# Plex Transcoding Quick Sync Hardware Acceleration - Artifacts
**URL:** https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171
**Category:** General Discussions
**Created:** [April 19, 2018, 5:17pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171 "2018-04-19T17:17:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 5:17pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/1 "2018-04-19T17:17:09Z")
I know this question has been asked several times previously, but maybe there’s an update.
I’m current running Plex on an i5 4th gen and CentOS 7. When I run Plex remotely with hardware acceleration activated (Quick Sync) with any h264 mkv movie I get lots of artifacts as scenes change or there’s lots of action. Transcoding is set to Fast and 2 to 4 Mbps on the client.
When I run Plex remotely with hardware acceleration deactivated and the same movies, artifacts are gone but of course cpu usage sky rockets.
Based on a review of forum posts, I believe Intel’s Quick Sync / VAAPI are the culprit and a fix is coming … someday.
Would a low end graphics card fix my artifacting problem?
Any other ideas?
Thanks in advance…
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### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 5:19pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/2 "2018-04-19T17:19:03Z")
what is the video bit rate and encoding of the source?
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### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 5:45pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/3 "2018-04-19T17:45:45Z")
AVC 9.1 Mbps
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 5:58pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/4 "2018-04-19T17:58:01Z")
Please get and attach the XML for one that fails. “AVC” is too generic unfortunately.
Hover over the item -\> Get Info -\> View XML.
Paste the XML, (skipping the actor/genre and other superfluous metadata at the bottom).
**Before Posting your comment Highlight the block and use `Code` paragraph formatting from the top bar. It will keep the forum from obscuring it.**
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### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 6:10pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/5 "2018-04-19T18:10:37Z")
I hovered and did Get Info but I didn’t see a XML reference.
Codec H264
Bitrate 9077 kbps
Language English
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Height 800
Level 4.1
Profile high
Ref Frames 5
Scan Type progressive
Width 1920
Codec DCA
Channels 5.1
Bitrate 1536 kbps
Language English
Audio Channel Layout 5.1(side)
Profile dts
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Maybe I’m not looking in the right place. Anyway hope this helps…
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### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 6:30pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/6 "2018-04-19T18:30:23Z")
That’s good enough. For future, when you hover, you click Get Info. After that, you see `View XML` in the lower left corner of the popup 🙂
The info shows H.264 👍
Is there any way to capture the artifacting? Some of it is just the processor generation and beyond anything we can do, while some of it are actual disturbances in the video stream (small corruptions / illegal values) from when it was initially transcoded down to 9 Mbps.
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### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 7:52pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/7 "2018-04-19T19:52:29Z")
Thanks, h264 was indicated in my initial post. Anyway artifacting covers the whole display anytime the scene transitions or action. Eventually it disappears when the scene becomes stationary and movement is minimal. Turning off HA fixes the problem.
Would it be worth trying a graphics card to move processing away form the processor to address the generation concern? Does CentOS 7 support this?
Thanks for your help!
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### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 7:56pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/8 "2018-04-19T19:56:07Z")
You jumped ahead. I was going to ask if turning off HW smoothed it out.
Since you’ve already answered that, the only next step, given the age of the processor family, is to see what comes in updates from Intel. I don’t expect much, if anything, but we can hope. Silicon design age is going against us since 8th generation is on the market and 9th generation is in development now
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### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 8:14pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/9 "2018-04-19T20:14:51Z")
So is a graphics card worth trying on Centos 7 to bypass Intel QuickSync?
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### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 8:18pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/10 "2018-04-19T20:18:53Z")
If you can make it work outside of Plex first, yes.
Be prepared because you’ll likely need a 4.x kernel to get the needed Kernel drivers. Centos 7 is still a 3.10 kernel
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### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 10:35pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/11 "2018-04-19T22:35:06Z")
I’ll work on another plan… disappointing…
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### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [April 19, 2018, 10:38pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/12 "2018-04-19T22:38:56Z")
Use Fedora and lock revision at 26. Not so hard
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### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2018, 4:18am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/13 "2018-04-20T04:18:44Z")
Thanks, my file server hosts Plex so changing the OS would be complicated.
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### Author:  [@ChuckPa](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ChuckPa)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2018, 4:22am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/14 "2018-04-20T04:22:50Z")
Not really as complicated as you might think.
At the top of the Linux forum, I’ve created a number of `Linux Tips`.
In there, you can make a full backup of your current installation and do what you need/want with it.
The beauty of Linux is that a tarball (`.tar` file) is its portability.
Create on system A.
Copy to some place safe if reinstalling the OS or take to the new Linux box
Install on ‘new’
Stop Plex
Extra the tar ball in position
`sudo chown -R plex:plex ./Library`
Start Plex
All the instructions are in the thread under Linux Tips
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### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2018, 3:21pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/15 "2018-04-20T15:21:25Z")
Thanks, I’ll look into it.
As an fyi I tried an h265 demo file and it played absolutely perfectly.
Codec HEVC
Bitrate 31695 kbps
Bit Depth 10
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Color Range tv
Color Space bt2020nc
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Height 1600
Level 5.1
Profile main 10
Ref Frames 1
Width 3840
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### Author:  [@mmbarry](https://forums.plex.tv/u/mmbarry)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2018, 3:30am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/16 "2018-04-21T03:30:49Z")
I’ll run with Hardware Acceleration turned off as it is producing artifacts with h264 content. It is interesting that when HA is turned off that the file plays perfectly with no artifacts.
Based on above, one would assume that a 4th Gen CPU is just old and needs to be replaced with a newer generation as you indicated: however, given an h265 file plays perfectly with HA turned on leads me to believe there’s a problem somewhere else.
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### Author:  [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2020, 12:56am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-transcoding-quick-sync-hardware-acceleration-artifacts/233171/17 "2020-01-08T00:56:37Z")