I have a W10 desktop with PMS running as a service.
The CPU is an older Haswell i7-4770k which sits at 100% when trying to transcode 4k hevc uhd 10bit to 1080p and i can see that the x264 encoding is happening in (hw).
I have a Shield in one room which obviously plays them natively with no issue, but would like the flexibility to just store everything as uhd then play back on any device/screen with the PMS doing any transcoding necessary - such as when watching back on another TV with AFTV in 1080p.
So i recently bought a Nvidia GTX 1050Ti which supports HEVC decoding and was under the impression i could drop it into the machine and the GPU hardware decoding would magically take the load of the struggling CPU - however this hasn’t happened
Instead i can still see the CPU grinding away at 100% and hw decoding only still being utilised for the x264 encoding e.g. “Video: Transcoding HEVC to H264 (hw)” displayed in the status.
Have a missed something here, or should the 1050ti not now be handling the decoding with hardware transcoding enabled in PMS?
The CPU is mainly used for transcoding with Plex, I’ve never seen it use much GPU on my SLI RIG when transcoding and HW acceleration is enabled. The CPU clearly makes a difference though.
Because i already have a large volume of 4k uhd and it’s not realistic to store both 4k HEVC or 1080p x264 copies now or in the future. The whole point of transcoding is that you don’t have to and can watch on the fly. In addition to that, having had a load auto-optimised in x264 previously, Plex takes forever to transcode it into another version, and handled the versioning very poorly - for example whenever i pause a 1080p version of a film and then continue it plays the 4k version, and i have to jump back out to the menu and re-select the 1080p version.
It’s just a giant PITA when it doesn’t have to be given hardware HEVC optimisation is out there and apparently supported…
@himwithnoname said:
The CPU is mainly used for transcoding with Plex, I’ve never seen it use much GPU on my SLI RIG when transcoding and HW acceleration is enabled. The CPU clearly makes a difference though.
It should if it’s set up correctly and the GPU supports it.
OK Bro
Have fun and hope you have enough cash to get at 20k benchmark CPU just to transcode maybe 2 4Ks and nothing else.
My server is heavily in use by remote friends I share with.
Not to mention the Huge overhead on the CPU to transcode, my upload pipe is only 20MBPS…
Hope yours is faster.
My needs are obviously much different than yours as I want maximum availability, performance, and reliability at reasonable costs…
I have over 5TB of 4k HEVC, a 1gbps fibre connection to my home, and a GPU perfectly capable of transcoding it… so yes our infrastructure is quite different and i do have an interest in getting this working.
Fiber connection does not necessarily mean high upload BW…
Are your 4Ks in h265??
Does your GPU support that??
Does Plex support h265 HW transcoding?? (I don’t know)
If you encoded 4K in h264… Well what can I say.
Overall poor planning if unless most your clients are 4K capable.
@jjrjr1 said:
OK Bro
Have fun and hope you have enough cash to get at 20k benchmark CPU just to transcode maybe 2 4Ks and nothing else.
Again what are you talking about? A Kaby lake is hardly expensive. So i have no idea what this idea of the 20K benchmark is about when a ÂŁ100-ÂŁ150 cpu will do at least 5.
That said I do agree with your concept of 4K for capable devices and 1080p otherwise. purely because if the 4K has HDR they look truly awful when transcoded.
You are telling me a Kaby Lake CPU can transcode 5 HEVC 4k movies??
I find that VERY hard to believe…
Show me your Status Page with 5 4K transcodes going on simultaneously.
My I7 with QuickSync can barely do 1 4K transcode. Add another… well problematic.
With that being said, my cpu has a passmark of 8k. (about the requirement to transcode 1 HEVC file). So do the math.
My machine also has QuickSync. It does not do HW transcoding for HEVC (Plex or Quicksync limitation?? Dunno)
He said uplink BW is not an issue. Therefore Direct Play 4K is golden for many streams.
a 20k passmark machine, based on my experience will only handle 2 transcodes of 4K…
But I guess I am wrong…
Thanks for helping to straighten me out…
I just believe the OP is heading into an area he will be frustrated with for a long time.
But as I suggested, maybe he does not have a lot of remote users (Or non 4K clients) like I do…
I also am not sure but I do not think all 4K is HDR…
@jjrjr1 said:
You are telling me a Kaby Lake CPU can transcode 5 HEVC 4k movies??
I find that VERY hard to believe..
Show me your Status Page with 5 4K transcodes going on simultaneously.
My I7 with QuickSync can barely do 1 4K transcode. Add another.. well problematic.
But I guess I am wrong..
Thanks for helping to straighten me out…
I just believe the OP is heading into an area he will be frustrated with for a long time.
But as I suggested, maybe he does not have a lot of remote users (Or non 4K clients) like I do..
Or maybe with his system he doesn’t care.
Anyways…
I’m telling you that one peaks at 16% and that is a full 4K remux and not a 10GB encode. That said a 1080p with H/W acceleration peaks at 5% and is mostly idle. But i guess a screenshot showing 16% means it’s a faked screenshot because you don’t believe it? Or your CPU isn’t at least a Kaby or needs reseating ?
Anyway sadly i don’t have 5 clients but here’s two totally crippling the server… NOT!!
With regards to the 4K HDR no they aren’t but the majority are. As in 95% of recent releases.
Thanks for the info.
Guess I need to repair my server…
4 concurrent HVEC transcodes is amazing. Remux do not count since transcoding implies converting h265 to h264 for all other devices non-4K…
Like I said, in my experience, h265 -> h264 transcodes at 20mbps takes 8k passmark CPU.
Do any of your HVEC transcodes use HW acceleration?? Does not on my machine…
Thanks again for the advice. Nice to hear from an expert now and then…
@jjrjr1 said:
Thanks for the info.
Guess I need to repair my server..
Yep
@jjrjr1 said:
4 concurrent HVEC transcodes is amazing. Remux do not count since transcoding implies converting h265 to h264 for all other devices non-4K..
Sorry I have no idea what you mean. Whether the input file is a 4K remux at 80mbps or a 4K encode at 25-30mbps makes no difference whatsoever to the CPU.
@jjrjr1 said:
Like I said, in my experience, h265 → h264 transcodes at 20mbps takes 8k passmark CPU.
And yet transcoding to 20mbs is using 16%.
@jjrjr1 said:
Do any of your HVEC transcodes use HW acceleration?? Does not on my machine..
Yes of course. Nothing ever even tries to transcode without full HW acceleration (encode/decode.) So like i said something is up with your processor assuming it’s a KabyLake or newer. If it is a Kaby then the only other thing that can possibly be different is if the container makes a difference to the transcoder (knowing my love for MKV and yours for MP4.)
@jjrjr1 said:
Thanks again for the advice. Nice to hear from an expert now and then…
I will assume you’re not being snarky here. It wasn’t me who said
@jjrjr1 said:
OK Bro
Have fun and hope you have enough cash to get at 20k benchmark CPU just to transcode maybe 2 4Ks and nothing else.
Not to mention the Huge overhead on the CPU to transcode.
Which is clearly totally wrong.
But at the end of the day I say again. I totally agree that whilst i know why @Sonic_UK would want to just keep a single 4K file and let it transcode when needed, I personally (as you suggested) keep a separate 1080p copy. None of the 10 or so people I share with have a 4K TV. So my 4K library is for my usage only.
Thanks for the screenshots - love a bit of Outlander
My issues are nothing to do with remote bandwidth but entirely to do with serverbased transcoding with 4k hevc 10bit to 1080p within a local network - wanting to store everthing on my server in the highest quality possible and then watch back on a huge array of devices - be it direct stream to nvidia shield, transcode to x264 AFTV, transcode to 1080p AFTV or a whole range of other formats all locally within the network to play back on a range of devices and formats.
I’ve just looked at optimising the library and it’ll take me about a month… and take another 2TB of space, so not really an option!
It does look like the only option to do that is to invest in Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake CPU that supports native HEVC decoding. It’s not really about the passmark but embedded HEVC capability, and it seems GPU decoding isn’t supported, or poorly so, so the only way to utilise hardware transcoding from HEVC / x265 is to get a CPU that supports it.
@Sonic_UK said:
Thanks for the screenshots - love a bit of Outlander
My issues are nothing to do with remote bandwidth but entirely to do with serverbased transcoding with 4k hevc 10bit to 1080p within a local network - wanting to store everthing on my server in the highest quality possible and then watch back on a huge array of devices - be it direct stream to nvidia shield, transcode to x264 AFTV, transcode to 1080p AFTV or a whole range of other formats all locally within the network to play back on a range of devices and formats.
I’ve just looked at optimising the library and it’ll take me about a month… and take another 2TB of space, so not really an option!
It does look like the only option to do that is to invest in Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake CPU that supports native HEVC decoding. It’s not really about the passmark but embedded HEVC capability, and it seems GPU decoding isn’t supported, or poorly so, so the only way to utilise hardware transcoding from HEVC / x265 is to get a CPU that supports it.
Yep. I’m not 100% sure if a Coffee Lake offers anything beyond a Kaby. But for 4K HEVC 10bit a Kaby will definitely do the job well. Which is why I was simply trying to steer you away from the false impression you were being given about a 20K CPU benchmarks being needed for 2 4K HEVC transcodes. Utter nonsense.
@HitsVille said:
Yep. I’m not 100% sure if a Coffee Lake offers anything beyond a Kaby. But for 4K HEVC 10bit a Kaby will definitely do the job well. Which is why I was simply trying to steer you away from the false impression you were being given about a 20K CPU benchmarks being needed for 2 4K HEVC transcodes. Utter nonsense.
Thanks.
I found some more details on Kaby Lake vs Coffee Lake… “In terms of the integrated GPU, there is only a change in the way Intel addresses the name. Technically, it is still the same Intel HD Graphics 620 that is found in the 7th generation Kaby Lake CPUs but Intel has decided to change the branding to “UHD Graphics” to better convey the 4K/HEVC decoding that the iGPU is capable of. It is still the Gen9.2/GT2 engine as the previous generation but it now comes with native support for HDCP 2.2. Therefore, the GPU part is relatively unchanged, and for the most part, Intel has limited its tinkering to the CPU side.”
So doesn’t look like Coffee would provide any benefit of Kaby for HEVC decoding.
