is hardware transcoding still not working as a service" i have read many conflicitng reports saying that it does and does not work.
Its been years since I last posted here but I wanted to say thanks again for PMS. It has worked flawlessly for 5 years now straight.
Not as far as I’m aware unfortunately. I don’t fully understand the situation, but I believe the limitation is related to session 0 isolation resulting in the service not having access to hardware transcoding. I’m sure someone here can provide a better explanation. The only workarounds I recall seeing involved using auto-login to avoid running as a service, or using a different application, AlwaysUp, which works differently somehow to allow hardware transcoding with Plex running as a service. AlwaysUp is not cheap though, so I’ve just lived without hardware transcoding.
Yeah dude, i switched to unraid (linux), everything is much better 
F Windows
Working on a Windows Server 2019 without any problems Thx!
Issue with AzureAD credentials
I have noted an issue with PMS as a Service which relates to the use of an Office 365 user as the logged in user to the device you’re installing the service on, if you’re looking to use these same credentials to run the service.
The service fails to start with a dependency error, and cannot be started using the credentials.
I don’t know if this is something that can be, or is planned to be resolved, but this would be very useful if it were.
1.17 installer stuck at Next!
Werid One, I’ve got 2 PMS, both running on 2 x Server 2016. but 1.1.17 will not install on one server. The MSI start up, and I press next, It just sit there and will not advance. Dos the MSI has a logging option ?
Yes this machine has 1.1.15 so it’s basically an upgrade?
I’ve tried stopping the Plex Service, and closing the Try app. but nothing.
Any ideas why it will not install?
Oh cancel works perfectly!!
Open an elevated cmd, use the following:
msiexec /i “full path to the msi file” /qb /L*ve! “full path to log file”
This will create a full detailed msi logging so yo can see what is going on.
Thank you so much for this btw, its been great. If you want to update your OS’s list, I have been successfully running it on server 2019 for 6 months now
Just wanted to send u a beer from vienna / Austria to Down Under. Unfortunally, they want 4 Euro for sending you 5 Euro for a beer. Besides Paypal … do you have a Bitcoin Adress? Monero? Litecoin? Dash? Ethereum? Would be a pleasure to send a beer in a more modern way than paypal. Big THX for this fine peace of software. Testing it on Server 2019 Datacenter / Desktop.
The explanation you are looking for is here:
tl:dr Services run in session 0. Session 0 does not have access to the video driver so hardware acceleration is unavailable to PMS as a service.
AlwaysUp can be setup to avoid running Plex in Session 0. Run Any Application as a Windows Service at Boot | AlwaysUp
How to Run Plex Media Server as a Windows Service (2019/10/2016/8/2012/7/2008)
To avoid session 0 you’ll need to setup auto-logon: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Answers when Running As A Windows Service with AlwaysUp
I ran PMS as a service until I upgraded to a server that supported hardware acceleration. Since I spent about $800 building this new server, another $50 for AlwaysUp didn’t seem like a huge expense for being able to take full advantage of my new hardware. Besides, cutting the cord and getting the local channels over the air has saved me over $100 a month for the past year. I’m still money ahead.
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I run PMS as a service in Win10x64, and hardware transcoding has been working fine for me.
I do run an Ryzen 3900X / AMD X570-based system with an Nvidia RTX-2060, so I don’t know if that hardware configuration is allowing the Plex hardware transcoding to work better on my system.
You can check the box, but it won’t work.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/hardware/design/dn653293(v=vs.85)
tl:dr Services run in session 0. Session 0 does not have access to the video driver so hardware acceleration is unavailable to PMS as a service. This is by design, it is a security feature of Windows.
I also run PMS as a service and have hardware acceleration enabled and it works. I can see it within the Dashboard when my users are streaming that it is transcoding using the GPU.
@jebrossard: Same here - When in the Plex Dashboard, I see Transcode (hw) next to videos that are actively streaming. Additionally, my Nvidia GPU Activity application, I see plex transcoder listed, along with a 5% increase in GPU loading.
I’m absolutely positive that PMS as a Service is utilizing Nvidia hardware transcoding, regardless of what Microsoft said back in 2017 (and not listing Win10).
AzJazz
It seems that some NVIDIA products/drivers can provide hardware acceleration in Session 0:
“Note: Drivers for NVIDIA NVENC and NVIDIA Tesla GPU hardware are structured in a way such that the hardware acceleration capabilities are available to applications running in Session 0 Isolation.” (https://www.wowza.com/docs/How-to-enable-hardware-accelerated-transcoding-when-running-as-a-Windows-service) I didn’t find a more authoritative source from a quick search.
This potentially explains the differing results results reported here. What I need is for Intel Quick Sync to support it!
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That is very interesting. This may explain why I have more issues with NVIDIA’s drivers than I do with AMD’s drivers, as it seems NVIDIA likes to break the rules. 
Hi!
What is the best way to run Plex with an unprivileged user account?
- Create a new user (Plex) in windows with no group membership
- Give Plex user Read access to Plex Media Server Programs folder
- Give Plex user Read access to the media/library folder(s)
- Change owner of the Plex Media App Data folder to the Plex User
- Create new permission: “Owner Rights” -> Modify -> Subfolder and files only; on the Plex Media App Data folder
- Give own account full permissions on the Plex Media App Data folder
Plex Media App Data folder = The folder where the database(s), caches, logs, etc are stored.
That seems to work fine but in the plex media server log I get the following error message:
Failed to delete session directory (boost::filesystem::remove: Access Denied: "S:\Plex Media Server\Cache\Transcode\Sessions\plex-transcode-nh3w3r638q0ud8yzfsetunqv-97ac3882-b456-42b1-be9a-a4c843d159f5\chunk-stream0-00027.m4s")
But the directory is removed just fine.
Also I’m not sure if this a permission issue or some other process is blocking the access?
Looks like it’s been awhile since this service was updated, but I’m getting ready to move the service to a new user account. I can’t find the “The path where local application data is stored” setting anymore though and I don’t see it in the registry. What happened to this setting?
The setting was removed from Plex Web in PMS v1.19.3.2740, released in April.
The default location is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Plex Media Server, which is usually C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Plex Media Server.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202915258-where-is-the-plex-media-server-data-directory-located/
