Hardware Decoding in Plex Linux VM

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

K D

Well-Known Member
Dec 24, 2016
1,439
320
83
30041
Has anyone been successful in having Plex do hardware trascoding in Linux? I have a debian VM with the latest plex pass version of the PMS installed and the intel iGPU passed through. But transcoding never hits the GPU.

Temporarily I spun up a windows 10 vm and installed plex. Hardware transcoding works in this setup.
 

pricklypunter

Well-Known Member
Nov 10, 2015
1,708
515
113
Canada
I haven't tried this but I have heard stories that you make ESXi use an external graphics adapter and pass through the Intel one to the VM and also remove the VMware graphics adapter from the VM, so it can only use the Intel one. Dunno if that helps or not :)
 

K D

Well-Known Member
Dec 24, 2016
1,439
320
83
30041
I am remote and don't want to mess with the host. If I screw something up then I won't be able to get to it for the next 3 weeks :(.

The whole thing works fine in the new win 10 VM I stood up. I'll try to play around with removing the VMware graphics adapter and see if that helps.

Ita just that I am on a very poor internet connection and have to transcode everything down to 1.5 mbps to avoid making the videos look like a PowerPoint deck.
 

K D

Well-Known Member
Dec 24, 2016
1,439
320
83
30041
A quick update. As a test, I installed PM on my workstation that has a geforce 980Ti running Windows 10.

Streaming is better when connected to the workstation that does HW Decoding with the 980Ti compared to the Main server that uses QuickSync. Waaaaaaay less buffering and fast skipping. CPU usage stays around 10%.

Need to redo my home server once I return home.
 

maze

Active Member
Apr 27, 2013
576
100
43
Anyone know if its possible to offload the transcoding to gpu when using the plex remote transcoder? - im moving my plex to my synology but would be nice to be able to point the transcoding to my server (where i'd then install a gfx) and not kill the cpu on the nas box
 

K D

Well-Known Member
Dec 24, 2016
1,439
320
83
30041
Anyone know if its possible to offload the transcoding to gpu when using the plex remote transcoder? - im moving my plex to my synology but would be nice to be able to point the transcoding to my server (where i'd then install a gfx) and not kill the cpu on the nas box
What is the remote transcoder? There was a project that worked till plex 1.7. I don't see it being developed actively.
 

pricklypunter

Well-Known Member
Nov 10, 2015
1,708
515
113
Canada
I haven't tried that either, I'm pretty conservative with my Plex and run it very much native vanilla. Last time I seen mention of it, it was being developed on Linux only, but that was about year ago, I haven't seen anything about it since :)
 

K D

Well-Known Member
Dec 24, 2016
1,439
320
83
30041
It without issues if I play without skipping. But the moment I skip a scene it takes almost 60 seconds to resume playing with Intel QS. With the 980Ti it's just 4-5 seconds.
 

moblaw

Member
Jun 23, 2017
77
13
8
38
You can always purchase a quadro nvidia card, to obtain more than the limited 2-streams. There's a list, that shows just which quadro is limited to 2 and which is not, and also the list shows which codec it supports. Maybe you can use an amd card, that does not have any restricted transcoding sessions. I have not testet myself with any gpu. But I know that faster cores are the way to go, vs slower ones, and even that depends on exactly which codec is in use. These codecs in general are troublesome imo.