Plex Player Windows 1.35 still stuttering on HEVC

Plex Players Desktop Players
1

Server Version#: 1.24.1.4931
Player Version#: 1.35.1.2632-c6783c78-x86_64

I have a series in HEVC which is not Direct-Play in Browser, so I used to use Plex App for Windows. It plays well in Version 1.33.0, but has issues in 1.34.1.2590, 1.34.1.2601 and 1.35.2632

WARN - [MPVEngine/mpv] cplayer: Audio/Video desynchronisation detected! Possible reasons include too slow
WARN - [MPVEngine/mpv] cplayer: hardware, temporary CPU spikes, broken drivers, and broken files. Audio
WARN - [MPVEngine/mpv] cplayer: position will not match to the video (see A-V status field).

I compared the logs of 1.33 and 1.35 and saw that 1.33 is using hardware decoding via hevc-dxva2-copy, because:

DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Looking at hwdec hevc-d3d11va...
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Could not create device.
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Looking at hwdec hevc-dxva2...
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Could not create device.
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Looking at hwdec hevc-nvdec...
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Could not create device.
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Looking at hwdec hevc-dxva2-copy...
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Trying hardware decoding via hevc-dxva2-copy.
DEBUG - [MPVEngine/mpv] decode_wrapper/vd: Selected codec: hevc (HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding))

Version 1.34 and above is using hardware decoding via hevc-d3d11va. You can find more details in the logs provided.

Windows is up to date and I also updated and reinstalled graphics driver, whithout difference:
472.12-desktop-win10-win11-64bit-international-nsd-dch-whql

Plex_1.33.0.2444.txt (59.1 KB)
Plex_1.35.1.2632.txt (59.6 KB)

1 Like
2

Anyone an idea, how to force version >1.33 to use hevc-dxva2-copy instead of hevc-d3d11va to tests if it is a codec problem?

How can I prevent Plex from update?

3

The issue persists in 1.39 - still have to use Version 1.33 to watch these videos…

4

Same issue for me on Plex for Windows Plex Pass version 1.39.1.2763-300bb607 on Windows 11 Pro. RTX 3080.

1 Like
5

Same with me.

Had to reroll on 1.33.

How do I turn of the questioning to update to 1.39?

Push!

6

I am having the same issue on hardware that VERY definitely should be able to handle decoding of HEVC-video just fine; any newer version of Plex than 1.33 refuses to use hardware-decoding, Task Manager’s performance graphs don’t show hardware-decoder being utilized at all. With 1.33 the hardware-decoder is being utilized and Task Manager reflect this.

VLC plays the same video perfectly well using D3D11 decoding and Task Manager’s performance graph shows the hardware-decoder being used.

8

Hi, somebody tested with version 1.40?

9

Hi again,

I tested version 1.40.1 and have the same issue. Today I digged a bit deeper and found mpv.conf.md leading to https://mpv.io/manual/master/#video I’ve put the file into AppData\Local\Plex and can see in the log that is beeing used.

I tried many different combinations and managed to force the use of dxva2-copy instead of d3d11va, but this did not help the issue. I also saw, that it is always using hardware-decoding just fine in any version 1.33 to 1.40. So I still think it might be an issue in ffmpeg version used. Unfortunately overwriting the files in AppData\Local\Plex\Plex Media Server\Codecs\ leads to no playback at all :wink:

During my iterations of settings in mpv.conf it managed to happen, that no usable hardware-decoder was found and it logged “Using software decoding”. When this happend, the video was playing fine - so the issue was gone…

I’m still hoping for some suggestions how to make hardware-decoding working again for all HEVC videos. I would really appriciate, if any developer would try to investigate this with me.
But for now, I think I go with software-decoding HEVC by pinning hwdec=nvdec in mpv.conf as workaround to not be so far behind in player version…

Best regards,
goelli

1 Like