Hello All, im currently running plex as a container on my unraid server (r720xd), it has 2 xeon E5-2630 V2, which i dont think support quick sync.
Here my problem, lets say i have a 4k movie on my plex server, if i play it on my 4k apple tv, it uses direct play and it plays fine, but when i try playing it on my non 4k apple tv, it needs to transcode it and it stutters like crazy, where i cant even watch the movie.
So im kinda new to PLEX, so im thinking i need to get a video card and use it for transcoding to fix this issue?
Getting a video card likely will not help. Even if you did, it would still attempt a transcode:
Plex defaults to transcoding depending on what file format the client (Your Apple TV or or non-Apple TV) can accept as a default. If everything is compatible, it just passes the file along all nice and easy. If not, Plex looks to reformat it into something that will be compatible.
You’ll likely need to re-encode your file in a format that is cross compatible for both devices in order to direct play it on each. Handbrake is a wonderful program for that. You’ll have to look up native file formats for each device and find a match if there is one.
4K transcoding is a tricky thing, and is still somewhat in its infancy. There’s a few good posts floating around about it, and how, at this time, it’s generally a bad idea to attempt. Almost all of them lead back to compatible files being the best solution.
Because your using virtualisation, you wont be able to harness hardware enconding/decoding from everything Ive read. Best bet is to have Plex installed natively (if its possible; I havent used/researched unRAID) and use the raid for holding your media colelction
That post is just plain wrong. Both QSV and nvidia work fine in docker environment, being it unraid or any other host system. You only have to passthrough the right device and/or install the drivers for your hardware.
I run unraid with QSV myself with no issues.
