Hardware Transcoding / Plex transcoding not working - renderD128 missing?


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I'm desperately trying to get quicksync / plex / emby hardware encoding to work on my system and can't seem to get it going.  I'm running the absolute latest BIOS for my motherboard and in the BIOS, I've enabled Boot graphics = Onboard, Set the memory size to 1GB and I'm still not seeing the renderD128 file in /dev/dri folder.  

 

My dev/dri folder is as follows:

rwxr-xr-x  3 root root      80 Jul 14 17:55 ./
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root    3500 Jul 14 18:07 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root      60 Jul 14 17:55 by-path/
crw-rw----  1 root video 226, 0 Jul 14 17:55 card0

 

My hardware configuration is as follows:

M/B: ASRock - E3C226D2I

CPU: Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1265L v4 @ 2.30GHz

Memory: 16 GB Single-bit ECC (max. installable capacity 16 GB)

HVM: Enabled

IOMMU: Enabled

Kernel: Linux 4.14.49-unRAID x86_64

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  I'm currently evaluating Unraid and really want it to work.

 

Thanks.

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5 hours ago, thatonethur said:

M/B: ASRock - E3C226D2I

 

The motherboard is your problem.  Since it has IPMI and the AST2300 BMC video controller,  "onboard" as the primary graphics selection refers to the AST2300.  CPU-integrated graphics and, thus, Quicksync, are not supported on this board as per the note below in the board CPU specifications. 

 

I have the same board in my backup server.  iGPU/Quicksync is not supported and renderD128 will not be loaded on boot.

 

With my main server motherboard (the ASRock C236 WSI), Plex hardware transcoding works very well as it has no IPMI/BMC video controller and the "onboard" selection loads the drivers for the iGPU, including renderD128 through a modprobe i915 entry in my go file.

 

CPU

- Supports Intel® Xeon® E3-1200 v3/v4* and 5th/4th Generation Core™ i7/i5/i3/Pentium®/Celeron® Processors (Socket 1150)
- Supports Hyper-Threading Technology

* BIOS version 3.0 or above is required
Due to Graphics control by AST2300, E3-1200 series integrated graphics can’t be used.

Edited by Hoopster
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I just saw this myself.  I wonder if this is still actually true though.  If you look at the BIOS updates starting with 3.30 you’ll see that it mentions Intel Graphics specifically:

4.Enhance Intel Gfx feature

 

I also see several spots in the BIOS now to adjust the RAM to give to the iGPU.  I just sent a message to ASRock technical support for clarification.

 

I just bought this bought and a separate processor to do Plex transcoding specifically and am giving myself a headache thinking about it not working.

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11 hours ago, thatonethur said:

I just saw this myself.  I wonder if this is still actually true though.  If you look at the BIOS updates starting with 3.30 you’ll see that it mentions Intel Graphics specifically:

4.Enhance Intel Gfx feature

 

I don't know.  I just assumed the note about CPU integrated graphics not being supported was correct and have never even tried to utilize hardware encoding on my backup server.

 

I did just update the BIOS on my E3C226D21 board to the new 3.50 (it was at 3.30) and I'll have to poke around a bit more someday to see if iGPU support has changed.

Edited by Hoopster
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Well, guess I’m going to have to hope AMEX will do a return guarantee as my CPU and motherboard purchase isn’t able to be refunded.

 

The official response from ASRock:

Thank you for reaching out to us for support! Please note that the JViewer remote video stream heavily and solely relies on the integrated GPU ASpeed AST2300. Video output processed by any other 3rd party GPU cannot be passed through to the BMC, thus it will not be streamed to the JViewer, the Console Redirection feature. JViewer capability will also be affected if a PCIe-based video card is installed because video output processed by PCIe video card will not be passed through to be used in JViewer (Console Redirection).

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On 7/15/2018 at 3:36 PM, thatonethur said:

I think I may and try to load Windows and see what it reports.  If it’s truly not reporting the Intel graphics properly the. I just spent several hundred dollars for nothing.

 

Also, once I hear back front Asrock I’ll report back here as well.

 

I have been playing with board settings, Plex docker settings, go file, etc. most of the day and I cannot get the iGPU in my i5 4590 CPU to be utilized.  I think, with this board, it is true that the AST2300 is the only "onboard" graphics that can be used because of the IPMI implementation. 

 

NOTE: I just saw your recently-posted response from ASRock.  This seems to confirm that with their IPMI boards iGPUs are not utilized.  Perhaps this is not the case with all ASRock boards with IPMI, but, I can't say for certain.  Plex hardware transcoding works great on my ASRock board that does not have IPMI.

 

I believe there are a couple of threads in these forums that mention some Supermicro boards that may support both IPMI and iGPUs.

 

 

Edited by Hoopster
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So, this makes me believe that quicksync IS actually available which of course is all I care about.  i'm sending yet another response back to them and looking for specific details on how to enable. after I questioned the Intel options in the BIOS, this is what I got back:

 

Thank you for your patience! It is confirmed by our BIOS team that the integrated GPU by Intel’s CPU is for transcoding purpose only. It is not used for video output for this server board. Hope you understand. Thank you!

 

 

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Well, after playing with a few settings in the BIOS, I *THINK* I may have gotten it to show up in unraid:

 

Linux 4.14.49-unRAID.
Last login: Tue Jul 17 16:07:26 -0500 2018 on /dev/tty1.
root@tower:~# cd /dev/dri
root@tower:/dev/dri# ls -la
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root       120 Jul 17 16:07 ./
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root      3560 Jul 17 16:07 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root       100 Jul 17 16:07 by-path/
crw-rw----  1 root video 226,   0 Jul 17 16:06 card0
crw-rw----  1 root video 226,   1 Jul 17 16:07 card1
crw-rw----  1 root video 226, 128 Jul 17 16:07 renderD128

 

This is the first time I've actually had it plugged in to a monitor and NOT had IPMI plugged in as well.

 

Off to do more testing, but this is highly encouraging.

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1 hour ago, thatonethur said:

Well, after playing with a few settings in the BIOS, I *THINK* I may have gotten it to show up in unraid:

 

Linux 4.14.49-unRAID.
Last login: Tue Jul 17 16:07:26 -0500 2018 on /dev/tty1.
root@tower:~# cd /dev/dri
root@tower:/dev/dri# ls -la
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root       120 Jul 17 16:07 ./
drwxr-xr-x 16 root root      3560 Jul 17 16:07 ../
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root       100 Jul 17 16:07 by-path/
crw-rw----  1 root video 226,   0 Jul 17 16:06 card0
crw-rw----  1 root video 226,   1 Jul 17 16:07 card1
crw-rw----  1 root video 226, 128 Jul 17 16:07 renderD128

 

This is the first time I've actually had it plugged in to a monitor and NOT had IPMI plugged in as well.

 

Off to do more testing, but this is highly encouraging.

 

What did you set in the BIOS?  I am happy to do some tests and validate with my backup server as well.  Even though I do not do active Plex hardware transcoding on it, it would be nice to know if that is even possible should it become necessary.

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I tried set memory to both 1GB and 2GB (neither had an effect) and then ran through the various Onboard vs. PCI Express and those seemed to have no effect either.  The only one that seemed to matter was the Intel VGA Control option.  I enabled that and it seemed to kickstart everything.

 

I still can't quite get Plex and/or Emby transcoding to work yet, but I'm guessing seeing renderD128 means I'm getting close?

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3 hours ago, thatonethur said:

I tried set memory to both 1GB and 2GB (neither had an effect) and then ran through the various Onboard vs. PCI Express and those seemed to have no effect either.  The only one that seemed to matter was the Intel VGA Control option.  I enabled that and it seemed to kickstart everything.

 

I still can't quite get Plex and/or Emby transcoding to work yet, but I'm guessing seeing renderD128 means I'm getting close? 

 

There will definitely be no hardware transcoding without renderD128, so, yes, seeing it in /dev/dri is definitely a step in the right direction.  I have Intel VGA control option enabled in the BIOS, but, I do not have /dev/dri (just /dev) so, no renderD128.

 

It looks like there are a few more things to work through on my server.

 

I can't comment on Emby, but, I assume with Plex you have done all the following?:

 

1 - enabled the "Use hardware acceleration when available" Transcoder setting on the Plex server

2 - added "--device=/dev/dri:/dev/dri" to Extra Parameters on the Plex docker

3 - added the following lines to your unRAID flash drive "go" file:

     modprobe i915
     chown -R nobody:users /dev/dri
     chmod -R 777 /dev/dri

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40 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

It looks like there are a few more things to work through on my server.

 

I now have hardware transcoding in Plex working on my ASRock E3C226D21 motherboard.

 

The issue was that I needed to remove "nomodeset" from the "append nomodeset initrd=/bzroot" line in syslinux.cfg

 

That was previously added because IPMI video went black on this board without nomodseet added to the append line.

 

Either the BIOS update or a some Linux kernel changes (likely that) in newer versions of unRAID have made that no longer necessary.

 

As soon as I removed "nomodeset", /dev/dri with all the drivers including renderD128 was created properly and I was able to enable hardware transcoding in Plex with the Quicksync iGPU in the I5 4590 while still retaining full IPMI video output through the AST2300 onboard video controller.

 

On 7/14/2018 at 5:41 PM, thatonethur said:

I'm desperately trying to get quicksync / plex / emby hardware encoding to work on my system and can't seem to get it going.  I'm running the absolute latest BIOS for my motherboard and in the BIOS, I've enabled Boot graphics = Onboard, Set the memory size to 1GB and I'm still not seeing the renderD128 file in /dev/dri folder.  

 

Thanks for your original post or I never would have investigated this possibility as i believed from the note in the board CPU specs that use of the iGPU was not possible.  Since I did not really need it on this server, I had never tried it.  Thanks to the OP, I gave it a try and was able to get it working. :)

  • Upvote 1
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I was literally writing my response when I saw your post... but adding the bit to the "go" file did it!   I finally played a test file in plex and saw the magical "transcoding (hw) to transcoding (hw)".

 

The official response from ASRock is as I suspected:

Yes, you can use Intel on-die GPU for transcoding. In BIOS – Advanced as you see, you just need to set Enable to Intel VGA Device Control and allocate your desired memory size to it.

 

Now, does anyone know if it's possible to use both Emby and Plex at the same time?  Well, not at the same time, but certain files playback better in Emby than Plex and vice versa, so my family often goes between the both of them.

 

Thank YOU so much for doing the research.  I was literally ready to throw in the towel completely after getting this new lower power system together.  It looks like I will be moving forward with this build.

 

I just now need to find a replacement for my security camera NVR, Blue Iris.  I really don't want to spin up a VM just for it and am investigating other possible Linux / Docker based VMs, but none seem to be even remotely close to Blue Iris.

  • Upvote 1
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10 minutes ago, thatonethur said:

 

I just now need to find a replacement for my security camera NVR, Blue Iris.  I really don't want to spin up a VM just for it and am investigating other possible Linux / Docker based VMs, but none seem to be even remotely close to Blue Iris.

 

Security cameras are the next network addition for me.  Since my network is a Ubiquiti UniFi network with UniFi router, switches and wireless access points, I will probably look into the Ubiquiti UniFi cameras and UniFi Video docker available for unRAID. 

 

The UniFi cameras are a bit expensive compared to other options, so, I may not end up there. Not sure how it all compares to Blue Iris as I have yet to do any research.

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