - Processor Intel® Core™ i5-9600K CPU @ 3.70GHz
Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API vaapi
Jul 21, 2019 21:44:46.265 [0x7fc1397fa700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - libva: /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/lib/dri/i965_drv_video.so init failed
Jul 21, 2019 21:44:46.265 [0x7fc1397fa700] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).
Nope, no fix yet at the moment, last post from ChuckPA was that it’s in testing and “not long” was beginning of June and now it’s almost beginning of August.
I see HW transcoding testing going on but don’t know the CPU or specific drivers. I think it’s fully migrated to new 
for all CPUs. I would have to ask to confirm.
HEVC 2160p is testing again now. This is another good sign. it’s the toughest one.
Great news! I’d love to use this new i5 processor!
I’ve likewise error messages since my upgrade to i7-9700.
I used to run the latest plex server inside a docker container.
Let us known if you want some early feedback with new hardware.
