Ubuntu PMS not utilizing Nvidia HW transcoding

[totilolmomanon]

Hello Community,

I specifically purchased a used GTX 1660 to help my PMS (and Handbrake) with transcoding. However, no matter my effort, I cannot get Plex to actually utilize my GPU resources at all. Please help!
Server Version#: 1.19.4.2935 (via snap)

My system:
Ryzen 3 2200G
64GB RAM
GTX 1660
Ubuntu 20.04

NVidia smi readout WHILE TRANSCODING:
Fri Jul 17 14:25:58 2020
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 450.57 Driver Version: 450.57 CUDA Version: 11.0 |
|-------------------------------±---------------------±---------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
| 0 GeForce GTX 1660 Off | 00000000:01:00.0 On | N/A |
| 38% 44C P8 6W / 120W | 224MiB / 5941MiB | 2% Default |
| | | N/A |
±------------------------------±---------------------±---------------------+

±----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=============================================================================|
| 0 N/A N/A 1206 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 35MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 1932 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 73MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 2134 G /usr/bin/gnome-shell 99MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 3208 G /usr/lib/firefox/firefox 2MiB |
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

I already reinstalled the driver multiple times, rebooted the system as well as PMS via snap and installed the keylase patch to unlock the card from Nvidia restrictions. Handbrake gladly uses the GPU for transcoding but Plex just says:

Video

1080p (H.264)

SD (H264)—Transcode

Any recommendations are greatly appreciated at this point.

[tom80H]

Sounds like a restriction through snap which does not provide support for the necessary drivers.

Transcoding on Nvidia 1650 Super

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.

Have you tried a plain install of Plex Media Server on your Ubuntu (using the dpkg without the abstractions)?

[totilolmomanon]

I didn’t think snap could be the issue, I’ll try to install PMS again and let you know if that helps.

[ChuckPa]

If i may augment;

SNAP is a container and as hardware restrictive as any docker/lxc in the default state.

[totilolmomanon]

OK, I managed to transfer my install but now all my media is supposedly unavailable, even though Plex knows the correct path to my files…

[ChuckPa]

User plex must minimally have read access to the media (directories and resultant files)

[totilolmomanon]

Awesome. It worked.
I would like to thank you two very much. It’s nice knowing that there’s someone here to quickly provide help.