Is transcoding working?

[dillspooch]

I now have a GTX 1050Ti in my TVS-673. I have a few 4K titles, one of them (Apollo 11) still suffers from buffering on my home (gigabit ethernet) network. I’m wondering whether transcoding is working. How can I tell when it’s active?

Related post: Hardware Transcoding on a QNAP TVS-673 - Plex Media Server / NAS & Devices - Plex Forum

[ChuckPa]

When the GPU is working, you’ll see this in the Activity - Dashboard as well as being able to monitor the actual card using the Nvidia utilities.

The PMS logs will also tell you the decoder or encoder are NVDEC / NVENC respectively.

[dillspooch]

Thanks chuck. That was very helpful.
I looked at the PMS activity and at first saw that the film was playing at native 4K.

It was actually playing quite well, only buffering every 40 seconds or so with a 3 to 4 second wait.

I changed the on the TV to switch from 80.2Mbps (4k) to 20 Mbps 1080p to force PMS to transcode, with the activity player showing the following image…

So transcoding is kicking in but it was unwatchable because it was buffering once every second for about a second, so constantly on and off.
The Nvidia GPU utility won’t open on my QNAP, not sure what to do with that.
I checked dashboard which shows as follows…

Although it shows the GPU at 0% I was often seeing it go up to 19% and then drop back to 0.
I’ve downloaded the PMS logs.
I looked at the raw content but its beyond my understanding. I’m not convinced it’s using the Nvidia gpu to transcode.

I’m pleased my network almost copes with 80 MBps stream. It’s going through 2 managed gigabit switches, and one unmanaged gigabit switch (all Netgear) before it gets to the TV. I’m considering upgrading my network to 10Gbps components. The only thing that won’t be is the TV itself, but perhaps it will help. It’s all CAT6 cabling. I can’t reduce the number of switches involved due to home and office layout, but perhaps it might improve the performance enough to reduce the 4K buffering of direct play. It will certainly reduce the time it takes to upload the MKV containers.

Ultimately I do want to get the transcoding working so I can take advantage of it when I’m away from home and so that family and friends get a better viewing experience.

[dillspooch]

Forgot the PMS log(File removed)

[dillspooch]

PS: The NVidia GPU driver is 4.0.1 and the NvKernelDriver is V4.5.1.1480.

[ChuckPa]

Regarding:

So transcoding is kicking in but it was unwatchable because it was buffering once every second for about a second, so constantly on and off.

That implies Subtitles or networking to the player. 20 Mbps is not demanding.

I just got a new TV (4K) and quickly learned that with it playing 80 Mbps DirectPlay, adding a 25 Mbps movie pushed the WiFi over the edge (congestion).

I had to move the slower tv to the other (slower) wifi for balance.

Possibly your situation?

As for the GPU utility, I don’t own a card so can’t assist there.

[dillspooch]

Thanks Chuck.
Subtitles are turn off. I’m using gigabit ethernet throughout to the TV (I put ethernet all around the house years many years ago).
It’s strange that it’s buffering every 1 second at 20Mbps yet only buffers once every 40 seconds for an 80Mbs 4K stream. It makes me think the transcoding isn’t work right on the GTX1050Ti card in the TVS-670. Is there a way to tell?