Transcoder not respecting Throttle Buffer

Plex Media Server Plex Pass Betas
1

Installed the newest beta today and have been testing out HEVC transcoding using an nVidia RTX 4060. It seems as though the throttle buffer is not being respected, both for HEVC transcoding and H264 transcoding. My throttle buffer is set to 60 (the default I believe), but when transcoding a video it transcodes the entirety of the stream before stopping. I have tried changing the throttle buffer to different times, but none have fixed the issue, nor has restarting the server. I assume this is a bug in the beta release?

Server Version#: 1.41.4.9399
Server OS: Windows Server 2022
Player Version#: Roku 7.30.24.9821-1020931ea-Plex

Edit: It appears from the update notes this is… intended behavior. That’s disappointing given transcoding pegs the GPU at 100% usage for the entirety of the transcode, which for some movies is upwards of 40 minutes. While the GPU is pegged at 100%, additional transcode streams fail to start due to buffering. Whereas before the GPU was at 100% for maybe a minute, and then spiked briefly throughout the rest of the watch time, allowing others to use those resources.

2

My experience is different than yours, however I am running Intel, not Nvidia. On mine, the iGPU goes to between 95-99% on the first transcode, not matter what it is. At first I was super disappointed and thought I could only do a couple transcodes, but I just tested with six 4K->1080p 8Mpbs HEVC transcodes + one 1080p->720p 4Mbps h264 transcode. My iGPU stayed the same throughout. When I attempt to start another 4K->1080p transcode it just won’t start. This is WAY better than I expected out of my little NUC with an i7-1165G7 CPU. All of these were doing tone mapping and looked really good. I’m really encouraged by this performance. and can’t wait to see what my remote people have to say. A couple of them are really bandwidth limited (4Mbps) and I’m hoping this affords them a better experience.

3

I am having the same problem here - and it is chewing up my disk space and ultimately then causing my server to crash. This has only just recently started happening (I am on 1.41.4.9399 - but I have plexupdate auto updating…)

5

Plex is tracking this issue. You can read about it here.

Transcoding Throttle Removal Problems - An Example - Plex Media Server / Plex Pass Betas - Plex Forum