I run a Plex Server on Ubuntu 20.4 I’ve set the HW acceleration and encoding ON - but I cannot get them working.
I know that Nvidia sets a HW decode limit of 2 streams, unless you patch the driver, but I’ve not patched and I still get nothing. I run NVidia driver 440.64
I have GreenWithEnvy and NVidia XServer settings apps - is there a switch somewhere in there that turns HW encoding on?
Luckily, I’ve a 3600X Ryzen chip, so multi stream software encoding is possible, but it does make a lot of use of the 3600X - and all the while, I’ve 4G of Fast Video Memory on the 1650 Super doing nothing.
I downloaded it from the Ubuntu Software App so I guess it was a Snap install. Would it make a difference if I got it as a Deb file direct from Plex.tv?
The snap does not include driver support for GPU’s and it isolates Plex from the one’s you installed.
Be aware that the Plex install/data directory is or use to be different /var/snap/plexmediaserver/common/Library/Application Support vs /var/lib/plexmediaserver.
If it is and you want to transfer your current data you will have to cp or move it to the new location, don’t forget to check file ownership afterward, should be plex.
That Snap install may be my problem as I started off on this new box using Linux Mint and I thought I saw NVideo transcoding running there on “Greenwithenvy”.
I then switched distros to Ubuntu when 20.04 came out, and I lost the transcoding - but that may be because Ubuntu has Snaps installed and I’m not sure it was included in Mint…
It’s worth fiddling with, so I’ve uninstalled the Plex version, Bleachbitted everything to get rid of junk and re-installed from Plex.tv using the .deb file.
Let’s see how that works after it has reloaded all the media.
Tiberius - thanks so much - your suggestion of loading the .deb file, rather than the Snap version, worked a treat. I’m up and running now on a .deb installed Plex and HW Transcoding is working perfectly.
Interestingly, I was also having problems with Filebot - it was finding the movie metadata but wouldn’t rename the file. Again, it was a Snap install and somebody posted that Snap sandboxed Filebot, so kept it from operating properly. So again I uninstalled the Snap version and re-installed the .deb version, and it also now works a treat.
I’m beginning to suspect that whenever you try to load a Snap version of an app, it should come with a mandatory Health Warning!
