Plex media server: Transcoding not working anymore

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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1

Hi,

I just realized that my setup fails to play everything that needs a transcode. Not sure when this started since I watched a series over the last couple of weeks that which - not needing a transcode - worked just fine. What happens is that I click on play and I indefinately only will se the loading spinner. The logs seem to indicate that some transcoding is happening, but it never will start playing, even when the buffered time threshold is reached. I can see the transcoding session appear in nvidia-smi on the Proxmox host. There seem to be two processes: "Plex Media Server, which seems to get replaced by “Plex Transcoder” after a short ammount of time. Not sure if this is normal.

Any idea what could cause this or what I could to to debug it? Thanks!

My setup:
Xeon 1280v2
Nvidia Quadro P400
Proxmox
Plex is running in a LXC container, the GPU is passed through. The setup worked since years like this.

Server Version#: 1.27.0.5897
Player Version#: Android TV 9.3.1.33134

The server logs:

2

At first glance of your logs, I’m catching this.

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.243 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Cannot open DRM render node for device 0.

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.243 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Cannot open a VA display from DRM device (null).

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.243 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: opening hw device failed - probably not supported by this system, error: Generic error in an external library
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.243 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Could not create hardware context for hevc
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.244 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: testing hevc (decoder) with hwdevice nvdec
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.244 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Rescanning for external libs: '/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/1cca1da-4321-linux-x86_64/'


Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: 10-bit HEVC test succeeded
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: analyzing media item 8818
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: The Northman (2022): Direct Play is disabled
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: The Northman (2022): media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: The Northman (2022): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: The Northman (2022): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/truehd
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: The Northman (2022): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/ac3
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: The Northman (2022): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/hevc/aac
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] The Northman - video.colorTrc limitation applies: smpte2084 != smpte240m|smpte170m|bt470m|bt470bg|bt2020-10|bt709 [list]
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: The Northman (2022): no remuxable profile found, so video stream will be transcoded
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: testing h264_nvenc (encoder)
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.411 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API nvenc

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.475 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Loaded Nvenc version 11.1

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.475 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Nvenc initialized successfully

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.541 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Nvenc unloaded

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] MDE: Cannot direct stream video stream due to profile or setting limitations
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: testing hevc (decoder) with hwdevice vaapi
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Rescanning for external libs: '/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/1cca1da-4321-linux-x86_64/'

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API vaapi
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Cannot open DRM render node for device 0.

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Cannot open a VA display from DRM device (null).

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: opening hw device failed - probably not supported by this system, error: Generic error in an external library
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Could not create hardware context for hevc
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: testing hevc (decoder) with hwdevice nvdec
Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Verbose — [Transcode] [FFMPEG] - Rescanning for external libs: '/var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Codecs/1cca1da-4321-linux-x86_64/'

Jun 16, 2022 08:55:54.571 [0x7f221f76bb38] Debug — [Transcode] Codecs: hardware transcoding: testing API nvdec

I’m seeing you’ve got a GPU, do you have HW transcoding enabled? May need it enabled for both encoding and decoding.

This to me looks like you’re trying to play with TrueHD audio and the Android TV doesn’t support this, it’s likely transcoding to OPUS 7.1 and direct streaming your video.

Depending on your client and your audio output source, maybe try setting audio to passthrough in Plex?

3

Hi!

Yes, I am using the P400 for transcoding. I cannot find an option to eplicitly enable hw transcoding for decoding. The Plex client on my Android TV is set to audio passthrough on HDMI. I also remember audio transcoding happening before. It never seemed to cause any problems.

The only change I noticed during the time I watched the series was the update of the Plex app on Android TV also bringing the new logo. I didn’t change anything in the configuration and it still worked before I started watching the series.

4

Sure enough downgrading the app to 8.x seems to avoid the problem.
image

5

Very interesting, I’m at a loss lol. I’ve got zero clue when it comes to hw transcoding, but I’m glad you got it working!

6

Yeah, for now its good enough. I still would like to figure out what is causing this though, since I assume I cannot stay on that old app version forever

7

I actually tend to stay on a version basically until it breaks, then I’ll update to the latest. Especially when using beta’s, I only install a new beta if there’s a change that’s actually relevant to me - though as I said, this is hard to do because the release notes suck lol.

I’ve been sticking to the stable releases as much as possible.

8

May I have the full ZIP file please?

Not possible to diagnose from that snippet

9

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