Server Version#: latest
Player Version#: latest, windows, IOS
I run Plex Server on a Windows Server2019 with a EPYC CPU, overall the System has enough power to do even transcoding 4K by Software.
But at the moment I get heavy buffering when transcoding 4K content. At the server I see that all CPUs (16) Are used but in average only around 30%.
If I set manually the transcoding service process to high priority in task manager the cpu goes up to 70 % and no buffering happenes anymore.
What is wrong, why plex transcode doesn’t use a higher percentage of CPU power ? Any chance to set priority higher by plex. At the moment there is only the priority change option for background transcoding.
It would be nice if Plex Ninjas would chime in on these threads, or maybe even start a pinned thread explaining these 4K buffering issues.
I have been going through the same issues. I built out a powerful Plex server, with i9-9900K CPU, 32 GB RAM, nVidia RTX 2080 Super GPU, m.2 NVMe storage, 10GB networking, etc. I STILL have buffering when trying to play a 4K transcode on the local network.
With 4K Blu-rays now commonplace, you’d think the Plex engineers would be focused on this issue. It really sucks to have to keep multiple copies of the same media files (encoding to different resolutions) just to avoid buffering. On the other hand, it would be awesome to only need to store 4K versions of media files and have Plex handle the transcodes seamlessly.
Will this ever happen? It would be nice to hear from a Plex engineer about that.
Did you check what power plan is set? A few years ago MS started defaulting servers to “power saving” power plans, which will limit how much CPU things will use. Set it to the max performance one instead.
after changing power settings, now 4K HDR transcoding with CPU without any problems.
Strangewise - I see in taskmanager now only little increased CPU utilization by the transcoder - but 4K transcoding down to 1080 playing fine. Also the power consumption of the board is not really changed…
Will try also later if it improves also GPU based transcoding.
You can use this PMS as a service
or you can use nssm.exe
Either will work. The latter requires you to install updates manually.
In general, video decoding in hardware won’t work. Windows is preventing services direct access to the hardware drivers which are required for hardware transcoding.
Plex Server#: 1.21.4.4079
OS: Windows Server 2019
CPU: 2x Xeon ES-2670
I have been having all the same problems people on this thread have been having with transcoding 4K movies.
I read on another thread where you can go into Display Settings → Graphic Settings and it will allow you to choose applications to customize graphics performance. The suggestion was to add “Plex Transcoder”. One of the reasons I upgraded to Server 2019 was that it has this option. Server 2016 does not.
It did not work for me, so I kept searching and found this thread. I have my performance set to maximum, and I tried elevating the priority of the Plex transoder to “high”. Unfortunately, neither worked for me.
Are you saying that one cannot do hardware transcoding in a Windows environment?
I am saying that you cannot use hardware video decoding, if you are running Plex server as a Windows system service (which is not the default and requires additional software).
does anyone found a solution for this?
I am have same problem on my windows 10 with 2 xeon E5-2680v2 @ 3.2 GHz (40threads)
My processor is running at 20% when transcoding 4K to 720p on my iphone and it always buffer with a message telling me my server is not strong enough.
I have try starting plex on high priority but the transcoding stays in normal priority.
I have also try, in windows, give more process to background service.
I have also try to run plex as a service.
note: when I was running in Ubuntu, everything was working correctly.
I forgot to said that I have 3 pool of drives.
benchmark on drive c is around 500MB/s read and write (plex installation drive)
Drive d is around 600MB/s read and write ( my movie library)
Drive e is around 400MB/s read and write (my plex temp)
