Server Version#: 1.25.2.5319
Player Version#:multiple on multiple devices from roku to firetv to android boxes to web
I have an old supermicro server for my plex needs for the last few years i picked up for ~$!k. it has dual xeon e3-2560 v3 and 128GB RAM. admittedly older but raw performance I would have thought still be okay.
I have a low profile 1650 graphics card in there for the transcoding. I often have trouble transcoding a single 4k x265 video. i have some clients capable of direct play but some aren’t and outside the home it is generally transcoded anyways. Is my hardware too old too handle x265? I have tried with and without patched drivers to remove the session limit without difference and as i said this happens on even a single transcode. Is there something I’m missing on setting this up properly or do I need to upgrade. could probably turn the server into a DAS for a couple hundred and connect it to a new server but budget would be somewhat limited for new server at the moment. i have stopped obtaining x265 files for now but still have performance issues sometimes. would appreciate advice on making this smoother for my family.
The issue you have:
11,920 Passmarks spread across 20 threads (10 cores).
Effectively 1,192 passmarks per core. That hurts. You need 5000-6000 passmarks
in 3 threads to transcode 10 Mbps HEVC HDR to H.264.
Recommendation would be to consider adding a Nvidia GPU GTX-1050 TI or above.
You’ll get HW transcoding of the video and the CPU will be more than capable of picking up the rest of the load.
i have a 1650 in there at the moment. shouldn’t that be slightly better than the 1050 ti?
You should avoid transcoding 4K especially HDR as the HDR will be transcode by the CPU and not GPU. If you do not have the horsepower to Transcode 4K HDR then I would recommend making optimized versions 1080P of the movie so Plex can use that for your non 4K TVs and remote users.
You might find this thread useful: [INFO] Plex, 4k, transcoding, and you - aka the rules of 4k
This is the list which is supported (Plex uses the Nvidia server-side drivers)
well the 1650 seems to be supported but apparently hdr doesn’t support nvidia acceleration?
how about some logs please which capture this so I can see what’s happening?
- DEBUG logging on
- VERBOSE logging off
- Start playback
- Play 20 seconds
- Stop playback
- Wait 20 seconds
- Download Logs ZIP file & Attach here
Most common cause for Nvidia not being seen when it’s compatible:
- Driver version too low
- PMS in a VM and Nvidia card not passed through
I have a 1650 in a similar old server, dual E5-2630L v2 @ 2.40GHz, which has no problem with 4k transcoding.
you should ensure you have some fairly current nvidia drivers installed, a good link for a lot of drivers @ GitHub - keylase/nvidia-patch along with a patch to unlock nvidia restrictions.
once you have installed the drivers/patch and rebooted, confirm that your linux can see the drivers
nvidia-smi
if installed properly, this will give you a bunch of info on the gpu.
you can do watch -d nvidia-smi to monitor gpu usage whilst transcoding something with plex.
additionally, you should monitor Plex Web > dashboard to confirm you are getting HW for both decode/encode sides.
I have not determined what the max 4k transcodes is for my system, but it has done at least 3 as far as I can remember.
with multiple 4k transcodes, you are likely to run out of GPU vram (each taking ~800meg) and/or cpu from transcoding HD audio (IIRC audio is single core cpu only and requires quite a bit of single core power)
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