Server Version#: 1.15.0.659-9311f93fd
Player Version#: any
Hi everyone,
I just got my hands on the Hades Canyon NUC (NUC8i7HVK) with the Intel i7-8809G CPU that has the particular use of a dedicated AMD Radeon Vega M GH GPU on top of the Intel HD 630 Integrated Graphics.
Using hardware transcoding works just fine it’s just that it uses the AMD Vega dGPU instead of the Intel iGPU. I want to make use of Quick Sync (which from what I read is available for use, even though there are no display outputs connected to the iGPU) and so far I can’t seem to find a way.
Some other user around here used Windows 10 display settings to add PlexTranscoder.exe to use the Intel HD 630 but trying that for me it doesn’t seem to work, Plex falls back to software transcoding.
It seems people keep saying that even though no monitor can be connected to the iGPU, the Intel graphics CAN be used for OpenCL tasks and Quick Sync. I just can’t seem to find a way on how to do that.
Well people keep saying that even though the iGPU has no direct video out (all display outputs are linked only to the AMD dGPU), you CAN use the iGPU for OpenCL and Quick Sync tasks. So this is what I want to achieve, use the iGPU for Plex transcoding tasks.
So far I am unable to do that. Even a simple setup of using MPC-HC with LAV filters and selecting Intel QuickSync as Hardware device in LAV Video Decoder fails and falls back to software decoding (Selecting DXVA2 or D3D11 works fine but again, uses the dGPU for decoding).
I’ve seen another thread here about this working in Linux, but I’m trying to find a way to do this in Windows. Does Plex has any sort of xml setting or something to manually define the GPU to use for transcoding. As said before, forcing the use of the iGPU in Windows Display settings doesn’t seem to work (falls back to software transcoding).
You have done the hard part and that is getting Windows to recognize the gpu in the first place. The only suggestion would be on the graphics performance profile should be on Plexmediaserver.exe not the transcoder.
I can concur with @DaveBinM as I also am using a Hades Canyon that until recently was also headless. Updated to Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS HWE kernel for Gnome desktop. Will be a greater challenge under Windows to use Intel QSV with PMS as there is no way to select the one you want to use.
When you say headless do you mean without desktop (gui)? I have always run sans desktop to stop the gpu from being monopolized by xwindows although I have seen others that have no problem. I don’t know if the gpu drivers would even be loaded on a non-gui windows server install.
Yes, there’s no monitor or anything connected to the server. I believe on windows you need a dummy HDMI plug or something to allow it to use the iGPU for HW transcoding, but that’s not required on Ubuntu.
OK so I did the thing you suggested and added Plexmediaserver.exe to the graphics performance profile, and no luck.
I then added both Plexmediaserver.exe AND PlexTranscoder.exe and that DID seem to make a difference. As seen in the attachment it now looks like the Intel iGPU is used for Video decoding.
That’s a very good question, especially since, when using the dGPU for transcoding it showed an overall usage of about 24-26% but seeing the iGPU do it with only 17% seems a bit fishy. One idea might be that the iGPU is only used for decoding but not encoding, but the Plex Dashboard denies that, as it shows (hw) for both decoding and encoding…
Also CPU usage is relatively high as well… which is also weird.
Make sure you have debug logs on, then start a transcoded playback. From there, you should see a line mentioning TPU, showing the decoder and encoder. However, that looks as if it’s using HW transcoding.
Mine isn’t anything particularly special. It’s just the standard Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop image, installed on the NUC. No special drivers or anything needed.
