Emby not using AMD GPU on Win 10

[chrisbr68 5]

HI Folks, subscriber here, first post.

 

Issue:

My emby server is not using my AMD GPU at all; transcoding, subtitles, conversions.

Setup:

Win 10 Home 64 bit running Emby Premiere. Its on my old Lenovo G50-70. 128gb SSD. 8gb ram. It has an HDMI dongle attached but its a laptop so its not headless. AMD GPU 8500M

Story:

I can stream my video in the LAN and on the WAN. The WAN often has to transcode due to bandwidth issues, my home connection allows around 20meg up but I have google drive and home security too. It does transcode but it uses the Intel Graphics GPU but never touches the AMD. I have read the guide and cant see what else I can do. I have installed AMD Radeon Adrenaline, I couldnt seem to get to Crimson and I am not sure of the difference, so I am not sure if what I have done is an issue, but its telling me its on the latest version. I followed the links in the Emby support pages. I have scanned through the log and it seems to see the AMD GPU but I see the below. The card is listed as supported by the Crimson AMF.

Please see log attached and some screenshots which may be helpful!

Many thanks.

 

"Info:   Adapter #1: 'AMD Radeon HD 8500M' Id:26223 (Driver: , Vendor: 4098)",
"Debug:  Device successfully created",
"Warn:   Could not get a VideoDevice for Adapter #1: 'AMD Radeon HD 8500M' Id:26223 (Driver: , Vendor: 4098)",
"Debug:  Dispose Dx11Device",
"Debug:  Dx11Device disposed",
"Debug:  Dispose DXGI Factory",
"Debug:  DXGI Factory disposed"

hardware_detection-63795032660.txt

embyserver.txt

Edited August 2, 2022 by chrisbr68

[muzicman0 59]

can you show what is under advanced in the transcoding menu?  Should be something like the attached image.  Make sure we can see the 'Preferred Hardware Encoders' section.

 

[muzicman0 59]

Also, are you sure the 8500M has an Encoder built in?  I can't find specs on it, and I am not a AMD GPU expert at all.

[Happy2Play 8351]

Yes what do you see on the transcoding menu?  Can you post the ffmpeg log?

hardware-acceleration-on-windows#:~:text=Capabilities Drivers %26 Software-,AMD AMF,-AMD Advanced Media

[chrisbr68 5]

Hi guys thanks for the replies. Interesting point on the encoding, don't know but I'll do some reading. Here are the details..

 

 

[chrisbr68 5]

ffmpeg-transcode-c6b6dfab-a87b-460e-b229-122d5ec3d94f_1.txt

[muzicman0 59]

It appears that IF the AMD GPU has an encoder built in, it is not being detected by Emby, or is not supported.  Based on your screen shots, Emby is utilizing the Intel Hardware Acceleration.  Unfortunately, that is as far as I can go on troubleshooting this.

The company I work for uses both Intel and Nvidia encoding in our software, but not AMD.  While Intel performance isn't near as good as Nvidia, the visual quality is pretty good.  I am not sure how AMD encoding performance compares to Intel.

[Luke 37213]

Hi, @softworkz will take a look at this. Thanks.

[chrisbr68 5]

On 03/08/2022 at 16:38, muzicman0 said:

It appears that IF the AMD GPU has an encoder built in, it is not being detected by Emby, or is not supported.  Based on your screen shots, Emby is utilizing the Intel Hardware Acceleration.  Unfortunately, that is as far as I can go on troubleshooting this.

The company I work for uses both Intel and Nvidia encoding in our software, but not AMD.  While Intel performance isn't near as good as Nvidia, the visual quality is pretty good.  I am not sure how AMD encoding performance compares to Intel.

Hmm, I couldnt see anything online but it doesnt appear under decoder either which seems a bit strange. I do wonder if its a driver thing but I have zero experience in this arena!

[caffeineshock 14]

stay with the intel encoder. he is better, faster and more efficient. except you got a very new gpu. but even then. a quicksync is mostly the best case if you are not planning on serving many user

Edited August 5, 2022 by caffeineshock
typos

[softworkz 3347]

@chrisbr68 In fact, your best option is to stick with Intel. 

Even IF (while I'm not sure, the answer is probably 'no') you could get something to work with the AMD GPU, there would still be the problem that AMD does not offer filtering/processing capabilities - like scaling.

Let's look at the ffmpeg log you posted:

You Intel hardware is old, but at least it allows you to:

• H.264-Decode a video (> FullHD)
• Scale down to FullHD
• H.264-Encode the video

all in hardware at > 1.0x speed. And with your CPU not being over-stressed and free for anything else.

With AMD - assuming it would be possible - it would be:

• H.264-Decode a video (> FullHD)
• Download the uncompressed video frames from hw to sw
• Scale down to FullHD - via CPU!!!
• Upload the uncompressed video frames from sw to hw
• H.264-Encode the video

Even when the decoding and encoding would be faster -  it's the CPU which does the memory transfers and it would need to do the scaling.
With an old CPU like yours - that would be still worse than what you got right now.

PS: You should update your Intel GPU drivers (from the Intel website)

Edited August 7, 2022 by softworkz

[chrisbr68 5]

That's great thanks for the reply and insight. I don't know much about this but you explained it well. I'll update the drivers.

 

It's been behaving pretty good to be honest. I started out using my rpi4 a while back for a bit of fun but then I decided to use it more and my friend in America streams from me. So I dug this old laptop out which to be fair is doing very well now. For a while it wasn't even using the Intel gpu till I changed some settings.

 

Thanks!

[Luke 37213]

Let us know how you get on. Thanks.

[Luke 37213]

@chrisbr68 ?

[chrisbr68 5]

It's been behaving well. I've not used it tons but any transcoding seems to work quite well with the gpu maxed. I have picked up a "new" laptop which has the Intel 520 gpu which seems to be twice as powerful as what I have so I'm not expecting any issues. The amd piece never worked but touch wood I don't need it anyway. I can't transcode 4k but nether do I expect to on this hw it handles 1080 fine!