If the (hw) value is not beside the word Transcode, then the server isn't using hardware transcoding. When a video is being transcoded on the Plex server, you will see Transcode (hw) in the Plex activity monitor. The 'Use hardware acceleration when available' setting in Plex On the right, check the Use hardware acceleration when available checkbox.From the menu on left, click Transcoder under the Settings section.Click the Settings - the wrench - link in the upper-right corner of the Plex server page.Log into your Plex server as an administrator.Open a Web browser and navigate to your Plex server.

To enable hardware acceleration, use the following steps: Hardware transcoding can be enabled on the Plex server if your server has the necessary hardware. How to enable hardware transcoding in Plex?

Intel QuickSync may produce lower quality video, especially for older chipsets.

Videos below 480p will use software for transcoding.

Macs hardware transcoding is only available for videos that are 480p or higher.

Macs are capable of encoding 1 video at a time because a platform limitation from Apple.

NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards do not have a limitation of encoding videos.

Windows and Linux servers using NVIDIA GeForce cards are limited to 2 encoding videos at a time.

Windows and Linux servers using Intel QuickSync do not have any artificial limit to the number of simultaneous videos.

Either options can be used to reduce the CPU usage for transcoding.īesides the graphics cards, there are some additional requirements and notes to keep in mind: Hardware transcoding requirements?Ĭurrently, there are two viable options for hardware transcoding: NVIDIA graphics cards and integrated Intel graphics accelerator known as QuickSync. Graphics cards have powerful processors that can easily transcode videos. This would reduce the CPU usage significantly. The ask from the community was to be able to use their graphics card to handle the transcoding. This caused the Plex servers to become slow as all available CPU resources were being used to transcode. While transcoding a video, the CPU usage would spike to 100%. While a CPU can transcode a video, it did have one drawback. If a client was not able to play a specific video codec, Plex would have the CPU transcode the video. When Plex first became available, the CPU did all the video processing. Let's take a look at what is hardware transcoding, and how you can leverage it for streaming your media. If you are new to Plex, you may be wondering exactly what is hardware transcoding? How can you use it with your Plex Media Server? Should you use that feature?

Hardware transcoding was a much asked for feature from the Plex community. Plex hardware transcoding is functionality that can reduce the CPU load when a video is transcoded.

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