@ChuckPA @jpirotte Is correct. We both tested 1.12.2.4896. In the thread I linked to before (in beta forum) here: http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/310828/plex-media-server-transcoder-preview-1-12-2-4896/p1
@jpirotte Did you test transcoding of any MPEG 1080P files? I don’t have any to test (I convert my media to a direct play format, only MPEG I can test is live TV, which is all Interlaced).
Regardless, as @jpirotte said, 720P MPEG2 Worked flawless, with very low CPU utilization, but 1080i would freeze every few seconds for just a moment.
Here’s a direct link to @jpirotte post with log files and demo file: http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1640827/#Comment_1640827
and here’s a direct link to @chrisallen reply suspecting HW deinterlacer not being enabled: http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1641489/#Comment_1641489
After that, we didn’t hear anything else.
@ChuckPA And all I really was asking, but can’t seem to get a yes or no, is will hardware de-interlacing ever be supported? Because if it’s not, Plex as a DVR is 50% useless to me, and I wasted money on a Plex pass and a HD Homerun. Or, like the original question was: Is this de-interlacing thing a show stopper for those of use with a 916+ (or Synology in general)?
I totally understand that the preview is just that, a preview. And far from complete. But from what you said before:
What I’m saying is, it doesn’t hardware de-interlace. Or, if it’s not intended to, I think that messaging needs to be much more clear.
Sorry if you’re frustrated with our questions, but its because I am frustrated with the answers. Like you say:
But if that doesn’t include de-interlacing, will it ever?
Sorry, I’ll stop bugging you.
Please see my post of 23-April.
I did typo… I humbly apologize
- HW decode: Yes.
- HW deinterlace: Unknown. deinterlacing is trivial regardless. Yadif is the best going which is what’s used
@silence21 I had also pretty much given up on this working for DVR’d content. Which really stinks. I think it’s in Plex’s best interest to get this working since they’re obviously spending a lot of marketing resource into their DVR feature. Requiring a powerful server is less than ideal for the average consumer.
To not need to rely on HW transcoding, I recently picked up a Shield TV which remote plays everything. And the DS916 seems to do ok with a single stream when the quality is not at the highest when streaming to a mobile/tablet device.
@ChuckPA Thanks for that, my attitude now is if it’s not working, I won’t expect it. I’m going to explore other options. Thanks for trying. Since Yadif is already included, and it doesn’t work properly with Live TV on my Synology at least, I’m giving up for now, I’ve spent too much of our time on this, for that, I apologize.
@jpirotte It really does stink. I love Plex, I’ve used it for I don’t know how long. I’ve spent hours re-encoding my DVDs and Blu-rays. I really wanted it to be my one stop shop. I bought the Connect HD Homerun specifically for Plex DVR. I also got a Apple TV because the Roku Plex app was giving me trouble. So now adding a Shield (and another device for my wife to learn), is pretty much a none starter.
Off topic, but have you tried Emby? I’m pretty sure it is also just a fork of XBMC, and also uses FFMPEG, so it may not be any better, but I think I’ll give it a shot. Seems like it’ll be hard to test, since they charge for Apple TV app, and DVR. Its funny, we want these things as a DVR, but we have to pay the subscription to even test DVR. I guess I can sign up for a month.
@silence21
In the ‘alternative configurations’ column, I have the ATV 4K (gen 5) and Infuse app as the player. There isn’t a single problem with any transcoding or deinterlacing whatsoever because it’s all done in the ATV 4K . To Plex, it’s a DirectPlay client.
@ChuckPA I had considered that, but my understanding was that it didn’t support Live TV? Does it support the Program Guide? If so, that’s a great solution!
@silence21 I tried emby, hw transcoding was the same and the players aren’t as polished as Plex.
@jpirotte Well, that’s a real shame. I think I’ll try it out, and I’ll get back to you. That said, my expectations are not high! I agree that Plex player is very polished, and part of what always brings me back to plex. I have tried Infuse a few times, and it feels very basic.
Hi @ChuckPA, Would you say the MPEG2 hardware transcoding is “done” for Synology, or still a work-in-progress?
I’m seeing transcoding speeds < 1 and buffering on 1080i OTA content (details below). BUT, the Synology CPU usage is just 30-40%, and it sounds like deinterlacing may not be the problem. So I’m wondering if 1) I might have some other problem to fix, or B ) it may be a glitch that will get better in a future PMS release.
I sure appreciate all of your help on here!
System Details: DS716+; 8GB RAM; memory compression off; 1.13.0.5003 x86_64; Roku Ultra; wired ethernet; ext4 volume; HDHomeRun Connect. Now Playing says “Transcoding MPEG2VIDEO (hw) to H264 (hw)”. Memory utilization is low at 10%. I’d be happy to upload logs if useful.
This is the first release of MPEG2 hardware support. If you look back on H.264 and H.265, I would expect some ‘tweaks’ are needed but silicon maturity is going to be the big issue.
That said, the N3150/N3160 are not going to give the same stellar performance as a J-series. The N-series is comparable to the 3xxx family whereas the J3355 and J3455 are 7xxx class (ApolloLake family) ASICS. That’s a big jump. I have an i7-3xxx desktop in addition to the i7-6700 (SkyLake) CPU in my NAS. There is no comparison in the two.
I would be interested in seeing DEBUG logs, captured from a quiescent system, of you recreating the playback session.
If you’re showing (hw) decode and (hw) encode, the N-series can easily consume 30% converting audio (example: 5.1 broadcast -> 2 channel web browser)
@ChuckPA out of curiosity does the ds918 handle 1080i hw deinterlacing with the current build without buffering? If I may suggest, since this is a popular format with dvr, it might be good to add columns for 1080i in the compatibility guide.
OK thank you @ChuckPA ! Hopefully the attached debug logs will come through. I’d love to hear that I’ve got something set up wrong, or there’s some other issue that can be fixed.
If not, then it sounds like I might just have to shop for a player that can Direct Play MPEG2 and play Plex OTA TV.
@msherrill said:
OK thank you @ChuckPA ! Hopefully the attached debug logs will come through. I’d love to hear that I’ve got something set up wrong, or there’s some other issue that can be fixed.
If not, then it sounds like I might just have to shop for a player that can Direct Play MPEG2 and play Plex OTA TV.
It’s not seeing your hardware.
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.130 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - Audio Stream: -1, Subtitle Stream: -1
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.131 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.131 [0x7f6b6c735700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.131 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item -1
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.131 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - MDE: : no direct play video profile exists for http/mpegts/
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.131 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - MDE: : no direct play video profile exists for http/mpegts//
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.131 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - MDE: : codec is unavailable for analysis
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.131 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - MDE: : codec is unavailable for analysis
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.132 [0x7f6b6c735700] ERROR - Unable to find title for item of type 5
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.132 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - MDE: : selected media 0 / -1
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.132 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - Cleaning directory for session be7e3f4b-7a20-40e6-a018-b70eca035686 ()
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.132 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - Starting a transcode session be7e3f4b-7a20-40e6-a018-b70eca035686 at offset -1.0 (state=3)
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.132 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Added session 0x7f6b6f8d67a0:be7e3f4b-7a20-40e6-a018-b70eca035686
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.136 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: enabled, but no hardware decode accelerator found
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.137 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder:
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.141 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - Job running: EAE_ROOT='/volume4/Plex/tmp_transcoding/pms-3631fb2a-6414-4d56-bb01-6c3462b5149e
Notice the TPU: hardware transcoding. It finds no encoder / decoder
Did you update DSM since in stalling PMS? If so, that’s why. I have put in a change to make PMS more resilient to Synology updates. It’s in QA now but not in 1.13.0.
All you need do is Uninstall 1.13.0 and reinstall it. Doing so rewrites the rules which Synology erases during their update process.
Hmm, the plot thickens… I see what you’re saying @ChuckPa but I reinstalled just this morning (to test ext4 vs btrfs). My DS notifications show the last DSM update almost a month ago on 4/13 (6.1.6-15266 Update 1). I did just reinstall again and the TPU messages look roughly the same to my untrained eye:
root@MartyStation:/volume4/Plex/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Logs# grep TPU Plex\ Media\ Server.log
May 05, 2018 19:09:17.620 [0x7ff0467ff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: enabled, but no hardware decode accelerator found
May 05, 2018 19:09:17.620 [0x7ff0467ff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder:
May 05, 2018 19:09:20.551 [0x7ff045735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: using hardware decode accelerator vaapi
May 05, 2018 19:09:20.552 [0x7ff045735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support present
May 05, 2018 19:09:20.552 [0x7ff045735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: not using zero-copy because video is interlaced
May 05, 2018 19:09:20.553 [0x7ff045735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: vaapi, final encoder: vaapi
May 05, 2018 19:09:25.098 [0x7ff04afff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: using hardware decode accelerator vaapi
May 05, 2018 19:09:25.099 [0x7ff04afff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support present
May 05, 2018 19:09:25.099 [0x7ff04afff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: not using zero-copy because video is interlaced
May 05, 2018 19:09:25.101 [0x7ff04afff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: vaapi, final encoder: vaapi`
The .spk file I installed is PlexMediaServer-1.13.0.5003-8fcb5b6e5-x86_64.spk, and what I see in Now Playing is:
Is there anything else I can check?
There is considerable difference.
Look at the last 3 lines of my previous post.
Compare the TPU lines to what you just posted.
What I posted from your logs:
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.136 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: enabled, but no hardware decode accelerator found
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.137 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder:
What you just posted from your updated logs after reinstalling
May 05, 2018 19:09:25.099 [0x7ff04afff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support present
May 05, 2018 19:09:25.099 [0x7ff04afff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: not using zero-copy because video is interlaced
May 05, 2018 19:09:25.101 [0x7ff04afff700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: vaapi, final encoder: vaapi`
Now the hardware transcoding capability is being seen again. The installer has re-established the permissions needed for PMS to access it.
Now it’s using hardware decoding of the MPEG2 and HW encoding of the output
Hmm, @ChuckPA it seems like those same messages are in my original set of logs as well, a couple seconds after the initial no-accelerator-found ones, at timestamp May 05, 2018 16:02:50:
plex-logs ツ grep TPU Plex\ Media\ Server.log
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.136 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: enabled, but no hardware decode accelerator found
May 05, 2018 16:02:48.137 [0x7f6b6c735700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: , final encoder:
May 05, 2018 16:02:50.606 [0x7f6b715a1700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: using hardware decode accelerator vaapi
May 05, 2018 16:02:50.607 [0x7f6b715a1700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: zero-copy support present
May 05, 2018 16:02:50.607 [0x7f6b715a1700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: not using zero-copy because video is interlaced
May 05, 2018 16:02:50.607 [0x7f6b715a1700] DEBUG - TPU: hardware transcoding: final decoder: vaapi, final encoder: vaapi
I’m going to need help then with whichever MPEG2 file is not working for you.
I would like the following:
- Recreate the problem again. Let it run just long enough to demonstrate
- Stop Playback
- Capture the ZIP file of the logs
- Get the XML (Hover over the file/item -> Get Info -> View XML)
Attach the ZIP and the XML. I need to see what PMS is working with as source
OK thank you @ChuckPA , I captured clean log files viewing a recorded TV file, details below.
Previously I was using Live TV, but I don’t see how to get the program XML for a live show. The buffering behavior seems the same when viewing the recorded file, so hopefully it’s valid to look at the XML for it. (But one curiosity is that I didn’t see the “no hardware decode accelerator found” message when playing the file.)
Please let me know if there are any other tests I can run. I appreciate your help!
