@ChuckPA said:
I’m overtly suggesting they put priority on it. That’s all I can do.
With a NAS like the 918+, how much would hardware transcoding actually help?
Most devices can’t play MPEG2VIDEO. Depending on the quality from your provider and how many devices play live concurrently, That’s a lot of software decoding to be done. The hardware encoding makes the output stage almost trivial on a synology. Please understand. I have DS1815+. It can ONLY do audio. Any thought of video transcoding is a pipe dream. You’d be in the same boat without the GPU in the 918+'s CPU.
@ChuckPA said:
Most devices can’t play MPEG2VIDEO. Depending on the quality from your provider and how many devices play live concurrently, That’s a lot of software decoding to be done. The hardware encoding makes the output stage almost trivial on a synology. Please understand. I have DS1815+. It can ONLY do audio. Any thought of video transcoding is a pipe dream. You’d be in the same boat without the GPU in the 918+'s CPU.
Thanks for the explanation. I have found that out the hard way. I hope that they add hardware transcoding for MPEG2 as soon as possible for our sake. I have two NVIDIA Shields (16gb), a Synology 918+, and a HDHOMERUN PRIME with Verizon Fios as my provider. Trying to watch a single transcoded stream off the Synology on my PC’s web browser is unwatchable in Plex. For reasons that I do not understand, using Silicon Dust’s W10 app runs MPEG2 recorded videos flawlessly.
@“Mi Key” said:
On my DS918+ I have tested the following files from Jellyfish http://jell.yfish.us/.Happy to try any specific files anyone wants me to test, CBF testing the entire lot
The test client device is a Samsung UA65JS8000
Ok
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-h264.mkv -direct play
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-hevc.mkv - direct play
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-hevc-10bit.mkv - direct play
Fail
jellyfish-140-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit - Attempted transcode, 100% cpu and wouldn’t start.
jellyfish-400-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit - Direct Play. 4% CPU, Artefacts and barely showed 3 frames., TV sounded like it was going to fry.The test client device is an iPhone 7 +
Ok
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-h264 - Was ‘direct stream’. worked well, barely any CPU registered on the NAS.
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-hevc - Transcoding, CPU reached 20% on the NAS, buffer was fine and kept well ahead of the output on the client.Fail
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-hevc-10bit.mkv - almost kept up ahead of the stream, using around 95+ CPU, but server not powerful message shortly after.
jellyfish-400-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit.mkv - LOL? Queue the fire extinguisher
Thank you very much for all the testing.
Is there anyone with a 918+ and an AppleTV 4th gen or maybe an AppleTV 4k?
I would be interested if there are any differences in performance when the client is the Plex App on one of those AppleTVs, or if the performance would be similar to your Samsung TV.
At the moment I am sitting on a DS415+ (no HW transcoding possible) and it is not possible to play H265 content with PMS on an AppleTV 4th gen with the Plex App. Just too much buffering.
Cheers.
@ChuckPA said:
MPEG2VIDEO hardware decode has not yet been enabled by engineering.
Playback of MPEG2VIDEO buffers once every minute when hardware acceleration is enabled but not when hardware acceleration is disabled.
Since MPEG2VIDEO hardware decade has not been enabled, is this a bug? I would think behavior should be the same in either condition.
I will look into that but it shouldn’t be enabled because it’s not ready for use as you observe.
@scottz what machine is this on?
@ChuckPA said:
I will look into that but it shouldn’t be enabled because it’s not ready for use as you observe.@scottz what machine is this on?
Synology DS918+
My thought is, having hardware transcoding enabled should utilize hardware transcoding when supported otherwise use software transcoding.
That’s how it works for those codecs it’s capable of
@smoochy said:
Thank you very much for all the testing.
Is there anyone with a 918+ and an AppleTV 4th gen or maybe an AppleTV 4k?
I would be interested if there are any differences in performance when the client is the Plex App on one of those AppleTVs, or if the performance would be similar to your Samsung TV.
At the moment I am sitting on a DS415+ (no HW transcoding possible) and it is not possible to play H265 content with PMS on an AppleTV 4th gen with the Plex App. Just too much buffering.
Cheers.
I do have a 4th Gen AppleTV and a DS216+II. For the last years i was using a dedicated i7 machine as a plex server because the 216+II had not enough power for transcoding. After informing myself about the 918+ i remembered seeing that ‘Use hardware transcode’ checkbox… turns out the 216+II has enough power to do transcodes 
and watching with either iphone or apple tv is working just great! I did not test any high bitrate stuff with it. But everything on my drive worked just fine… 720p, 1080p, h264, h265. No problems so far and the 918+ should offer even more peace of mind.
I ordered a 918+ anyway since i want to replace the 216+II AND the server with it and i think everything will be just fine…
Excuse me.
The Topic here is New Synology Compatibility: DS418, DS418play, DS918+
@marff said:
@smoochy said:
Thank you very much for all the testing.
Is there anyone with a 918+ and an AppleTV 4th gen or maybe an AppleTV 4k?
I would be interested if there are any differences in performance when the client is the Plex App on one of those AppleTVs, or if the performance would be similar to your Samsung TV.
At the moment I am sitting on a DS415+ (no HW transcoding possible) and it is not possible to play H265 content with PMS on an AppleTV 4th gen with the Plex App. Just too much buffering.
Cheers.
I do have a 4th Gen AppleTV and a DS216+II. For the last years i was using a dedicated i7 machine as a plex server because the 216+II had not enough power for transcoding. After informing myself about the 918+ i remembered seeing that ‘Use hardware transcode’ checkbox… turns out the 216+II has enough power to do transcodes
I ordered a 918+ anyway since i want to replace the 216+II AND the server with it and i think everything will be just fine…
Would it be possible, once you get your 918+, to test H265 content (i.e. from http://jell.yfish.us/) with enabled hardware support on the Plex Media Server for playback on the AppleTV? That would be very useful! Thanks in advance.
@ChuckPA said:
Excuse me.The Topic here is New Synology Compatibility: DS418, DS418play, DS918+
We are talking about 918+ and its performance. So what is your issue here exactly?
It was a general statement to those posting about DS216’s or DS415’s or whatever.
My apologies if I seemed too all-encompassing in my remarks
@smoochy said:
@marff said:
@smoochy said:
Thank you very much for all the testing.
Is there anyone with a 918+ and an AppleTV 4th gen or maybe an AppleTV 4k?
I would be interested if there are any differences in performance when the client is the Plex App on one of those AppleTVs, or if the performance would be similar to your Samsung TV.
At the moment I am sitting on a DS415+ (no HW transcoding possible) and it is not possible to play H265 content with PMS on an AppleTV 4th gen with the Plex App. Just too much buffering.
Cheers.
I do have a 4th Gen AppleTV and a DS216+II. For the last years i was using a dedicated i7 machine as a plex server because the 216+II had not enough power for transcoding. After informing myself about the 918+ i remembered seeing that ‘Use hardware transcode’ checkbox… turns out the 216+II has enough power to do transcodes
I ordered a 918+ anyway since i want to replace the 216+II AND the server with it and i think everything will be just fine…
Would it be possible, once you get your 918+, to test H265 content (i.e. from http://jell.yfish.us/) with enabled hardware support on the Plex Media Server for playback on the AppleTV? That would be very useful! Thanks in advance.
@ChuckPA said:
Excuse me.The Topic here is New Synology Compatibility: DS418, DS418play, DS918+
We are talking about 918+ and its performance. So what is your issue here exactly?
It arrived today. I’ll see if I can do some tests tomorrow. Are there some things you are particularly interested in?
@ChuckPA said:
It was a general statement to those posting about DS216’s or DS415’s or whatever.My apologies if I seemed too all-encompassing in my remarks
I just wanted to say that even my 216+II is pretty good since the hardware is supported and that one shouldn’t need to worry about the performance of the 918+ since the cpu has about twice a many points in benchmarks. Didn’t want to get off topic…
I would be interested if those H265 sample files with 50-80Mbps play nice and smoothly and how much of CPU/RAM it takes with and without hardware encoding enabled.
Thanks again for your effort.
With transcoding enabled everything played pretty much instantly and in absolutely acceptable quality (edit: on ATV 4 of course). At least i’m quite happy. I did not screenshot the RAM but i looked right now and during the Test it didn’t go over 14% of the original 4GB.
Without transcoding i didn’t even wait for the video to begin. It went up to 100% and stayed there so it’s pretty much unusable.
In the end i did a test that’s more realistic. One of my movies in HEVC 3268 kbps and FullHD. It worked a little more in the beginning but went down to about 10-12% where i think it would stay for the rest of the movie. I don’t know if it makes a difference but i had subtitles enabled as i always have.
Hope i didn’t forget something.. I definitely keep this box!
That’s wonderful news. Thank you very much for your effort.
@“Jay Werrett” said:
just got wait on @Mi Key as to what files he willing download from the link @ChuckPA gave, so we can test the performance of these two devices when comes to DS418Play and DS918+ with direct play and also transcoding
@“Mi Key” said:
On my DS918+ I have tested the following files from Jellyfish http://jell.yfish.us/.Happy to try any specific files anyone wants me to test, CBF testing the entire lot
The test client device is a Samsung UA65JS8000
Ok
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-h264.mkv -direct play
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-hevc.mkv - direct play
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-hevc-10bit.mkv - direct play
Fail
jellyfish-140-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit - Attempted transcode, 100% cpu and wouldn’t start.
jellyfish-400-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit - Direct Play. 4% CPU, Artefacts and barely showed 3 frames., TV sounded like it was going to fry.The test client device is an iPhone 7 +
Ok
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-h264 - Was ‘direct stream’. worked well, barely any CPU registered on the NAS.
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-hevc - Transcoding, CPU reached 20% on the NAS, buffer was fine and kept well ahead of the output on the client.Fail
jellyfish-60-mbps-hd-hevc-10bit.mkv - almost kept up ahead of the stream, using around 95+ CPU, but server not powerful message shortly after.
jellyfish-400-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit.mkv - LOL? Queue the fire extinguisher
Hey @“Jay Werrett”,
Any updates? I was looking through this thread seeing if you’d posted an update and can’t seem to find one. I’m eager to know the real-world difference between the DS418play and the DS918+ as I’m really close to pulling the trigger on one or the other.
Thanks!
Hi everyone I have a DS216play and obviously doesn’t play h 265 because of no hardware transcoding. My question: I want to play h265 files Hdr 10 on my samsung HUD via APPLE TV 4th gen. with plex pass subscription Ds218+ or DS718+ can I play those file with hardware transcoding and the 2gb ram standard ?
Hey guys. Did anyone play with DS918+ and Apple TV 4K? Does it direct play 4K HDR content? And how’s everything below that? I’d really appreciate the testing. Thanks!
I’m going to make a broad statement here. Please think about what I’m saying before reacting.
HEVC 10 bit (HDR) decode in hardware is very demanding of a GPU.
Regarding the processors (J series), be very careful what you expect of a HEVC HDR transcode. The J series processors are not as sophisticated as the KabyLake desktop processors (e.g. i7-77xx series)
Hardware transcoding, being zero-copy does need more RAM. Running on the Synology stock 2GB is pushing your luck. 4GB is better. If you can upgrade the memory, do it. Kingston RAM, for me, has worked well
I have a DS1815+. Rather than breaking up the processor’s ability to run in dual-channel mode, I installed a matched-pair kit. Matched pair kits allow the processor run in dual-channel mode. This means more data per clock cycle which results in faster processing.
For Reference, this is how I resolved the DS1815+ because Synology doesn’t sell what’s needed.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KQCU3WM/
