So i recently upgraded the gpu in my server from a 1070ti to a 1080, minor change I know, but there was issues with the 1070ti. Well for some reason plex is refusing to transcode with the gpu. Everything worked fine with the 1070ti before being pulled. I was almost afraid something was wrong with the newer gpu, but its not the gpu. I changed the gpuid in the docker, jellyfin and tdarr both use the gpu just fine for transcoding, but I can't make plex use it properly. It shows up in the transcoding section of the settings area and is selected, cpu can transcode just fine, but when using the gpu, it will often fail immediately with an error and if it doesn't it will close the video stream within a minute without any error. Gpu statistics shows plex is using the gpu when it does transcode. I'm really at a loss on how to fix this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have the latest nvidia driver installed, I had stable previously, I tried updated to see if it would resolve the issue.
The docker I use for plex is plexinc/pms-docker, the official one from plex.
This seems like an issue with plex itself, as jellyfin and tdarr seem to utilize the gpu just fine.

Make backup current Plex   Try creating a new plex container and leave the current one offline.  If test works out, restore your backup to new container.  If it works, mission complete.  If not, install the fresh one again and import your files as if creating from new database.   Even dare a different repository, I see both binhex and linuxserver have options available.

4 hours ago, Veah said:

Make backup current Plex   Try creating a new plex container and leave the current one offline.  If test works out, restore your backup to new container.  If it works, mission complete.  If not, install the fresh one again and import your files as if creating from new database.   Even dare a different repository, I see both binhex and linuxserver have options available.

I figured that might be something i might have to do... starting over would be... not fun. Theres A LOT of work put into this database. Ill come back with results on a new docker.

Ok looks like I jumped the gun a little bit. after transferring over to a new docker and moving everything over, looks like the issue isnt the gpu. its something to do with pc browser/plex app and hdr tonemapping crashing streams. all tvs ive tested hardware transcoding hdr tonemapping, it works just fine, including the plex htpc app. realistically this isnt a big issue, as no one uses the plex app but me and i just use it to test files and watch things, but i dont transcode using it. Still odd though. from what i can tell, I can get it to transcode after a failed attempt or 2. most of the time it will keep transcoding no issue. so this might have been an issue before, i just never noticed it because i dont transcode on my pc. I'm not too miffed about transferring over, as now I have a backup docker of plex if something happens to the current one, but its strange that hdr tonemapping is causing this issue.

Happened upon something possibly relevant here.  Problems with hdr and Windows 11 24h2 update. 

12 hours ago, Veah said:

Happened upon something possibly relevant here.  Problems with hdr and Windows 11 24h2 update. 

Unfortunately it did not help, I already had the feature off, turned it on for the hell of it, didnt help either. I also tried turning off HDR on my monitor, didn't help either.
Did some more testing and I can't find a rhyme or reason behind what plays and what doesn't, everytime I think i see a pattern, something throws that out the window. Some things transcode just fine, some don't. some are avi, mp4, mkv. hdr or not hdr, they can be h264/h265/hevc/avi, doesn't matter, completely random. Most won't transcode without failed attempts.
Ended up doing some googling, It sounds exactly like this, unfortunately rolling back the nvidia driver didn't help either. Setting the quality ahead of time in the settings seemed to work though. at this point I'm kind of out of ideas. 

 

Edited February 2, 20251 yr by Vulkandr

Question. Are you testing how many GPU transcodes you can do on your GPU via a browser? I've noticed the same behaviour when I test multiple transcodes on multiple browsers (brave, FF, chrome) as soon as I set a transcode to go from 4K to 1080p it craps out. But if i do it on devices like a phone, shield etc it has no issues. 

7 hours ago, z0ki said:

Question. Are you testing how many GPU transcodes you can do on your GPU via a browser? I've noticed the same behaviour when I test multiple transcodes on multiple browsers (brave, FF, chrome) as soon as I set a transcode to go from 4K to 1080p it craps out. But if i do it on devices like a phone, shield etc it has no issues. 

So only browser and plex app give me problems with transcode and only if the transcode is going down in bitrate, going up in bitrate seems to cause no problems. Roku, Chromecast, WebOS, HTPC app all run just flawlessly transcoding.

I'm guess this has something to do with either unraid or docker versions of plex. I'm gonna try hosting my plex server on my main pc temporarily to see if it resolves the issue.  

ok so i tried running it on my local machine running windows 11, if i kept my old database, it gave me the same problem, even on my 4090. However, when i did a fresh database, from local video files or from the unraid server, it transcoded just fine, so its something within my database, its not because of unraid or nvidia driver. now the question is, is this something salvageable, or am i boned lol. I will experiment with my secondary docker when I have more time, might not be til next weekend.

EDIT: Also tested a fresh docker in unraid, transcoding also works, this is 100% something with my database.

Edited February 3, 20251 yr by Vulkandr

On 2/3/2025 at 2:35 PM, Vulkandr said:

ok so i tried running it on my local machine running windows 11, if i kept my old database, it gave me the same problem, even on my 4090. However, when i did a fresh database, from local video files or from the unraid server, it transcoded just fine, so its something within my database, its not because of unraid or nvidia driver. now the question is, is this something salvageable, or am i boned lol. I will experiment with my secondary docker when I have more time, might not be til next weekend.

EDIT: Also tested a fresh docker in unraid, transcoding also works, this is 100% something with my database.

Working in plex web now too? I did a fresh linuxserver plex install the other day thinking it was a database issue as well, but nothing transcodes in web. But does on devices without an issue.

On 2/6/2025 at 9:50 PM, z0ki said:

Working in plex web now too? I did a fresh linuxserver plex install the other day thinking it was a database issue as well, but nothing transcodes in web. But does on devices without an issue.

When i did a fresh install with the binhex version, everything ran perfect including web and app, same with a windows version. the second I use my own database on unraid or windows, it's just borked on web/app. tvs and phones are fine. I've tried replacing every single folder in the database but the metadata, I'm at a loss on how to fix this.

Edit: I have no clue why this worked, but in the transcoder section of plex, I set
Trascoder Quality: Automatic (these two only seem to matter that you changed them to something they weren't before)
Background transcoding x264 preset: Faster (these two only seem to matter that you changed them to something they weren't before)
Use hardware-accelerated video encoding: Disabled(Unchecked)
Do all 3 at the same time.

As a result of that change, both web and app transcoding works again. This might have also been also in conjunction with removing every file from the database that wasnt related to keeping my metadata and layouts. It didn't work with that alone, but transcoding started working after making those changes and removing the files together. Try making the in menu changes to see if thats enough for you, I can't say for certain if the file removals did anything.

I even tried replicating it and turning on hardware accelerated video encoding broke it again, however turning it back off didn't fix the issue, til I changed the other 2 settings to something else at the same time. Once after many transcode successes I'll get an error, but the next try will work again. It seems to continue working after a restart too, so i'll call that fixed on my end. I won't mark this solved until a couple days from now to make sure this issue doesn't come back.

Edited February 11, 20251 yr by Vulkandr