Plex fails to fallback to software encode on error while trying hardware encode

Plex Media Server
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Tested server version: 1.25.9.5721
Web client version: 4.79.3
OS: DSM7.0.1-42218 Update 3
Model: DS916+

This should be considered a bug in Plex because Plex should handle the error and fallback to software decode rather than failing with an error when hardware decode doesn’t work.

A bug in the Intel CPU driver causes attempts to play some video formats to fail on Plex for Synology D-series “+” NAS (the “+” version uses Intel Celeron processor) when “hardware encoding” is enabled.

Video formats that don’t work and the trigger for the CPU driver bug are outside the scope of this post and can be read in the bug post for the driver.

CPU driver bug is tracked here:

The error is output to the console upon trying to play such videos:

libva error: /usr/lib/dri/iHD_drv_video.so init failed

In the UI user is presented with a modal with an error that playback couldn’t be started.

The workaround is to uncheck the box “Use hardware-accelerated video encoding” in Settings > Transcoder.

User should never be presented with an error and a stop condition when the software can easily handle the condition and continue working as expected.

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thanks for report

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Hey, thanks for the report! Would you mind sharing complete PMS logs when this occurs so we can have more of a dig into what’s happening here?

And thanks for sharing the driver bug issue link, that’s helpful for context, but if you were also able to share a sample file that can reproduce the issue, that would be super helpful too.

Thanks again!

5

No, sorry, that would expose too much private information.

I don’t know enough about the logs to sanitize them.

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@josh_pruitt_gmail_com

I will send you a PM so the logs can remain private.

Please check your PM.

7

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