Hardware transcoding not working on Intel CPU

[snitchy 3]

Hello,

 

I'm currently a Plex user that's making the transition over to Emby, and whilst I've managed to get everything working how I like it, I can't seem to get hardware transcoding working. This is something that definitely worked with Plex, so I know it's capable of doing so but clearly I must be doing something wrong.

 

I've gone through the Wiki to check I've done everything I need to do, including downloading some different drivers but that hasn't resolved the issue. I have also connected a monitor to the PC as this was something that I also read was required. I have also attempted to look through as many posts of these forums to see if someone else has the same issue, but I've not been able to find someone with the exact issue that I've got. If I've missed it and it has already been discussed please accept my apologies.

 

It's a Windows 10 PC with an Intel i7 2600K CPU. The file I'm trying to transcode is a 1080p MKV, and I'm playing it back on my Android phone at a bitrate of 4mpbs. The logs show that it attempts to start using hardware transcoding, but it fails and reverts back to CPU transcoding.

 

I've attached the logs files so I'm hoping that someone will be able to point me in the right direction. I've only paid up for a month at the moment to try and get this working, but if I can I will definitely be a lifetime member

 

Many thanks,

Richard

 

 

logs.zip

Edited September 20, 2019 by snitchy

[Luke 37050]

Hi there, did you follow our hardware acceleration setup guide?

[snitchy 3]

Hi Luke,

 

Yup I did mention I followed the Wiki, which was my way of saying I followed the guide. I didn't really see much additional steps that I needed to check, apart from checking for drivers and ensuring a monitor was plugged in. I've plugged a monitor in, but the drivers I'm using are already the most up to date drivers I can use.

[Sammy 735]

Do you have Premier?

 

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

[snitchy 3]

I do yup, I purchased a month with the intention of making sure everything worked before purchasing a lifetime code like I have with Plex. This is the only thing left I need to get working before it expires on the 28th of this month (it's been a busy month )

[Sammy 735]

Restart the Emby server? Reboot the PC?

Check your GPU drivers?

 

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

[snitchy 3]

I can assure you the PC and software has been restarted multiple times during my testing, and as I mentioned before the drivers have been checked and are on the latest possible version that I can get.

 

In the logs it states the following:

[h264_qsv @ 000001d80552ae80] Error initializing the encoder: invalid video parameters (-15)
Error initializing output stream 0:0 -- Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height
Conversion failed!

I would be interested to know what the significance of this is, and if there is a standard cause for incorrect parameters?

[Sammy 735]

Sounds like something for @@Luke or one of the other developers to investigate.

 

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

[snitchy 3]

Does anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this? I hate to bump, but my Premier membership expires on the 28th, so I won't be able to test anything after that date.

[Sammy 735]

One thing to consider is your GPU. Intel iGPU's don't work too well, especially in GEN 2 Core processors. I have a GEN 4 Core i5 4690k but added an Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU for better transcoding. My CPU thanks me for lightening the load.

 

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

[snitchy 3]

If that's the case, I just need confirmation from the developers and I'll stick with Plex. But my understanding is that both Plex and Emby use FFMPEG so I don't see why it wouldn't work.

[rbjtech 4254]

Hi - Your CPU is a Sandy Bridge (GPU=Intel® HD Graphics 3000) which I believe does support QuickSync h264 decoding and encoding.

 

Under Transcoding>Enable Hardware Acceleration> set it to 'Advanced' - what options are you seeing here for Decoders and Encoders ?

 

Perhaps worth disabling the encoders (for now) to see if things then work as expected, perhaps trying different combinations to try and pinpoint the problem although the ffmpeg error is clearly pointing towards an encoder error.

[snitchy 3]

I've uploaded a screenshot of what decoders and encoders are available which hopefully is attached.

 

Whilst trying to get to the bottom of the issue, I did play around with these settings, but to be honest I didn't really know what I was doing so ended up going back to the defaults. Nothing I changed then made any difference unfortunately.

 

If I disable the encoders, it works fine, but with CPU encoding which is what I'm trying to avoid.

[rbjtech 4254]

All I can suggest further is to perhaps change the priority on which H264 encoder to use (swap them around) but you really need the dev's to step in here as I suspect the HD3000 is not fully compatible with an ffmpeg switch that is being used.

[snitchy 3]

Thanks for your suggestions - I will have a play tonight and see if I get anywhere. In the meantime, hopefully a dev will respond with their thoughts on the matter

[daldana 47]

I ran into the same type of problem after the last update, both on my stable server and beta server (running on the same machine). Although I'm using a different CPU, Intel i5-3470, I found that the only way I could get transcoding to work was by using the DX11VA Intel® HD Graphics for all three decoder sections (MPEG-2, VC-1, and H.264) and the Quicksync Intel ® HD Graphics - D3D11 - H.264 (AVC) encoder. I also found that after making the change in priorities, I had to restart the server for it to work.

[snitchy 3]

Many thanks for taking the time to tell me about your experience with this. I tried to do the same as yourself but without any luck, as it still fails and reverts to CPU encoding

 

I can only assume that my older CPU just isn't supported - probably something that needs to be noted on the documentation if indeed that is the case.

[softworkz 3335]

@@snitchy @@daldana @@rbjtech

 

Hi guys,

 

I've posted a new ffmpeg version for testing here: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/77218-4307-ffmpeg-43/?p=788932

 

Could you please replace the one in the Emby\System folder and try with the new version?

(Windows only)

 

Please report back how it goes..

[Sammy 735]

And there you have it. Try getting a response like that from Plex! 

[snitchy 3]

Hi softworkz,

 

Thanks for getting in touch. I've tried the updated ffmpeg but I'm afraid it's still not working for me. After checking the logs the error message is the same as before.

 

I did further googling last night and I found this link which further suggests an old issue with my CPU and hardware encoding with ffmpeg, so my guess is that it's an issue that perhaps has been around a while. Not sure how Plex gets around it - I did investigate that as well by analysing the switches that Plex uses when "Plex Transcoder.exe" is called, but clearly they have a very custom version of ffmpeg because it's nothing I could replicate with the standard ffmpeg.

 

I think I'm going to continue to switch to Emby anyway. I'm pretty sure my CPU can cope with 4 simultaneous transcodes and I don't expect I should exceed that amount. Hopefully

[softworkz 3335]

@@snitchy - Thanks for trying. Could you please post an ffmpeg log with the updated version, just to be sure that it was really using it...

[softworkz 3335]

And then, could you please try this one:

 

ffmpeg_2019_04_09.zip

 

This is the version we had previously and where we've never seen those problems.

[snitchy 3]

No problems, I've attached the logs for the newer ffmpeg and the older version. Unfortunately I get the same results with both.

 

I do have a newer PC running a newer Intel CPU, so as soon as I get some time I might fire that one up and see if I get the same issue just for curiosity's sake. I'll let you know once I've tried.

 

Thanks again for your assistance.

logs.zip

[softworkz 3335]

Thanks for trying.

 

Would you be able to run the following two command lines manually and see whether you'll get the same errors:

 

1

P:\Emby\system\fffmpeg.exe -hwaccel qsv -hwaccel_device hw -qsv_device 0 -c:v h264_qsv  -f matroska -i file:"\\walle\Movies\10 Things I Hate About You (1999)\10 Things I Hate About You (1999) Bluray-1080p.mkv" -threads 0 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -sn -c:v:0 h264_qsv  -g:v:0 72 -keyint_min:v:0 72 -sc_threshold:v:0 0  -copyts -vsync -1 -codec:a:0 ac3 -metadata:s:a:0 language=eng -disposition:a:0 default -ac:a:0 6 -ab:a:0 384000 -ar:a:0 48000  -f segment -max_delay 5000000 -avoid_negative_ts disabled -map_metadata -1 -map_chapters -1 -start_at_zero -segment_time 3  -individual_header_trailer 0 -segment_format mpegts -segment_write_temp 1 -segment_list_type m3u8 -segment_start_number 0 -segment_list "P:\Emby\programdata\transcoding-temp\d9d8d6f45bf244f4cdb8bbf58692bba8.m3u8" -y "P:\Emby\programdata\transcoding-temp\d9d8d6f45bf244f4cdb8bbf58692bba8%d.ts"

2

P:\Emby\system\fffmpeg.exe -hwaccel qsv -hwaccel_device hw -qsv_device 0 -c:v h264_qsv  -f matroska -i file:"\\walle\Movies\10 Things I Hate About You (1999)\10 Things I Hate About You (1999) Bluray-1080p.mkv" -threads 0 -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -sn -c:v:0 h264_qsv  -copyts -vsync -1 -codec:a:0 ac3 -metadata:s:a:0 language=eng -disposition:a:0 default -ac:a:0 6 -ab:a:0 384000 -ar:a:0 48000  -f segment -max_delay 5000000 -avoid_negative_ts disabled -map_metadata -1 -map_chapters -1 -start_at_zero -segment_time 3  -individual_header_trailer 0 -segment_format mpegts -segment_write_temp 1 -segment_list_type m3u8 -segment_start_number 0 -segment_list "P:\Emby\programdata\transcoding-temp\d9d8d6f45bf244f4cdb8bbf58692bba8.m3u8" -y "P:\Emby\programdata\transcoding-temp\d9d8d6f45bf244f4cdb8bbf58692bba8%d.ts"

Thanks!

[softworkz 3335]

Probably, at this point, it doesn't even matter with which ffmpeg version as it does not seem to be related to the version.