Server Version#:latest stable
Player Version#:roku
trying to sort out the reality of hw transcoding vs what everyone seems to claim.
As you can probably ascertain from the above, I have a dedicated plex server running the latest stable pms. cpu is a ryzen 5 7600, 192GB ram, and transcodes are written to a ram drive so it all happens very efficiently (and saves writes/wear to the nvme).
up until recently, my process was: download the movie, render it out (via handbrake) to 1080P h.265 .mp4, that way everything within my network at home (all wired via ethernet) direct played from the media server without the need for transcoding. the only time transcoding would be called upon would be for remote playout to the other homes of my family.
the other day, one thing led to another and the only way i could get a download to play out was if i left it in its original 4k .mkv container. the playout was great, so i tried a few other favorites by re-downloading them in 4k.
all my tv’s are 1080P so plex transcodes them (in hw) down to 1080p.
i experimented last night by playing 3 of the movies, 2 across 2 tvs, the 3rd to my pc via the plex app.
2 transcodes were fine. the cpu went to 97-100%, the iGPU was at around 50%, but they played out fine. it coulden’t keep up with the 3rd stream… that would choke/buffer the transcode.
my question is this: that ryzen 5 7600 on a VERY optimized win10 IoT enterprise install (it is completely gutted, had it down to around 60 processes before installing PMS), i see people all over claiming that their transcoding several 4k streams down to 720p via their old iGPU without issue. why wouldn’t my cpu be able to do the same? 1080P to 720P is no problem at all, and i have had several streams without the cpu breaking a sweat, but i would’ve thought mine would be at least as capable as everyone elses…
