H264 hardware encoding does not work with this beta on my Radeon RX 550. It was working in the previous PMS release (1.12.0.4829).
Using the life of pi UHD sample file from:
http://hdrsamples.com/life-of-pi-4k-uhd-hdr-sample-footage/
Windows task manager confirms that there’s 0% usage on the GPU video encoder but about 20-30% usage on the decoder.
@anaander can you please post PMS logs?
Been testing on a few clients (xbox one, ios, web, roku) and have some feedback. Running PMS on a Synology DS916+ 8GB.
What works works very well. Most issues I’ve encountered are with MPEG2 -> h264 transcoding
Also I’m curious, does the “Transcoding Quality” setting affect quality when hardware decoding?
I’ve attached logs that should show #2 and #3. If you need sample video files please let me know. But this is the same with all MPEG2 recorded content that I’ve tested.
Thanks!
I’m having huge issues optimizing videos in a folder. I don’t see any obvious correlation between what does optimize and what doesn’t. I’m part way through 140 moives and 53 have already failed optimization. I have attached my log files.
I just have to say that this release, for me, fixed the quality issues with hardware transcoding on my QNAP TS-253A!
Thank you!
-UPDATE-
Hardware transcoding causes Amazon FireTV to time-out around 30-45 seconds into a stream.
Improved quality of HW transcoding on Synology DS918+
I am working with:
E3-1220L (no intel QV)
Geforce GT 1030
Ubuntu 16.04 Server
Still no joy transcoding, am I here too soon :neutral:
@heps15 said:
I am working with:E3-1220L (no intel QV)
Geforce GT 1030
Ubuntu 16.04 ServerStill no joy transcoding, am I here too soon :neutral:
I looked at your other post and are your trying to do hardware transcoding?
If so you can’t with most xeon processors as they don’t support quick sync. As far as I know that is a requirement regardless of offloading to the GPU or not.
https://ark.intel.com/products/53401/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1220L-3M-Cache-2_20-GHz
@WatchTowerPlex said:
@heps15 said:
I am working with:E3-1220L (no intel QV)
Geforce GT 1030
Ubuntu 16.04 ServerStill no joy transcoding, am I here too soon :neutral:
I looked at your other post and are your trying to do hardware transcoding?
If so you can’t with most xeon processors as they don’t support quick sync. As far as I know that is a requirement regardless of offloading to the GPU or not.
Intel Xeon Processor E31220L 3M Cache 2.20 GHz Product Specifications
Thanks, and yeah it’s HW decoding I’m hoping to get working.
There has been success with Nvidia-only using Windows (same hardware as mine):
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/297885/nvidia-hardware-transcoding-not-working
On Ubuntu, it appears to be related to an upcoming FFMPEG update:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/306739/feature-request-upgrade-ffmpeg-base-for-extended-hardware-de-encoding-support-under-linux
That’s as far as I got anyway, hope it gets resolved in one of the Transcoder updates!
@Essam01 said:
Improved quality of HW transcoding on Synology DS918+
Could you elaborate on that please?
@“Marcos.Silva” said:
@Essam01 said:
Improved quality of HW transcoding on Synology DS918+Could you elaborate on that please?
with 1.12.0 and HW decoding enabled, the playback of hevc coded media (even at only 3.6 Mbps) is quite pixelated (takes very long until it starts, very low quality); with 1.12.1 is much less but actually still low quality and still takes ages to start playing. That is why I said “improved” and not good.
For comparison purposes, the same media played (transcoded) with a MacBook Pro (core i7, 2012) is excellent. HEVC playback is generally not very good even with the “other Green Server” 
Hope this helps
@chrisallen I think I found the problem:
Mar 13, 2018 05:08:53.214 [8184] ERROR - [FFMPEG] - The minimum required Nvidia driver for nvenc is 378.66 or newer
Mar 13, 2018 05:08:53.214 [8184] WARN - avcodec_open2 returned -1313558101 for encoder ‘h264_nvenc’
Mar 13, 2018 05:08:53.214 [8184] WARN - Failed to find encoder ‘h264_mf’
Mar 13, 2018 05:08:53.277 [8184] WARN - Failed to find encoder ‘aac_mf’
Mar 13, 2018 05:08:53.277 [8184] WARN - Failed to find encoder ‘mp3_mf’
Mar 13, 2018 05:08:53.277 [8184] WARN - Failed to find encoder ‘hevc_mf’
Mar 13, 2018 05:08:53.339 [8184] WARN - Failed to find encoder ‘aac_mf’
Mar 13, 2018 05:08:53.339 [8184] WARN - Failed to find encoder ‘mp3_mf’
Typo in the ffmpeg string?
the encoder should be h264_amf, hevc_amf, etc etc for AMD. I’m not even sure what aac_mf or mp3_mf are supposed to be, there’s no hardware audio transcoding.
the _mf stands for Media Foundation which in the context above, we could not find the system provided codecs (which we can use in place of the ffmpeg ones) these are not the “Hardware” accelerated codecs.
for h264_nvenc that is the Nvidia Encoder provided by the Nvidia Driver, which FFMPEG can use via VAAPI if I understand correctly.
I am assuming you don’t have an Nvidia card in your system, so that error above may be the Plex Transcoder looking for h264_nvenc which results in a check for the Nvidia driver which you don’t have.
Do you mind setting the TranscoderLogLevel to debug (https://support.plex.tv/articles/201105343-advanced-hidden-server-settings/) and then trying to play the content that should HW transcode and provide the logs here?
Once done please set the log level back to error (or simple delete the registry key and PMS will default back to error)
I have an AMD card (RX 550). Hence, requiring the hevc/h264_amf codecs in ffmpeg for hardware encoding.
Here are the logs, still with hardware decoding/software encoding:
@anaander those logs look incomplete. It is lacking lead up to you starting to play the media. Can you please provide the full log?
Here’s the full log from when I restarted the server.
@anaander said:
H264 hardware encoding does not work with this beta on my Radeon RX 550. It was working in the previous PMS release (1.12.0.4829).Using the life of pi UHD sample file from:
hdrsamples.com - This website is for sale! - hdrsamples Resources and Information.
Windows task manager confirms that there’s 0% usage on the GPU video encoder but about 20-30% usage on the decoder.
Not exactly the same issue on my Core-i7 8700K : the HW transcoding is working, but never using more than 40%-50% of the GPU capabilities, making it impossible to transcode 4K HEVC content with HW Transcoding, so I was forced to disable it. It was encoding the same movies at around 2x factor with HW transcoding before.
Am I understanding this correctly? Does this mean MPEG 2 HW Transcoding will finally be working? (I’m on a Synology NAS). This would make my day!
depends on your NAS and if it includes a CPU supporting hw transcoding AND which is supported by Plex (=Intel)
Yeah, I have a DS916+. I gave it a shot, and it seems to be working great! I’m showing MPEG2(HW) to H264(HW) on a remote live tv stream. This is what I’ve been waiting for!
One small issue, although I don’t know if it’s related to this release at all, is I have the “Remote Access” setting for Limit Remote Stream set to 3Mbps 720p, but I’m only able to select up to 1.5Mbps 480p remotely. And yes, I’m testing on an HD station (several).
Update: Scratch that comment. It’s totally working. I had set Remote access to 1.5Mbps, and changed it to 3Mbps. Once I closed the tab and reopened, I was able to stream 3Mbps remotely.
