Yeah all 640 posts.
Not hard to link if it actually matters enough to someone.
not hard to scroll up the last user noting stuttering was 4 days ago.
Oh well that’s a start.
EDIT… yeah someone else so upset but wants to leave it to someone else to provide logs.
not hard to find if you care enough to, theres plenty of them.
Perhaps we can all try to approach the matter a little less emotionally again.
I have recently posted here the .log files from both Plex HTPC and PMP as attachments (see Post #625 in the above). The problems with Plex HTPC persist, while PMP runs flawlessly. This is not an accusation against anyone, but simply a fact that I would like to understand.
I am very happy to provide more information of my system and am also happy to run tests. I just need to be told what exactly I should do 
Kind regards!
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For all those that are getting a little heated under the collar in regards to choppy or stuttered playback in Plex HTPC, a few things might be worth considering…
As far as I am aware, this product is still essentially BETA, and therefore may well have various problems that have not yet been addressed.
And also, @gbooker02 did actually comment on this issue 16 days ago…
To me, this looks like it might be a fairly complex issue to resolve, and therefore might take some time, and whilst you are waiting, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from using PMP, which means you are still able to continue using Plex quite happily.
Perhaps a little bit of patience might be be called for here!
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I think we all understand that Plex HTPC is a preview release.
That is also why we try to describe any problems as accurately as we can and try to provide logs to help Plex better understand these issues.
From my point of view, it seems the “heated” discussion were not from users having issues or providing HTPC feedback, but rather from a user having no issues at all with HTPC but uses this feedback forum to complain and accuse users of being lazy and not attaching logs.
Let’s use this channel to provide Plex with HTPC feedback as it was intended from the beginning. Meanwhile I am using PMP until I hear any progress about HTPC.
Thanks again to Plex Team for trying to solve these HTPC issues.
Hopefully we’ll get a stable version soon.
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Thanks for your answer @axemanuk666 ! I definitely agree with you 99.9%. However, the problem does not seem to be caused by dxva2-copy, at least not for me…
If you look at the two .log files for Plex HTPC and PMP that I provided in post #625, you will see that dxva2-copy is used in both cases. But only in case of PMP it runs smoothly. Or do I interpret the .log files wrongly? What’s more, if I use the player from mpv.io directly and switch to dxva2-copy as codec, movies also run without any problems.
I’m certainly not an expert in this field. But for me this seems to be a good indicator that it can’t be the real source of the problem.
Other opinions on this are most welcome, of course!
I have the same stutters regardless of hardware decoding enabled or not ,this is on an 11400f based system with a rtx 3060ti so plenty of power, did the same on my previous 3200g based system too.
its a shame were not given the option to alter and increase the amount of frames presented in advance like other renderers/players as this would likely smooth out the majority of the issue.
Wow, don’t visit this thread over the weekend and it gets inundated by posts from one who’s been a troll on these forums before and a plasma fanboy who doesn’t seem to have understood the original point. For the latter, when I called out “despicable behavior” I was quite clearly referring to the manufacturer of a particular display forcing overscanning. The fact that this particular display was plasma is immaterial. I would’ve said the same thing if it had been an LCD, OLED, µLED, QDEL, or whatever. The problem with overscanning is that the display removing rows and columns of pixels from the top/bottom/left/right and then SCALING the rest to fit the display. The upscaling produces noticeable effects, especially if you know what to look for. That is what I have against overscanning and this particular display. I don’t care about whether it is plasma or not.
Looking back at your previous post, you have a NUC10i7 and that machine has sufficient bandwidth between the GPU/CPU that the copy-back is not an issue for most of the framerates you will encounter. 60Hz content may be an issue with copy-back though. If your stuttering is similar to what I’ve seen, it’s not continuous but intermittent and seemingly random at that. Additionally I’ve only seen it on Windows thus far which is unfortunately the most difficult platform to work on. It appears that going from dxva2-copy → dxva2-egl has no effect but dxva2-egl → d3d11-egl does produce better result though still not perfect.
It is being looked at but the rendering pipeline in ANGLE does present some severe limitations in what can be done. Perhaps a different rendering pipeline will yield better results.
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Thanks a lot for your detailed answer! You are absolutely right, the stuttering is intermittent and seemingly random. I could not have better described it.
In fact, I’m just happy to hear that you guys know what the problem is and that you try to find a solution. I would be really happy to use Plex HTPC in the nearer future, as I really like the new design. However, until then, I will simply stick to the good old PMP and try to be patient
Kind regards and thanks again!
Can I request that the Mac version not prevent the display of the computer from sleeping when Plex is open in the background. If Plex is in the foreground, sure, preventing the display from sleeping makes sense (though I’d argue it should only prevent display sleep when media is playing). But if it’s in the background it really has no reason to stop the display sleeping. Right now I’m having to quit Plex whenever I’m not using it so the display can turn off. Not ideal for an HTPC without an attached keyboard and mouse.
This should be the case. It logs Disabling OS screensaver/Enabling OS screensaver when it is disabling/enabling the screensaver and sleep. Check to see what the logs are saying around this. In my testing it is only ever disabling sleep during playback and when playback ceases (paused doesn’t count) it re-allows sleep.
What kind of resource utilization are folks seeing when using hardware decode vs no hardware decode? I’m seeing more GPU utilization using HTPC than I do in most games, including AAA titles like Battlefield 1. I’m surprised to see HTPC use so much of the GPU just to play back video in its native resolution.
I have a core i7 7700k and a GTX 1080ti and it gets beat up pretty good with hw encoding enabled. Here are the figures I’m seeing:
4k with hw decode
- CPU: 14%
- GPU: 40%
1080p with hw decode
- CPU: 11%
- GPU: 32%
4k no hw decode
- CPU: 22%
- GPU: 14%
1080p no hw decode
- CPU: 14%
- GPU: 5%
1080p @ 9.5 Mbps h.264/5.1 ac3 mkv, win 10, i7-5600u HD 5500
hw decoding (dxva2-copy): 7%
no hw decoding: 70%
CPU 5950X
GPU 6800XT
Test File: 1917 (2019) - UHD - BluRay - 2160p - 91 Mbps - 23.976 - HDR10+ - 1000 nits - Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos - 6 Mbps
Plex HTPC
hw decode
CPU: 22%
GPU: 48%
no hw decode
CPU: 18%
GPU: 10%
MPC w\madvr {settings high)
CPU: 2%
GPU: 17%
MPC w\madvr {settings low)
CPU: 1%
GPU: 6%
I’ll have to check mine… I was playing The Martian last night in 4K using the HTPC app and there was quite a bit of stuttering. Glad I came across this thread. My server specs are:
- CPU: Intel(R) Core™ i9-9900 CPU @ 3.10GHz
- RAM: 32 GB
- Nvidia GeForce 1650 GTX w/ 4 GB DDR5
- Windows 10 Pro
- 3 x Samsung SSD HDDs
This is a dedicated server that does nothing else but run Plex so it’s obviously got the horsepower to handle whatever is thrown at it. But I’ll check my usage specs with/without hardware decoding.
@ncohafmuta Dang that’s a huge difference with hw decoding turned off. I am curious if that’s what HTPC engineers expect to see.
@dseto Thanks! It’s odd that both your CPU and GPU usage both went down when you turned off hw decoding. My CPU took more of a hit which is what I would expect in a system with a discrete GPU. It’s odd that your system wouldn’t behave in the same way. Then again I’m assuming that hw decode is leaning on the GPU more than the CPU.
@fixedwing71 Your server is a beast, but is that what you’re also viewing your content on?
@cstokes86 , Agree it is hard to say comparing CPU & GPU setup, brand and drivers as well, for the root reason we all get a difference in performance. but for me the one thing that really stands out, is MPC w/madvr set to high, uses so much less then plex htpc . so it would be my thoughts that the rendering process with plex htpc and or mpv still are not optimized for video quality in the home theater setting, but maybe with more collaboration it will get closer. but until then still test plex htpc, but use other front end gui with external player…I mean it is just not a htpc if you drop any frames!!
Hi @cstokes86, yes, this machine does both… server and client. I’ve been using PMP since I built this a couple of years ago and it’s been fine; I’m definitely looking forward to the issues with PHTPC being solved as the interface is very slick… and it runs perfectly unlike Plex for Windows. I have to wait several seconds after a click for the interface to register what I’m doing.
