Plex Media Server 1.16.7.1597 (Updated) - New Transcoder Preview

Plex Media Server Plex Pass Betas
146

Attempting to test the new Transcoder, but when I load a movie on my phone and go to its main page. Pressing the Play Button does nothing, initially you see the yellow loading symbol, but nothing ever happens. I see some points where it appears to load the hardware trancoder, then loops on that again and again. Plex Media Server Logs_2019-09-13_11-23-20.zip (79.5 KB)

Sep 13, 2019 11:22:47.928 [9108] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded sym: cuDestroyExternalSemaphore
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:47.928 [9108] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded sym: cuSignalExternalSemaphoresAsync
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:47.928 [9108] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded sym: cuWaitExternalSemaphoresAsync
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:47.993 [9108] DEBUG - Scaled up video bitrate to 20152Kbps based on 1.500000x fudge factor.
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:47.993 [9108] DEBUG - Codecs: testing aac_mf (encoder)
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.008 [9108] INFO - [FFMPEG] - MFT name: 'Microsoft AAC Audio Encoder MFT'
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.040 [9108] DEBUG - MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.040 [9108] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 33074
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.040 [9108] DEBUG - MDE: Bastille Day (2016): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.040 [9108] DEBUG - MDE: Bastille Day (2016): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/dca
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.040 [9108] DEBUG - Codecs: testing aac_mf (encoder)
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.040 [9108] INFO - [FFMPEG] - MFT name: 'Microsoft AAC Audio Encoder MFT'
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to codec dca when profile only allows aac
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - MDE: Bastille Day (2016): selected media 0 / 33074
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Calculated bandwidth of 26719kbps exceeds bandwidth limit. Changing decision parameters provided by client to fit bandwidth limit of 8000kbps
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Determining preferred transcode encoders through transcode only decision.
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - Codecs: testing h264_nvenc (encoder)
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API nvenc
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded lib: nvcuda.dll
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded sym: cuInit
Sep 13, 2019 11:22:48.071 [9108] DEBUG - [FFMPEG] - Loaded sym: cuDeviceGetCount
147

Just thought I would chip in with a couple of observations that I have with the new transcoder preview:

System:

  • HP Microserver - core 2 duo - 16Gb memory
  • Nvidia Quadro P400 - 2Gb VRAM
    – driver version 435.21
  • clients tested
    – 2018 75" Samsung TV
    – NVidia SHIELD
    – remote web browser
    – iOS app (under iOS 13) on iPad and iPhone X

  1. I am finding that the transcode performance is faster/more stable with the previous version (.1574) rather than .1597
    when starting remote streams from 4K it takes longer and seems to buffer more with the later version. I have tried flipping back and fourth with the versions, and it is more than just the system being busy with the buffering, so not sure if there are any differences in the decode options. In both versions I can see that it is being hardware decoded and encoded, and the video file being decoded from is 4K 10bit HEVC and transcoded to 1080P.

  2. Chapter generation with 4K movies takes a long time, and I was wondering if there is a way of tweaking the thumbnail generator to use the GPU for this?
    This is the process that I can see running for the chapter generation:
    /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/Plex Transcoder -codec:v hevc -i /PMS-Media/4KMovies/Anna (2019)/Anna - 2019 - WEBDL-2160p-DEFLATE.mkv -threads 0 -nostats -q 3 -loglevel quiet -filter_complex [0:V:0] fps=fps=0.500000:round=up,scale=w=320:h=240:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease [out] -map [out] /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Media/localhost/f/1edfe80eef8b7e15a669b825406598a55388fff.bundle/Contents/Indexes/tmp/img-%06d.jpg -progressurl http://127.0.0.1:32400/video/:/transcode/session/bif/f3b5b2ba-061c-4d9a-b53e-3736c286e331/progress
    At the moment this process is taking up (almost) 2 CPUs and on this low-spec machine is taking a long time to process.

Before people start saying about dual core and 4K video… we are only looking for something that can handle a single 4K stream, and we rarely use this. With the new preview transcoder I have seen an enormous increase in performance, even in comparison to the ‘patch’ that was created… whatever you have done has been stunning in performance. These are just a couple of observations that I have seen so far, everything else that I have seen has been as good (if not better) that before.

Again, thank you for integrating the NVDec stuff into the transcoder, made me a happy bunny :slight_smile:

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148

The Transcoder preview is now closed and all fixes have been included in the Plex Media Server 1.17.0 Beta release

We are still looking the Stuck in P-State P0 after transcode finished on NVIDIA - #43 by ComasSky1 issue and will continue investigation in that thread.

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