Server Version#: 4.30.2
Player Version#: Latest across several devices
Hi Guys. My first post here. Really hope someone can help me out.
Basically, I have got three different builds to play around with, which are,
A. AMD Ryzen 7 1700 + MSI X470 GAMING PLUS MAX + GTX 1650
B. Intel G5400(with HD610) + ASUS TUF B365M GAMING PLUS
C. Intel G4560(with HD610) + ASROCK H270M-ITX AC
Build A is my main UNRAID server at home and it has been running perfectly for about a year except for the well known ‘NVIDIA graphics card stuck in P-state P0 after transcoding’ issue. I’m fine with SSHing the server once a day before going to bed to kill the PMS process to put the graphics card back to sleep so nevermind.
Build B & C are my experimental builds just for trying out something new. Recently I’m trying to do a second UNRAID server to specifically run the Plex server. I checked WIKIPEDIA about Intel Quick Sync Video and got that the integrated graphics in both Kabylake(G4560) and CoffeeLake(G5400) should be able to do encoding and decoding of 4K HEVC video. Since all VMs and Dockers will be running on the main server, the second one doesn’t really need a powerful cpu and hence either of my builds B or C should be fine to do the job.
However, when I tried to test the hardware transcoding on them(both), I found that neither of them would do it properly. When streaming a 4k HEVC 10-bit video from any device(ios, android, pc) and intentionally picked ‘convert to 1080p 20mbps’, neither build will show ‘hw’ in the dashboard. Meanwhile, they both perfectly do hardware transcoding from H264(in whatever resolution) to H264.
I firstly suspected it was something about my UNRAID settings. But after I carefully checked everything, I didn’t find anything wrong. I used ‘modprobe i915’ to drive the gpu, I used ‘chmod -R 777 /dev/dri’ to give docker rights to utilise the gpu. I added ‘/dev/dri’ as a device in Plex docker. I checked ‘Use hardware acceleration when available’ and to activate hardware transcoding(and of course I have a plex pass). And in fact since both builds B & C can handle H264 to H264 transcoding hardwarely, I don’t think it has anything to do with activating the hardware transcoding function itself.
Then I thought maybe it was because the graphics card(HD 610) in both CPU was too weak to do the job. So I did some experiments with both builds. I installed Windows 10 on them and run PMS windows. what?? They both did hardware transcoding from the same 4K HEVC 10-bit video to H264(in whatever resolution) PERFECTLY!!
Afterwards, I did another small experiment. I went back to UNRAID platform, and unchecked the ‘Use hardware-accelerated video encoding’ boxes in the PMS settings. YES! Now I can see the ‘hw’ sign on the decoding part in the dashboard. But of course not in the transcoding part because the encoding was set to use CPU’s power.
So now I’m really confused. It seems that it has nothing to do with the capabilities of the HD 610 but more likely a software(or rather a driver) issue related to Intel’s Graphics working on Linux?? And it also implies a failure in the encoding process. I tried to search the similar issues that other people might have encountered but could hardly find any. Is it that everyone else is using NVIDIA cards on UNRAID for transcoding or I’m the only one has got this issue among those who use intel’s graphics?
Thanks guys. Waiting for your replies.
