Hello, forum users! It’s time again for an update to Plex’s transcoding and analysis backend. This is a special forums-only preview release; the changes in this build will be included in an upcoming regular release once any new issues are handled.
Please test this version with a variety of different media file formats and clients. If you notice any new issues (specifically ones that don’t also happen on the current beta release), please respond to this discussion instead of starting a new one, and include your Plex Media Server logs and a sample file that reproduces the issue.
Note that regular releases’ version numbers may share the same first 3 components as this release. The fourth component (the build number) will differ.
If you’re running Windows, you should always uninstall preview releases before installing another preview release or an official release. This won’t affect your library or personal data at all, and it will work around some Windows installer-related issues.
To test in a Docker container, open a shell in the container (using docker exec), download and dpkg -i the Ubuntu package, update the version number in /version to reflect the build number you’re testing, and restart the container.
NEW:
(Transcoder) Support zero-copy hardware transcoding on macOS (#13904)
This update moves us towards being able to support AV1 video decode. This feature isn’t available in this initial preview, and I can’t make any promises on the timeline, but it’s being worked on .
Warning: the above does only apply as long as you don’t use 3rd-party software like “Uninstallers” or “system cleaners” or “registry optimizers”.
Like for instance “Revo Uninstaller” or “CCleaner”.
Sometimes such type of tools come even with 3rd-party anti virus packages.
If you want to avoid the loss of your Plex library when uninstalling Plex Media Server, you must ensure to either have no such software on your system
or at least disable them completely before trying the above.
Update: in the original version of this post, I said I couldn’t provide a timeline for macOS zero-copy hardware transcode support. I now can: I implemented it right after that, and it’s in the updated OP. Enjoy!
A future update will also add hardware decoding support for 10-bit and 4:4:4 H.264, along with ProRes.
@Volts you seen this? I could do maybe 32 before Apple tells me
Warning: Kernel Task has crushed you.
EDIT: while I managed 32 transcodes today, it wasn’t the smoothest test when one iMac had a Plex Player crash as i was about to do the screenshots.
EDIT2: I found the maximum was 32 transcodes. Any more will not use HW. Tested only 1080p. Increased to 22 PGS subs. No VA reading because the laptop was plugged in. The source bitrates avg. 25 Mbps. The previous crash I had testing 720p was due to the Mac Studio DoVi screensaver coming on.
Volt Amps for an inductive load displayed on a Cyber Power UPS where 36 VA ~= 32 W AC but the conversion really depends on what’s plugged into the UPS. ↩︎
Thank you for this update, really appreciate you’re working on improvements and AV1 support! I can report it’s working fine with Nvidia and Intel transcoding. No noticeable differences, but maybe the changes were only for macOS in this release.
I can confirm that 1.29.2 works as expected on my NUC11 (Ubuntu 20.04) without the need for any userland drivers. I can’t tell much difference between 1.29.1 and 1.29.2 (so good job I guess?).
As it has been in the past - when I play a 4K stream (tried several) with PGS and SRT subtitles the CPU goes to about 50% on one stream. According to the server it is still hardware transcoding the 4K to 1080P so I’m assuming the 50% load is the subtitles themselves being burned into the image at the server side. I can play this smoothly (after it buffers) on the Chrome client. The Roku client still dies when I try to stream 4K with subtitles.
Is the recommendation from the Plex team to run the .deb or the docker?
I can do either and not asking for a “which is better” but more of a “which is recommended” from a support / development POV. Fully understand the inherent benefits of docker as a container.
Right now I am on a fresh install of Ubuntu 22.04 / PMS 1.29.1 / 12th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i7-1260P (NUC12) and it seems like the .deb does a better job enabling transcoding for 4K DoVi/HDR10 (HEVC Main 10) (hw) steams, the docker doesn’t hardware transcode them.
Planning on moving to 1.29.2 to see if it fixes stutters when using subtitles and just contemplating .deb vs docker.
I know you can’t make any “promises” for AV1 decode, but could you make any approximations at all? End of year? 6 months? Wanting to pick up a new Intel Arc GPU but don’t want to buy one early at launch price if Plex won’t support it for a year.
Hi Ridley, I must say I’m very pleased with this preview. Over the last 12 months or more, I have had Audio artefacts with eac3 when Direct playing to my LG OLED65B8. This has been with eac3 Audio codec enabled and disabled in the LG client. It’s like a giant hummm and very annoying.
This Preview has seemed to have resolved the issue, for what ever reason when eac3 is enabled. So far I have not found any issue with this preview with many file formats.
This update broke transcode on all the items on my library.
The only way i was able to get it working was to revert back to the non-beta (1.29.0.6244).
.
Warning: Kernel Task has crushed you.
