Activating Plex hardware acceleration

[joncy92]

I found the "smoking gun". Dell R330, R230, T330 and T130 all share the same BIOS: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=yy9vy

You can try that BIOS version 2.9.0, but given that the R330 was confirmed previously to not have an option to use the Intel iGPU, I'd expect this version to behave the same, and not offer the Intel iGPU.

I actually updated everything just a few days before posting in this thread so I guess nothing's changed!

Guess I'll have to fork out for a supermicro or something
Thanks for the help though dude!

 

[Yorick]

Guess I'll have to fork out for a supermicro or something

You can also just instruct Plex to "Optimize" your videos for the target resolution. It'll keep that as an additional copy and will choose the right one depending on resolution for playback. That way, there's no transcoding going on during playback.

 

[joncy92]

You can also just instruct Plex to "Optimize" your videos for the target resolution. It'll keep that as an additional copy and will choose the right one depending on resolution for playback. That way, there's no transcoding going on during playback.

Unforunately I don't have the capacity for having multiple qualities for films.
Also I'm actually using emby and not plex. I realise of course that this is all plex related but I was hoping to get the iGPU at least visible to my Emby jail and see what's possible from there - I guess we won't find out now haha.

The issue I'm actually facing is when some people who have access to my library remotely try to stream a 4K film Emby must transcode to a lower quality to cope with the limited upload bandwidth - the modest CPU does its best but it can't keep up and there's no buffer between the playback position and transcode position.
With 1080p films, the CPU still maxes out but the transcode position gets ahead quickly and continually increases until transcoding is finished.

I guess to handle 4K transcodes and multiple transcodes, I'll have to either upgrade the board or the CPU....or both

 

[elorimer]

I have a j5005 processor that should be able to do hardware transcoding, and I'm on the 12.0 nightly train with plex-pass in a jail. What might I need to do to see if hardware transcoding is possible?

 

[Yorick]

get the iGPU at least visible to my Emby jail and see what's possible from there - I guess we won't find out now

Oh but we know. Emby on FreeBSD does not support hardware transcode, and the Emby devs are looking to hire a FreeBSD dev to look into it. See https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/70699-enable-hardware-acceleration-on-freebsd/page/2/

 

[Yorick]

What might I need to do to see if hardware transcoding is possible?

Check that the iGPU shows up in lspci, then follow the instructions: https://github.com/kern2011/Freenas-Quicksync

 

[elorimer]

Check that the iGPU shows up in lspci, then follow the instructions: https://github.com/kern2011/FreeNAS-Quicksync

Thanks, worked a charm. With some wrinkles I'll explore.

lspci is producing output more obscure than I expected:

Code:

freenas# lspci
00:00.0 Class 0600: Device 8086:31f0 (rev 03)
00:00.1 Class 1180: Device 8086:318c (rev 03)
00:02.0 Class 0300: Device 8086:3184 (rev 03)
00:0e.0 Class 0403: Device 8086:3198 (rev 03)
00:0f.0 Class 0780: Device 8086:319a (rev 03)
00:12.0 Class 0106: Device 8086:31e3 (rev 03)
00:13.0 Class 0604: Device 8086:31d8 (rev f3)
00:13.1 Class 0604: Device 8086:31d9 (rev f3)
00:13.2 Class 0604: Device 8086:31da (rev f3)
00:13.3 Class 0604: Device 8086:31db (rev f3)
00:12.0 Class 0106: Device 8086:31e3 (rev 03)
00:13.0 Class 0604: Device 8086:31d8 (rev f3)
00:13.1 Class 0604: Device 8086:31d9 (rev f3)
00:13.2 Class 0604: Device 8086:31da (rev f3)
00:13.3 Class 0604: Device 8086:31db (rev f3)

And while I am getting the (hw) flag in the plex dashboard, the transcoded video is significantly blocked.

 

[Yorick]

And while I am getting the (hw) flag in the plex dashboard, the transcoded video is significantly blocked.

Is this VC1? If so, there is a known bug in the Intel hw transcode.

 

[elorimer]

No, these are MPEG-2 files. But there is a bug in the plex hardware transcoding for Gemini Lake devices.

 

[intelligence]

Putting together parts for a new system. I saw that Gen 8 and up is not supported currently, but I don't understand if it will work in the future? (there's just a mention that it will work with TrueNAS core).

Parts I'm looking into:

• Supermicro X11SCH-F
• Intel Xeon E-2246G

 

[Yorick]

but I don't understand if it will work in the future? (there's just a mention that it will work with TrueNAS core).

TrueNAS Core is the future. FreeNAS branding ends at 11.3, and what you think of as FreeNAS is rebranded as TrueNAS Core from 12.0 on.

 

[intelligence]

TrueNAS Core is the future. FreeNAS branding ends at 11.3, and what you think of as FreeNAS is rebranded as TrueNAS Core from 12.0 on.

Yes I understood that after posting. Also saw another post by you that indicated that the parts in question is very likely to work with HW acceleration, but you cannot promise it will. Correct?

 

[Yorick]

Yes I understood that after posting. Also saw another post by you that indicated that the parts in question is very likely to work with HW acceleration, but you cannot promise it will. Correct?

Correct. The changes in the driver to support the Coffee Lake iGPUs are small, as you’d expect: It is after all the same basic architecture as Kaby Lake. And we know that people are using this successfully on “raw” FreeBSD 12.1. It would therefore be a big surprise if it didn’t work.

And as always: You don’t know for certain until it’s been tested.

 

[elorimer]

I haven't run this to earth yet, but as was posted above hardware acceleration, at least with plex, is broken at least at the Gemini Lake level. It is said the solution is to delete the iHD_drv_video.so driver. Then plex will fall back on the old driver. I had no difficulty getting hardware acceleration to kick in on the 12.0 nightlies, but ran into the driver problem; after deleting that driver plex was not falling back to the other driver and reverting to software transcoding.

 

[NasKar]

My Main FreeNAS box does not have an iGPU but I noticed my backup FreeNAS does. It has an ASROCK E3C226D2I with an Intel i3-4130T which has quick sync. Will that combination work with HW acceleration?

 

[Yorick]

Maybe. The release notes at https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C226D2I#Download mention "Enhance Intel gfx feature", so that's promising for iGPU being available. Bring the BIOS and IPMI up to date and try it. Worst case, you don't see /dev/dri in FreeBSD and you are done at that point.

 

[NasKar]

I installed plex on my back FreeNAS and followed the instruction on https://github.com/kern2011/FreeNAS-Quicksync
ls /dev only shows drm not dri

 

[Yorick]

@NasKar Give us an lspci in code tags, and see what options you have in BIOS to enable the iGPU.

 

[NasKar]

@NasKar Give us an lspci in code tags, and see what options you have in BIOS to enable the iGPU.

Code:

root@freenas:~ # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 06)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x16 Controller (rev 06)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI (rev 05)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:16.1 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev d5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev d5)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev d5)
00:1c.7 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #8 (rev d5)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation C226 Series Chipset Family Server Advanced SKU LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 SATA controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE9235 PCIe 2.0 x2 4-port SATA 6 Gb/s Controller (rev 11)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I210 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I210 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
05:00.0 PCI bridge: ASPEED Technology, Inc. AST1150 PCI-to-PCI Bridge (rev 02)
06:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ASPEED Technology, Inc. ASPEED Graphics Family (rev 21)

 

[Yorick]

Interesting. No Intel graphics processor, and reference to a Xeon E3-1200 instead of your i3-4130T. That might be an lspci artefact.

To go further, I think you'd need to get with ASRock support and see whether the Intel iGPU is supported on this board, and how to enable it in BIOS if it is.