Any chance we‘ll finally get hw transcoding on ARM chips?
Chris and I discussed it. I’ve sent a message asking him.
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I’ve chatted with Chris.
ARMv8 acceleration. along with a few other changes , are on his To-Do list.
All of this was predicated on the upgrade to FFMPEG 6.1 as it provides the foundation and base capabilities.
I cannot speak to scheduling. Following FFMPEG 6.1 moving to production status, we will be upgrading Intel Compute Runtime (ICR) and the Intel Media Driver (IMD). Both of these are needed to add support for the newer GPUs (e.g. BattleMage, et al)
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It was working smoothly, but I appear to be having issues with some transcoding:
Jun 29, 2025 13:46:54.192 [140479362693944] Info — [Req#12cb48/Transcode/1lzq7comovvzcj1ujuxporan] Preparing driver imd for GPU Intel Raptor Lake-S GT1 [UHD Graphics 770]
Jun 29, 2025 13:46:54.296 [140479567387448] Error — [Req#12cb99/Transcode/1lzq7comovvzcj1ujuxporan/30b29cff-885b-4ce0-ac07-7d9e30876cc4] [aost#0:1/aac @ 0x7f6928fda940] Error parsing bitstream filter sequence 'framedrop=count=2': Bitstream filter not found
Jun 29, 2025 13:46:54.296 [140479500409656] Error — [Req#12cb9a/Transcode/1lzq7comovvzcj1ujuxporan/30b29cff-885b-4ce0-ac07-7d9e30876cc4] Error opening output file dash.
Jun 29, 2025 13:46:54.297 [140479390325560] Error — [Req#12cb9d/Transcode/1lzq7comovvzcj1ujuxporan/30b29cff-885b-4ce0-ac07-7d9e30876cc4] Error opening output files: Bitstream filter not found
Jun 29, 2025 13:46:57.888 [140479390325560] Error — [Req#12cc66/Transcode/1lzq7comovvzcj1ujuxporan/03b96c9e-552e-4369-abf1-119df493ded0] [aost#0:1/aac @ 0x7f14db1af100] Error parsing bitstream filter sequence 'framedrop=count=2': Bitstream filter not found
Jun 29, 2025 13:46:57.888 [140479350479672] Error — [Req#12cc69/Transcode/1lzq7comovvzcj1ujuxporan/03b96c9e-552e-4369-abf1-119df493ded0] Error opening output file dash.
Jun 29, 2025 13:46:57.888 [140479628421944] Error — [Req#12cc6d/Transcode/1lzq7comovvzcj1ujuxporan/03b96c9e-552e-4369-abf1-119df493ded0] Error opening output files: Bitstream filter not found
Jun 29, 2025 13:46:57.937 [140480007228216] Error — Session 0x7fc3f6cc6ad8 terminated
I’m now rolling back to the previous version to see if that fixes it.
We needd more to go on than just that excerpt.
Can we please have the server DEBUG logs which capture this?
(Enable DEBUG and recreate it)
Failing with Live mpeg2 streams from HDHomerun tuner when transcoding to HEVC.
Intermittent failures when playing recorded mpeg2 and transcoding to HEVC.
Vanilla Debian 12
Linux debian 6.1.0-37-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.140-1 (2025-05-22) x86_64 GNU/Linuxlspci -nn | egrep -i “3d|display|vga”
00:02.0 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation CoffeeLake-S GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] [8086:3e92]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GP106 [GeForce GTX 1060 3GB] [10de:1c02] (rev a1)
Server was rebuilt clean without nvidia support to minimize straying but it had out of memory messages while doing the same tests.
Working with 1.41.7.9823
Logs cover 1.41.7.9823 to 1.41.8.9914, recording a test file to compare live stream vs recorded.
Side question: Hardware decoding was disabled sometime ago for Live TV & DVR will that be permanent.
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Thanks for the detailed report! Was this happening on any client or just one? Regardless, I’ll take a look and file an issue to track. Thanks again!! 
Plex Web 4.147.1
Plex for Windows 1.109.0.329-ea562b95
And you can add trying to record with HEVC (Use hardware-accelerated video encoding) fails instantly.
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@Anaerin any chance you can also include a sample file which reproduces the issue?
@pl_5309 it looks like you actually uncovered two issues, one when transcoding live tv to hevc in general, the other with live tv streams which include ASTC A53 CC subtitles. both have been filed and added to the known issues list.
To answer your side question, no we do not intend to re-enable hw decoding of live tv. It is very common for live tv to have bad data and there were reported cases where the bad data would take down the entire host machine (instead of just that transcode session) when hw transcoded.
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Thank you, I have observed in the logs Plex sometimes struggling with the stream startup.
Hardware Decode - Stability is way more important than system load but Plex probably needs to make an official statement for all those individuals with NAS’s and Low power CPU’s might struggle with more than 2 live streams.
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Is this why the New Experience clients are forcing LiveTV to transcode to h264?
As I posted over here Pixel 8 Pro reports EAC3 is supported, but EAC3 content fails to play - #53 by Gavin-Ashford this transcoder preview has seemingly helped a little with the Pixel EAC3 (with Atmos?) issue by attempting direct play and finding it fails and falls back to transcoding when it can’t.
However from my limited testing (and with the older, non-new UI, Android app) its certainly not resolved all the instances; some still fail as before.
If the intention is that in all instances of failed direct play it should fall-back to transcoding I’d be happy to provide sets of logs to help - just let me know what/which you’d need!
@dklein I’m honestly not sure why the new experience is forcing it from their end but i can try to find out.
It was definitely a troubleshooting step. Originally they did not block HEVC transcodes on livetv, but playback was failing almost 100% of the time until someone realized if they disabled HEVC transcodes at the server level then livetv would work. So Craig disabled HEVC specifically for livetv.
Will this upgrade fix all the TrueHD audio tracks being transcoded to OPUS instead of FLAC in the new iOS app?
Before the launch of the new experience app on iOS (specifically on iPad in my case), TrueHD tracks were correctly transcoded to FLAC, but the behavior changed with the new app and they’re now transcoded to OPUS. It’s resulting in a much quieter and noticeably worse audio quality.
I asked about this new behavior in a thread here but never got any response.
@Tion1 it will not fix the fact its getting transcoded to OPUS (the clients now make that decision) however you should be getting much better quality of OPUS.
When do you foresee this landing in production? Within this year?
I foresee this landing in production (based on our discussions) as soon as
- Forum Preview issues are resolved.
- Player teams confirm being ready
Chris might know more but those are the obvious gates I know of
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it will be released when its as ready as we can make it. That will depend on the number and severity of reported issues. At some point there won’t be any new issues coming in here and the only way to get more data will be to add it to the release process (beta for ~1 month then public). I would strongly suggest testing now as once it gets into beta it will take a major breaking change for it to be reverted.
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