Plex Hardware Transcoding Explained : Do you need it? What is the performance like?
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- Опубликовано: 19 июн 2024
- Get a Plex Pass: lon.tv/plexpass - For this month's Plex sponsored video we take a look at hardware transcoding and how it can dramatically improve the streaming performance of low-end Intel hardware. See more Plex: lon.tv/plexhdhr and subscribe! lon.tv/s
Links:
Pepper Jobs Mini PC review:
• Pepper Jobs GLK-UC2X M...
Intel Quick Sync list: lon.tv/quicksync
Plex Hardware Transcoding: lon.tv/plextranscode
VIDEO INDEX:
0:00 - Intro
01:22 - Transcoding explained
02:34 - Hardware that supports transcoding
03:38 - Performance: Hardware transcoding switched off
05:17 - Enabling hardware transcoding
05:57 - Performance: Hardware Transcoding Enabled
06:25 - Monitoring transcoding
07:13 - Performance: Multiple Streams
09:01 - PC used for testing - lon.tv/l6js (affiliate link)
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thx for actually making a video where I don't have to sit through 20 minutes and 4 commercials before I get my answer... big thumbs up!!!
@Angelo Legend instablaster :)
@Angelo Legend Glad I could help =)
FINALLY!! THANK YOU!! Been looking for a few days for a straight forward, full explanation, in-depth, and easy to understand video on this... Thank you!!!
Hours of research i spent looking into this topic and your the only one that shows actual real world scenarios! Have a like and subscription my friend!
Thanks for the Video made me take a second look at my I7 Plex Server it was not doing HW transcoding even though I had it set .... it needed a Video Driver update from Intel now it is working.
Thank you Lon yet again! I was working to resolve the high CPU transcode load on my Synology DS918+, and all I needed was one checkbox. Wow, hardware-accelerated video encoding alone is worth the cost of the Plex pass.
It makes a huge difference!
Lon thank you so much for this video and explaining and going into this topic in depth.
Thanks for sharing the information with a appropriate demonstration.. very helpful for beginners
This is a very informative video but I feel it may give the impression that as long as you only watch your media at home then transcoding won't be an issue. Plex doesn't just transcode when you're outside of the home and the video needs to be compressed, that's only one of the few situations in which it will transcode. It will also transcode when the device you're using isn't compatible with one or more codecs contained in the file. For example if you try to play an H.265/HEVC movie on an original Chromecast, Plex will have to transcode that H.265/HEVC file to H.264 because the OG Chromecast doesn't support HEVC, there's also a large issue that comes up in anime which makes heavy SSA/ASS subtitles and basically no device is compatible with that subtitle format so Plex has to transcode the file to burn those subtitles into the video. So even if you only watch your media at home a Raspberry Pi may not make a good Plex server and access to hardware transcoding may still be a requirement for an enjoyable experience.
In my own opinion, a Pi is best as a "PortaPlex" aka a portable Plex server connected to a few 2.5" SSDs or portable hard drives with all the media already transcoded to the most commonly/widely supported codecs to use when you won't have a reliable internet connection when traveling or while in the car. That way the Pi can direct stream pretty much everything and will never have to worry about transcoding.
Thanks Lon, very informative as usual!
Wow such a great explanation! I have none of this but found it all very interesting and probably one day will need this in the future. 🙂
Great video Lon! Hardware transcoding is the way to go -- best bang for your buck from a performance and power consumption perspective. The P2000 is the sweet spot for NVIDIA gpus that support it out of the box.
Very good info/video, thanks! Just ordered Plex Pass!
Solid video. Much appreciated. I have a few family members that stream from my Plex server and this video helped me decide that a Plex Pass is definitely worth it for hardware transcoding alone.
this is very informative as usual, hardware transcoding is always important
This also includes the newer Intel Pentium processors, which I think is the best way to build a "proper" low budget server with enough ports (especially SATA). I did just that a few years ago and since we got hardware transcoding, this thing is a beast and I canceled my already planned CPU upgrade!
Hey Lon can you get Plex to fix their 10bit to 8bit color tone mapping with 4K HDR content? That would be amazing!!
Good video, perhaps you could have mentioned the increasing cpu usage with audio transcode, all your streaming where also transcoding DTS audio to AAC, this is easy handled in cpu, but when transcoding multiple streams it starts eating your cpus
Thank you very informative.
Thank you for that Video i've been using Raspberry PI as plex server for couple of years now but i shared my library with few friends and then it became struggling and now i know why :D. I have an old Laptop with Intel CPU and i'll be moving my Plex server there :)
Great video. I would love, though, to see a test like this with 4K HEVC 10 bit, since it has become some kind of "standard" to enjoy con 4K HDR screens, but sometimes you play that file from somewhere else / a device that can't play the native file... please do a new test!
Thanks for the vid! Can you do another with the best cheap hardware to transcode 4k? I have been thinking about buying or building a plex server to do this and need some suggestions.
Do different setting levels of transcoder quality affect the hw transcoding capabilities?
Did you try it with 4K files? I think you said only Blu-ray but not sure if you meant 4K bluray
Hey Lon, Just wanted to say thank you, I learned a lot from you here. I do have a problem with my NAS, is there anyway I can email you or contact you? Thank you.
Great video! Best I found about the subject! Subscribed!
Quick question:
I would only need this feature (Hardware Transcoding) for streaming high quality videos to devices outside of my home network right?
My Plex server is my PC and I plan to stream 4K and 8k VR movies on my Quest2 using the same network and if possible wthout loss of image quality and without stuttering or buffering.
I also plan to disable transcoding to make sure Plex streams the original high quality file without converting them.
Am I missing something?
Hope you or someone can double check this.
Thanks
Thanks for the Video. I'm currently using a low end Celeron chip(no Quick Sync) getting 35% Cpu usage. Watching live OTA away from home on my phone (through Channels) Don't want to spend much. How much better would a $250 core I3 with Quick Sync laptop do?
Maybe I missed something, but if you enabled an extra feature (transcoding) then why did system resource usage go down? I'm looking at doing this at some point and I'd like to understand some of the lower level details.
Is this a Sinclair ZX81 in the back?
and an iPaq? the Newton!? ❤️ (omg, i must be old...)
Oh, and thanks for the video, very helpful 😉
amazing video huge thanks for the info, but i wonder why is my apple TV plex eating 100% CPU transcoding vs remote transcoding that only uses about 15/20% CPU. can you help please?
using 6700K without HW acceleration.
Would this work with Dgpus? Or only Intel Quicksync. Also make my cpu hurt setting is that helpful if transcoding?
How to enable p400 or p2000 for Plex transcoding on dell T320 . i am already enabled Hardware acceleration under plex sever settings . still not taking my card for trans-coding
So I have a small pc set up as a place server. It’s about 4 yrs old and uses an i3 chip that is like 3300ghz or something like that. The machine has no issues sending full bit rate Blu Ray rips to any of my roku’s Apple tv’s etc, but the pc struggles to play the movie itself. What may the issue be?
What about the Athlon 200GE? Can the Vega 3 iGPU do this as well?
is the video card utilized for hardware transcoding? or just he cpu?
Is there a better way (less stress on the motherboard CPU) to have the transcoding done in hardware other than the main CPU, like on an internal or external SSD or in RAM. When I open the Plex toolkit and go to transcoder, I see other boxes where settings can be made to configure the transcoder. Could you explain how these settings can affect the transcoder please?
Hi !! Could you comment / compare how a J4125 (intel) will compare with a GPU from MSI Geoforce Gt1030 2G Low Profile or a 1650 4GT LPOC or a 1030 2G LP OC ? I have been considering a unit from QNAP 453D vs a 473a and adding any of those cards (if found), but, I am a bit confused about how much performance I would get using any of those cards on the 473a vs using a 453D or 253D.
THe 473a uses an AMD chip --> AMD Ryzen™ Embedded V1500B 4-core/8-thread 2.2 GHz processor, so, It just makes me wonder if it's worth it ? or should i just pass and get a 253D (2 bays) or the same 453D (4 bays). Both 453 and 253 use celeron chips with transcoding. But, my concern in the end is really how much will i be getting if I went the AMD way.
I have looked at the specs, but really there is only so much I know that, I would really appreciate your recommendation.
My transcoding would to share videos from my iphone to family and friends but keep them stored on a NAS. Thanks !
I have played a bit with PI 4 as a nas, and again, it works but can't do transcoding properly ( is to small or lacks a bit of power - if transcoding to lower bit
Thank you in advance. I am looking forward to hearing from you.
What CPU does the computer you demonstrated the hardware transcoding using?
Question does does the free version of Plex use the onboard Intel graphics GPU or only dedicated GPU?
I'm just using the free Plex version so does that mean my server is not even using the integrated Intel gou when transcoding?
Hello Lon, what is the best option for a Plex server with hardware transcoding between Nvidia Shield 2019 Pro and Pepper Jobs mini pc? My needs: a low cost Plex server for maximum 3-4 transcoding streams on 1080p (no 4k). Thanks!
This is exactly what i needed. I was googling this last week when my plex server was buffering when trying to transcoded. Any advice for us without plex pass?
Use kodi. Or get plex pass. If not there really isn’t anything you could do. It was designed to make people sign up for the pass for profit certainly it requires money to stay afloat as a business
One important thing to note is that the hw transcoding won't help you when you have image subtitles(ex .idx, .sub and usually .mkv file) . The transcoding only apply to video. So if you need to watch vdo with image subtitle , you need to get the i5/i7 for your plex server, unfortunately. Image subtitle transcoding can only be done with raw CPU power.
Unfortunately no mention that subtitles (at least the image-based ones, which are the default on blu-rays) can't be handled by hardware-transcoding. So if you use subtitles frequently and don't want to mess with finding text-based subtitles on some internet server, you might as well stock with software-transcoding.
tkx. subscribed
I love that gnome-system-monitor package.
yeah I dont think I am asking for much I would just like to have two 1080p streams without having a spinning disc. I usually end up having to watch in 480p. I have one ethernet connected roku and one iPad wireless. If both are trying to watch streams at the same time I get a spinning disc at some point. My Plex server is a hard drive connected to my iMac via thunderbolt 2. Is an i7 chip in the iMac.
I used to have a Plex Pass and use hardware transcoding to watch my ripped media on various devices. But these days I simply put a code from the disc into MoviesAnywhere so I can stream movies to those devices both inside and outside my home. If I want to watch the movie on a TV or my projector I can do so using a blu-ray player (for a disc) or Shield TV (for a rip.) Generally the streaming quality to a phone or tablet is equal to or better than what I got from transcoding on the fly, and Apple, Google, Vudu, MoviesAnywhere, and the like often provide extras that I never bother to rip from disc.
So, Ryzen processors aren't supported for Plex HW transcoding. But, would a beefier Ryzen processor with software transcoding for Plex still give a good result? Would I lose any benefit by not using HW transcoding?
But what about GPUs? And what if you have a Qsync CPU and and GPU - which does PLEX use?
don't forget they recently enabled hardware transcoding with nvidia GPUs, my Plex Server is an AMD FX-8350, with a GTX 1050 Ti, and can easily transcode at least 5 at once., I really need to stress test it and see, pretty sure it could handle upwards of 10.
Hi Long, What software program are you using to display CPU usage? Thank you.
This was the Ubuntu activity monitor
I have a "Xeon E3-1240 V5" no quicksync. Sad times. Also Great Vid, thanks
Maybe you could help me with my issue. So basically nothing changed, but my videos started to buffer once per 3-5 minutes. Probably what changed indeed is Plex upgrade from 1.27 to 1.28. My Plex server runs on Synology DS218+ with 2GB of RAM, all settings are default, no hardware transcoding. I'm watching videos on Samsung TV via Samsung Plex app. The strangest thing is that I have zero buffering issues watching the same videos via simple file explorer using DLNA.
I’m planning to buy a plex server for my family
Most of my movies are 4k Blu-ray (mostly Mkv & some Mp4) so the server storage should be over 40 TB at least
I am not sure how many devices will run movies from my plex at the same time but may be 5 at least
Internet upload & download is very good So i need your advice which server should i buy or its features?
I am thinking of My Cloud Pro Series PR4100 from WD …Is it a good choice ?
all I’m worrying about is transcoding
i still don’t fully understand it but what i know that it converts the video quality So i can play it on my phone, Tv …
my other Q is : Does every video i run will be transcoded ? can i run my videoes as they are on my nas server without transcoding ?
what will i need for 4k transcoding? what hardware?
So you don't need transcoding if you don't need to access outside your local LAN?
I have an Intel Sandy Bridge i7 2600K PC build. I put in a very, very old AMD GPU just so I could plug in a monitor. If I tell plex to use hardware-accelerated when available will it just use the CPU or will it try to use the very bad GPU? Can I tell plex to only use the CPU for hardware-acceleration?
Also, I noticed that PLEX now has a second option "use hardware-accelerated video encoding" ??
Hey Lon, great video! I'm doing a plex server on my NAS (DS918+), and will get the plex pass. I will have 2-3 family members streaming at a time. Do you think a single disk would be able to handle 3 streams of 3 different movies at the same time, from the same disk?
Should be fine. You are only putting one disk in it?
@@LonSeidman I have 1 ssd in it for docker etc. and 2 4tb nas disks, the last bay is still empty.
GTX570TI to a 1050TI would there be any boost in visual quality?
The sweetspot is around the shield TV
This helped me a lot to understand what this harwarev transcoding is all about. Thanks! But I'm still confused... Isn't a cpu and CPU? Is quicksync a special chip? A special core? What makes a cpu quicksync?
Quicksync is a little piece of the Intel chip that is highly optimized for video processing. Apart from (un)loading the data and the instruction onto the QS core, the main chip does not have to do much work.
As far as I understand it Quicksync is a special FPGA that lives on the CPU die that handles the hardware acceleration. It's part of the CPU, and there are quite a few CPUs that don't have Quicksync listed that support it to an extent, undocumented support so to say.
Almost all Intel cpus have an integrated gpu. That's what's used for quicksync.
Everyone needs HW transcoding! I think the J5005 is the sweet spot.
This is a solid first comment.
If I could only get it to work on my i7 8700K reliably.
Btw the Quicksync link is broken due to a t in the word sync
I know this video is old, but at the time, was Nvidia GPU transcoding not possible yet?
How can I stream 4K movies?? I am able to stream it out to my cell phone fine. But my LG OLED55E8PUA TV wont play it, just says buffering. It is hardwired to my network. Is it the TVs Plex app that cant handle it??
@@Paperclown I already have Plex Pass got it for $60. Most of my 4K files are only 15-25GB. My 1080p files play fine everywhere. Its just the 4K. They play fine on my cell phone off network. I think its just the LG TVs Plex cant handle it. Doesnt work on my Samsung Q7 TV either.
Does an AMD 3800X even need Plex Pass transcoding if at most it streams to 2 devices at home? I feel like I might just be throwing money away. Anyone know if there Is a way to stream plex only on your network and not through the internet? That would be nice.
Plex works online and local. But it doesnt work on android phones. You need one time purchase. Plex pass idk its good for color tunings
I mostly use Plex for in-home streaming. Does anyone know why the CPU get stressed out when turning out PGS-type subtitles (bitmap subtitles extracted from the Bluray)? My Synology DS416play can easily transcode a couple of streams without PGS subtitles, but struggles with even one with PGS.
External SRT files pose no problem - the client can blend them into the movie.
I believe picture-based formats like PGS are harder to burn into the video than text-based formats like SRT, and SRT almost never has to be burned because basically every device supports SRT.
So I have 50 Mbit up, that means I wouldn't actually need hardware transcoding when I want to watch my movies remote, right?
You can use GPU usage monitoring to observe Plex unload the transcoding (essentially a resize and re-encode to specific bitrate) jobs to the GPU. nVidia GPUs perform way better than Intels. The nVidia GTX-1050Ti in my laptop is twice as fast as the Intel UHD630 in my laptop. AMD Radeons fall somewhere in between. To monitor GPU usage, install nvidia-smi / intel-gpu-tools / amd-aticonfig or amd-radeontop.
12 Megabits, oh boy Comcast sure know$ how to take advantage of you :p
would an eGPU connected to a mac mini 2018 help with hw accelerated transcoding?
Not necessary as the Mac’s processor already supports it
@@LonSeidman Also I believe you said that's the transcoding is done 100% on the CPU. Right ?
Plex transcoding is awful in MacOS. It only supports one hardware encoding stream.
The quality of Quick Sync is rather bad on Sandy Bridge from my testing it works great on Ivy Bridge and later though, Coffee Lake or later does HDR h265 also. 6th gen or later for h265 hw.
What Blu Ray drive would everyone recommend?
I have buffalo it's great so far but no 4k support
Is there any way to get Plex to stream to an echo show?
On the same wi-fi network, you should be able to cast to it.
So hardware transcoding doesn't use the gpu? I think it does i'll have to recheck. Glad i got a intel cpu :)
Does HW transcoding work for live TV?
Yes and I would say it’s a requirement given how it works
So with my Ryzen 5 2600 and GTX 1080 i cannot use hardware transcoding? That could be a deal breaker
Great video by the way
Lon this is a great and informative video. I have a couple of dumb questions.
1) I have a dedicated computer (coffeelake chip 6 cores) that happens to have a Geforce 980ti GPU. Does the GPU help at all with hardware encoding on plex or is that only on the CPU?
2) If I went with extra storage of a synology NAS would I then lose the extra hardware encoding that I now have with using my computer ? I usually use about 2-3 streams at once with all being transcoded in some nature.
I have seen some of my family members getting what i would think are low quality (SD ) transcodes of 1080p movies and I have always wondered if the issue was on their side (say wifi speed etc)
Thanks again and keep up the good work.
I believe it will prioritize the cpu for encoding over the nvidia but it might use the nvidia for decoding when necessary. Recent synology’s with intel cpus should be able to maintain a few simultaneous streams and consume much less power.
Too bad you have to have a Quadro P2000 in order to transcode more than one or two streams.
You also have to use a Quadro if you are doing pcie pass through with ESXi, ProxMox or HyperV. Nvidia disables the drivers if it detects a geforce card on a vm.
Gaming cards shouldn't even have those video capabilities in the first place. They're for gaming. I'd expect to have to buy a pro level card to deal with video.
I often read, that Intel QS has a very shitty transcoding quality, especially in action movies. It's better with an NVidia GPU but the best quality is still via Software where you do need a very fast CPU though.
I am thinking of getting a QNAP TS-251D to replace my TS-251A to get decent Hardware Transcoding but I am afraid I'll have a terrible video quality when transcoding.. I saw a solution with getting a small Quadro card to use for transcoding but no way I am spending over 1000€ for a NAS only to be able to build in a 400€ GPU.. That seems very expensive to me..
Would be awesome if you'd do a video where you compare the transcoding quality - Software (via CPU), Intel QS (like in this video) and with an NVidia GPU.
Does the nvidia shield capable of transcoding??
Yes
Awesome then am set thanks
@@salvadorchavez2198 Yeah but that's basically the only ARM device that can do hardware transcoding and that's only because it has an Nvidia GPU (which do support hardware transcoding). Speaking of I wonder if hardware transcoding can be done in that $100 Nvidia dev board since it also has an Nvidia GPU. Perhaps Lon could test that becuase if that Nvidia GPU can be used on that device it may make a great low-cost low-power ARM Plex server.
@@LonSeidman ^^^^^^^^^
I think it's the Nvidia Jetson Nano that I am talking about.
I'm using a J5005 and one case where transcoding is needed is when watching live TV on the google chrome browser. This forces the server to transcode the mpeg2 stream from my HDHomerun from 1080i to h.264 1080p. This still uses 20% of the CPU for a single transcode stream with HW transcoding enabled. You can see this in the Plex server's dashboard. You might want to try this on your system. You will also see some strange issues when you start playing a live channel that is transcoded like this. You may want to use this tool, manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/intel_gpu_top.1.html, to monitor the GPU usage.
Also, could you please, please, please, address the lack of HW transcoding support when running the Plex server on Windows 10? This has been a known issue with the Plex server for over a year now and still they have not fixed this issue.
So this won’t work on amd chips ?
Amd gpus and apus are supported by plex in windows.
The Nvidia SHIELD also supports hardware transcoding, and at only $200 is a solid option for a Plex server. My server runs on a SHIELD and works fantastic.
The Raspberry Pi had a "plex" server in the 1 and 1b. It was not used. It was used for getting a signal from a laser disk to video.
FYI, don't bother trying to use HW transcoding on an M1 Mac. It doesn't work due to Mac's translation of an x86 application to arm hardware (via rosetta2 translation). Your videos will skip badly with lots of buffering issues for your users.
even with HW transcoding off, I have a lot of issues with buffering related to transcoding. This is on an M1 mac mini w/ 16gb ram.
Guys be aware that a file that is has a 40mbps buffer is extremely big. It'd have to be a lossless 4k movie. (40GB or so)
If you're using a Yify encode or something, a 1-2mb upload/download will easily be enough to direct stream.
Hardware accelerated Transcoding is mostly unnecessary. If I'm being honest, the fact that he's left these detail out make me think that the sponsorship might have made quite an affect.
on old CPU, the quality is very bad. I'm using a old laptop (i7 4770HQ or something like that) HW transcoding quality is low with this.
@@MarkAllenGuitar at nearly full quality it's okay but dropping to 480p and lower (quality is fine with soft transcoding) is awfull. Pixel everywhere.
On the go, i generally watch at 320p while moving, it's not watchable
Someone needs to make a card that just deals with decoding and encoding of video. Seems like such a waste to need a whole GPU for a fraction of what it's actually capable of, and a waste of power.
Sorry, but 100% CPU is not necessarily "stressing out" the CPU. It is working the CPU, yes. But just because the CPU is at 100% doesn't mean that it is overworked. Thinking that it should be at something lower than 100% is erroneous, that means that it is idle ... which is something we wouldn't expect in your workflow.
just get a gpu: quadro-p1000/p2000 , cheap and no more cpu load !! tnx
P2000 aint cheap. Goes for about $400 on eBay. But the P2000 has no restrictions on amount of transcodes and it works within ESXi, KVM or HyperV.
No sure don't use transcoding . Only 4k uhd direct play only.
Liked....just because...Linux...
The best solution to plex transcoding? To me it is just buying Infuse and all problem solved
Half of video and then you tell me i need to pay for that option...