Activating Plex hardware acceleration

[Yorick]

FreeBSD 12.2 does not support Comet Lake. I think the highest supported is Coffee Lake Refresh right now.

If you are truly keen on hw transcode, SCALE is your path.

 

[neotoxic]

FreeBSD 12.2 does not support Comet Lake. I think the highest supported is Coffee Lake Refresh right now.

If you are truly keen on hw transcode, SCALE is your path.

Oh, thank you, I assume it will be supported one day, I don't really want to mess up my server anymore, any idea for my /dev/ issue ?

 

[zilladave]

Does anyone have iGPU tone mapping working on quicksync? I installed ocl-icd just now, and my initial testing shows buffering has gone away but I'm sure it can't be this simple of a fix...?

 

[mistermanko]

I installed ocl-icd just now

On CORE? Or SCALE?

 

[zilladave]

On CORE? Or SCALE?

12.2 Core...going to do some more testing tomorrow

 

[path]

Hi everyone. I'm in the midst of upgrading my system and buying a board and CPU. Do we have a recommended hardware setup that would be capable of HW acceleration for plex when transcoding for some clients. I've been focused on Core so far, but I realize that there is no reason why I cannot migrate to SCALE eventually and that seems like the right call given that I'll have access to the linux ecosystem rather than freebsd.

 

[EvanVanVan]

Hi everyone. I'm in the midst of upgrading my system and buying a board and CPU. Do we have a recommended hardware setup that would be capable of HW acceleration for plex when transcoding for some clients. I've been focused on Core so far, but I realize that there is no reason why I cannot migrate to SCALE eventually and that seems like the right call given that I'll have access to the linux ecosystem rather than freebsd.

Bump/Same question.

I guess to add, I'm wondering if I'd be better off updating my 7+ year old TrueNAS hardware, which as far as my uses go (i.e. office storage, wireguard VPN server, and plex storage) still works perfectly. Or just building a new dedicated plex server, with whatever OS is best supported for HW acceleration. I'm guessing moving my Wireguard server over to it could be beneficial as well. This might be a question better suited for the plex forums.

 

[barekzop]

I run a G4560 (very cheap chip) for the above exact reasons. Check if your mobo supports it.

 

[Yorick]

I'd seriously consider not doing any hw transcode. It's cool, but of limited usefulness.

HDR: Transcode doesn't look good at all, even w/ tone-mapping. You're better off placing an SDR alongside, and for subtitles an srt file.
SDR 1080p->720p: CPU handles this fine, and if worried about it, you can always tell Plex to "optimize" ahead of time, which will have it place a 720p file alongside.
SDR VC1: Optimize ahead of time or let the CPU handle it.
SDR VOBSUB/PGS subtitles: The one legitimate use for transcoding - and CPU handles this fine. Also, you can go for srt instead and avoid the transcode here as well.

 

[EvanVanVan]

I'd seriously consider not doing any hw transcode. It's cool, but of limited usefulness.

HDR: Transcode doesn't look good at all, even w/ tone-mapping. You're better off placing an SDR alongside, and for subtitles an srt file.
SDR 1080p->720p: CPU handles this fine, and if worried about it, you can always tell Plex to "optimize" ahead of time, which will have it place a 720p file alongside.
SDR VC1: Optimize ahead of time or let the CPU handle it.
SDR VOBSUB/PGS subtitles: The one legitimate use for transcoding - and CPU handles this fine. Also, you can go for srt instead and avoid the transcode here as well.

My biggest concern is transcoding audio, 7.1 to 5.1. Which I don't even know if Plex handles, but transcoding audio currently seems to cause most of my user's buffering issues.. Unfortunately, not all UHD files come with a 5.1 compatibility track.

 

[Yorick]

My biggest concern is transcoding audio, 7.1 to 5.1. Which I don't even know if Plex handles, but transcoding audio currently seems to cause most of my user's buffering issues.. Unfortunately, not all UHD files come with a 5.1 compatibility track.

Audio transcoding will always be CPU afaik; an iGPU does not help there at all.

 

[rladelman771]

Updated to truenas 12-u8 Plex transcoding working, but now these two errors are showing up

Feb 10 12:41:03 TrueNas drmn0: fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
Feb 10 12:41:03 TrueNas i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin: could not load firmware image, error 2
Feb 10 12:41:03 TrueNas drmn0: fail (0) to get firmware image with name: i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin
Feb 10 12:41:03 TrueNas drmn0: successfully loaded firmware image with mapped name: i915_kbl_dmc_ver1_04_bin
Feb 10 12:41:03 TrueNas kernel: [drm] Finished loading DMC firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin (v1.4)



Feb 10 14:09:11 TrueNas drmn0: <drmn> on vgapci0
Feb 10 14:09:11 TrueNas vgapci0: child drmn0 requested pci_enable_io
Feb 10 14:09:11 TrueNas vgapci0[904]: Last message 'child drmn0 requeste' repeated 1 times, suppressed by syslog-ng on TrueNas.lan
Feb 10 14:09:11 TrueNas kernel: [drm] Unable to create a private tmpfs mount, hugepage support will be disabled(-19).
Feb 10 14:09:11 TrueNas kernel[904]: Last message '[drm] Unable to crea' repeated 1 times, suppressed by syslog-ng on TrueNas.lan
Feb 10 14:09:11 TrueNas kernel: Failed to add WC MTRR for [0xc0000000-0xcfffffff]: -22; performance may suffer
Feb 10 14:09:11 TrueNas kernel[904]: Last message 'Failed to add WC MTR' repeated 1 times, suppressed by syslog-ng on TrueNas.lan

Something to ignore?

 

[DevilNAS]

Hello everyone,

Sorry to be stealing this thread but I am having problems too with Plex hardware transcode on TrueNas Core.

I have installed my plexmediaserver on my plex jail on TrueNas Core 12.0. The system is the one on my signature.
I installed everything according to a post on this forum and configured to grab the latest version of plexmediaserver.

Everything worked very well. The Direct Play and even the Hardware Transcode (from 4K to 720p with SRT UTF-8 subtitles) on my Android Plex App and Chrome Explorer on my PC. The problem started when I tried to play on my LG SmartTV with Plex Client v5.33.1. The moment I tried to play a movie on, gave me an unknown error. After that I tried to play a simple 4K TV show and everything worked so for what I am thining is the TV do not support Dolby Vision and was transcoding so when I tried to Direct Play everything worked well.

After that try on my TV I cannot see anything on other devices that need a video transcode. They buffer for ever or give an error s1003 (Network).
Tried to stop the Jail and it was impossible. So SSH it and tried to stop the plexmediaserver service and it taked for ever and nothing happened. The sollution was to restart the NAS and everything seeams to work well except the video transcode.

I deleted the Jail and restarted the NAS (If I do not start, the service seems to continue running and after the new install the problem do not disappear) and tried to install the plexmediaserver again on a new Jail. Everything working well until know even the video transcode but will fail again because I have made this "cheating" too last week.

1. For everyone that had this problem or similar with video transcode what was your solution?
2. What do you think to install the Plex on a Ubuntu/Debian VM to avoid FreeBSD with the hope video transcode will work well?
3. What do you think to upgrade to TrueNas Scale? Who is running Scale have the same problem with Plex Transcode?

I saw every file from Logs but do not understand what are the important ones. Here is the link for the logs that were exported from Plex.

Anything else that you need, please let me know.
Thank you in advance!

 

[Yorick]

I’ve seen issues where the jail dies. That’s a Plex problem, and or issue with the drivers they have in the jail, and last I checked they weren’t very engaged in fixing hw transcode on freebsd.

You can bang on it for the giggles, but your best bet is to stick with no transcode or sw transcode.

Support on Linux is a bit better, which may eventually get you over to scale.

 

[DevilNAS]

Made a fresh installation yesterday and everything was working great until today morning when I tried to what a movies with PGS subtitles. The server yesterday was able to handle 4 transcode together and with a single PGS sub that was transcoded it crashed and needed to delete the Jail to stop it.

I try to mount a Debian VM with Plex and see what happens. If work great I will move to Sclale.

 

[Yorick]

If that VM is in core it won’t have access to the iGPU, so that’s not a good test of hw transcode.

 

[DevilNAS]

If that VM is in core it won’t have access to the iGPU, so that’s not a good test of hw transcode.

Yes, it is.
So, I will all-in to Scale in hope for a better solution.

 

[Yorick]

Good luck!

 

[zperetz]

Switching to TrueNAS 13.0 from 12.0-U8.1 solved all problems with hardware acceleration. Cheers!

 

[mistermanko]

Switching to TrueNAS 13.0 from 12.0-U8.1 solved all problems with hardware acceleration. Cheers!

Well, that's great news. What exactly wasn't working for you that is fixed now?