When playing h.264 files, playback works flawlessly, even when transcoding to different qualities and bitrates on the fly. The HW acceleration on the Celeron J4005 works totally fine and I can playback even multiple streams at once from my NUC.
However, transcoding HEVC files into h.264 at any bitrate is unusable. Buffering happens all the time. When using the “Optimized version” feature to convert it offline, the conversion speed is 0.2x, which explains why it’s not possible to do it on the fly.
In the transcoder settings, I already set the quality to “Prefer high speed encoding” and the background x264 preset to “Super fast”.
Is there anything else I can do to make it viable to play h.265 files or am I doomed to never being able to do it with that device? Note that I play via the web player so I have to transcode to h.264.
I figured I can actually playback HEVC for some reason, even on Firefox on Windows (did not know this). But the only way to get it to play HEVC is to enable the option “Disable video stream transcoding”.
Unfortunately this means I cannot transcode H.264 to a lower resolution or bitrate for when I’m using my phone with mobile data, unless I change the option back. I guess it’s a workaround.
Facts:
NAS: DS918+
CPU: INTEL Celeron J3455
Graphics: INTEL HD Graphics 500
NAS Version: DSM 7
Last known PMS version without problems: 1.32.1.6999
Player: WebOS - Plex for LG
I never had any problems in HW transcoding of any files. As of all PMS versions above 1.32.1.6999, all transcodes are buffering and not playing properly. The PMS version 1.32.1.6999, is the last known one working for me.
What I noticed, is what vbersier also posted here. That the transcode speed, for example with the version 1.32.6.7371, is at 0.4x for me. Meanwhile the speed on the 1.32.1.6999 version, is above 1.5x without any buffering. At least I am testing on a file, that is just burning subtitles.
Is it possible, that there is an issue with the newer PMS versions that are limiting the transcoding speed for the INTEL Celeron/INTEL HD Graphics?
Would be interessting, if @vbersier faces the same issues with the 1.32.1.6999 version or if they are gone with that version too.
That’s not something I have added to my preferences.
@Shinokaizoku I don’t really want to downgrade my PMS right now, and since I found a workaround by disabling transcoding for now, I’m not in a hurry to get this solved. Maybe my hardware is just too weak for H.265 also.
I just checked it and I don’t have anything related to “VaapiDriver” in there. I think I never changed anything in that “Preferences.xml” file as I never had problems.
