Thought i would start uodating tome old SD movies to H264 4K (Future ready for when i get a 4K TV).
However when trying to playback on my WIn10 PC (which is the server), i get constant buffering… i can see my CPU and GPU never get more than 60% loaded with or without harware encoding… ive tried adding the transcode directories to bitdefender as well as disabling bitdefender completely… but no such luck…
All my PC stats are below from CPU Benchmark. The movie files are on the seagate baracuda and plex and windows are on the Samsung SSD as well as the transcode directory…
What am i doing wrong… surely my CPU isnt too slow???
Server Version#: 1.23.3.4707
Player Version#: Plex Web 4.57.4
Plex for Windows a more capable client than Plex Web. It can direct play most audio and video formats, including scaling 4K video to non-4K displays and tonemapping HDR to SDR.
From a “transcoding 4K HDR video with Plex” point of view, you will be better off using Intel Quick Sync Video in the i5 than the AMD GPU.
Plex transcodes video to H.264 SDR (8-bit color).
HDR to SDR tonemapping is still a beta feature. In Windows, it is supported on the CPU and partially on Intel QSV graphics. There is no support for Nvidia or AMD GPUs (see support document below).
Plex uses the default graphics processor on a system. I’m not sure if there is a way to configure things for Plex to use Intel graphics and others to use the AMD.
You could also disable HDR Tonemapping in Settings → Transcoder. However, if you transcode HDR video it will have washed out colors, due to the lack of tonemapping.
Glad you have it working. Thanks for the reference on assigning GPUs to Plex.
If you want confirmation on which GPU Plex is using, you can look in the console or log files.
Look for lines with TPU:.
Here’s an example with Intel integrated graphics: Feb 13, 2021 07:32:23.697 [12112] DEBUG - [Transcode] TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: dxva2, final encoder: qsv
If the log entry does not list a decoder or encoder (final encoder: ), then transcoding is occurring in software, on the CPU.
To look in log files: Pull the log files via Settings → Troubleshooting. The ZIP file contains many log files. Look in Plex Media Server.log (wraps to .1, .2, etc) for lines with TPU.
To look in the console, go to Settings → Console. Filter for TPU: (otherwise there is too much info). The console is a real-time view of the log files. The TPU: entry appears when transcoding first begins. You’ll need to be looking at the console before streaming begins to catch it.
