So it seems I now have a fully upgraded PMS, to latest beta (1.31.3.6819-2ef591a4c_amd64.deb). Transcoding seems to be happy once more, though for reference I’m using Nvidia drivers 525.85.12 also.
I’ve not checked if anything has changed with VAAPI and how the transcoding wastes time trying this before NVENC - so I don’t know if this has been looked at. (To me, the process should be checked and changed to better accommodate Nvidia transcoding, e.g. why keep checking for VAAPI for every start of a transcode when clearly it’s not powered off and I’ve magically installed an Intel CPU with VAAPI 
)
I’ve run a similar process (to the below) a good few times of the past months (different PMS versions), but PMS was clearly still not having any of it… Until today 
Anywho… Today I took another stab at this and wanted to see if the latest PMS beta was now working correctly. Here’s the process I followed
- Powered off my VM (ESXi VM) for PMS (Ubuntu 20.04)
- Made a snapshot
- Powered on
- Remove old Nvidia stuff
-sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-* -y
-sudo apt autoremove - Rebooted
- Updating initramfs (take from @ChuckPa, from a different post)
-update-initramfs -u - Rebooted
- Installed the very latest Nvidia drivers
-sudo apt install nvidia-driver-525-server nvidia-settings - Rebooted
- Downloaded and installed the latest version of PMS (beta)
-wget https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server-new/1.31.3.6819-2ef591a4c/debian/plexmediaserver_1.31.3.6819-2ef591a4c_amd64.deb
-dpkg -i plexmediaserver_1.31.3.6819-2ef591a4c_amd64.deb
(N.B. I didn’t want to just do apt update/upgrade as there are lots of other updates needed, I just wanted to focus on PMS) - Let PMS sit for a good 15+ minutes
(Even though the DB update took about 5mins, PMS was still really busy afterwards for around another 10mins)
And that’s about it. Once PMS had time to catch-up with itself, it seems ok. My transcodes to an external Roku box are working without issues, whereas before they would instantly fail.
I’ve not been keeping tabs on everything that has been going on since PMS 1.30.xxx came out. I tried to be a part of the “lets find the problem”, but as soon as I mention ESXi/VMs, you’re on a bit of a loosing streak. But, it seems that this dreaded transcode issue has been identified and fixed at some point, prior (or at) this latest PMS beta.
I’ll still need to be careful with future releases of PMS as we won’t know when all of the changes made to the beta will be in the public release. You’d expect it to be the “next version”, but this is not always the case… So unless I find a big problem with this beta, I’ll have to stick to this for a few public release… And then re-test all over again
I’m only posting all of this for completeness, and to show there is a least one working version of PMS just now 
… Also, to give a nod to the hard working forum admins/staff who’s work has paid off, and the Plex developers have made good progress. Lets hope the constant checking for VAAPI get looked at
