Linux PMS no longer Hardware Transcoding using NVIDIA GPU

Server Version#: 1.18.2.2041
Player Version#: PMP (3.104.1)

OS: Debian Stable 10.20 and Linux Mint 19.2
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700HQ @ 8x 3.5GHz
GPU: GeForce GTX 960M
Nvidia Driver Version: 440.30.01
I have a gaming laptop that has Nvidia optimus graphics.

Just to give a little bit of history:
I was running a headless Debian server on this and I initially had hardware transcoding working with my gpu. I installed the Nvidia drivers through NVIDIA’s .run file and as I was transcoding a h264 video I saw the “(hw)” appear in the dashboard and double checked nvidia-smi to confirm and as expected there was two instances of the plex transcoder visible in the process list.

Several days later I noticed that the plex transcoder was no longer appearing in nvidia-smi. I double checked the logs and noticed that the transcoder was using the intel cpu instead of the graphics.

I still am not sure why it stopped working, I looked through my bash history and my best guess still is that maybe installing ffmpeg through debian repo’s broke it.

I reinstalled Debian, went through the same process, and had no luck.
I tried installing Linux Mint and installed the nvidia drivers through the PPA, no dice.
I tried installing libnvidia-encode1 and libnvidia-decode, didn’t work.

I would appreciate any tips, or guides to solve my problem.

Edit:
Forgot to include nvidia driver version

Is plex ignoring transcoding through nvidia because the iGPU is present?

You would ideally want transcoding done on the gpu rather than with the intel iGPU right?

Is this a design choice or a bug?

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