PMS not using HW transcoding with Quadro P400

[luedi]

Server Version#: 1.20.1.3252
Player Version#: Plex Web Version 4.34.4

I’ve run into a problem with getting HW transcoding to work on a Debian 10 server.

GPU: Nvidia Quadro P400
Nvidia driver version: 440.100
HW acceleration is enabled in PMS settings.

When running a 1080p to 240p transcode (for testing), both Nvidia-smi and nvtop pick up the transcode, but let the CPU do all the work (328%, 4 core).
Same with 4K to 1080p but with 100% CPU load (400%) and choppy playback.

nvtop shows: -hwaccel:0 nvdec -hwaccel_fallback_threshold:0

Does anyone know what I can do?

I’ve looked into dependencies for Debian (HardwareVideoAcceleration - Debian Wiki)
According to this, two packages are necessary:
libnvcuvid1
libnvidia-encode1
I can’t install them because they conflict with the latest Nvidia driver (screenshot).

Should I downgrade the Nvidia driver?

[TeknoJunky]

is this server running on bare metal or through a virtual machine?

it should work fine with normal nvidia drivers.

you might want to update to newer drivers

go @ https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch

download the latest nvidia driver from the links provided

i’m running 450.57 currently.

shouldn’t need the patch itself

also, check your server dashboard and logs to see if plex is only doing (hw) decode and/or encode.

in the logs, look for entries with
mde: will tell WHY something is transcoded
tpu: will tell you WHAT cpu/or gpu transcoder mode is used

[luedi]

Hi TeknoJunky,
Thanks for the advice. I will upgrade the driver asap. Plex is (now) running directly under Debian to support GPU HW…
Previously, docker portainer did not agree with passing the Nvidia runtime to the container.
I will report…

[luedi]

Hi again,
I’ve managed to install the .run package from NVIDIA and HW transcoding just works, no extra packages/dependencies to install.
However it took quite a while to completely remove all NVIDIA package manager packages and disable nouveau. For others doing the same I did this (in Debian 10).

sudo apt-get autoremove nvidia-driver
sudo apt-get autoremove --purge nvidia-driver
sudo apt-get purge nvidia.
The “.” is important = wildcard

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nouveau.conf
add:

blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo reboot

sudo systemctl stop display-manager

Then install the package:
sudo sh NVIDIA…

BIG Thank you to TeknoJunky!

[TeknoJunky]

@luedi

disable nouveau

yeah, I think this was probably the key issue, nouveau can cause problems, in my experience.