I’m at the latest non-beta plex media server version. I have re-installed my plex VM numerous times, so it’s a fresh install with only the plexmediaserver installed along with the appropriate NVIDIA drivers (for my GTX 1070).
Hardware transcoding works fine when starting a movie. However, when changing the quality of the encoding (lowering or increasing the bitrate and/or resolution), it buffers endlessly and nvidia-smi no longer reports any instances of Plex Transcoder.
The logs simply report ffmpeg exiting with an exit code of -9, and stating “Transcode runner appears to have died.”
I have no idea what might be causing this. Again, transcoding works fine, just when CHANGING the quality it breaks.
I can’t find anything on where the ffmpeg logs are stored, and if they are even stored at all. I think I might get more insight when I read the error reported before ffmpeg exits with code -9. Does anyone know this? I have no Plex Transcoder.log in my Logs folder, only Plex Transcoder Statistics.log. Would greatly appreciate your insights.
No idea what the issues was. Fix was to use an older NVIDIA driver, 535.
Posting my setup and symptoms here so that I can maybe help someone:
Virtualized (host CPU and full GPU passed through, shouldn’t matter)
NVIDIA GTX 1070
Transcoding would work, but only at very specific resolutions and bitrates (4k High, 720p Medium). Everything else wouldn’t work.
watch -n 1 nvidia-smi would reveal some Plex Transcoder processes starting up and crashing after a couple seconds. Stream would hang and error out.
Was running plex v.1.41.2.9200, though in my troubleshooting I downgraded a bunch and that didn’t resolve the issue, thus the plex version didn’t seem to matter.
Was running nvidia-driver-550 (installed using apt), this turned out to be the problem. installing nvidia-driver-535 was the fix
I still have no idea why the newer NVIDIA driver was causing trouble, because I can’t seem to access any ffmpeg logs. Found it by throwing fixes at the wall and seeing what sticks.
I am having this happen to me on a Debian host running 535 or 565.
Streaming without hardware transcoding? Not an issue, a bit sluggish but it’s stable.
Streaming with hardware transcoding? The Plex Transcoder process appears in nvidia-smi, Seeking causes the video to lock up, it just endlessly buffers.
I am having the same exact issue as described in #897147, I have poured over the log and can’t see anything that seems to indicate why this is happening. On mobile clients, it functions seemingly perfectly. In the web client, either directly or via Plex Web, it performs as described above, just killing my transcoding sessions.
Hi I don’t think we have the same issues, for me changing the quality caused the endless buffefing. Changing the quality back to a “good” quality made the content play again. Seeking didn’t have any positive or negative effect.
But like I said, my fix was to downgrade the nvidia driver. You’ve already tried 535 and that was the one that worked for me, so I’m not sure if going any older with the drivers would work for you.
