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Preferred Hardware Decoders/Encoders Missing


TalNum
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TalNum

Hi all,

I have run into a rather weird issue this evening after reviewing my hardware encoder options.

After seeing a remote user connecting and playing a media file that needed to be transcoded due to global bit rate limitations, I noticed that it was streaming at a rather low bitrate of ~900kbps when the global limit was set to 2.5mbps. My upload speed is more than capable of achieving this and has done so without issue in the past.

I hopped onto DSM to see what was up and found my CPU usage was spiking to 99-100%, which was causing the slow down. This has never happened before and I would typically only see CPU usage of 10-20% while transcoding any file, so I thought to check my hardware acceleration options, as per the wiki suggests, to ensure nothing was switched off.

I found that I still had hardware acceleration set to 'Advanced', but weirdly enough, no options appeared under 'Preferred Hardware Encoders' as they had just a week ago. See the screenshot. It is almost as though it no longer recognizes any of the hardware options for hardware acceleration on my NAS.

I am stumped as to what has caused this sudden switch. My only inclination would be that it has to do with my recent upgrade from Synology DSM firmware 6.2.3-25426 Update 3 to version 6.2.4-25554 last evening. That upgrade went smoothly and nothing indicated there was an error, but this is the only major change from last week to today.

I have confirmed that this occurs both for remote users and myself while local. This issue occurs on a variety of different platforms including Amazon Fire TV devices, Firefox, etc.

I also confirm that the spikes completely subside once I stop playing/transcoding of media files. Direct play files are seemingly not causing spikes of this nature. My Emby Premiere license also appears to be correctly input and resolving fine. I am also running the official package, not within Docker.

Any help would be appreciated so I can adjust my hardware acceleration options to not cause spikes. Included is the server, hardware, and transcoding log of a problem file.

Thank you.

Server Specifications:
Synology 920+
8GB Memory
Firmware: 6.2.4-25554
Emby: 4.5.4.0

 

Transcode_Screenshot.jpg

 

Edited by TalNum
Removed files due to lack of support into issue
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Hi there, what does your hardware support that you're expecting to see there?

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TalNum
7 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi there, what does your hardware support that you're expecting to see there?

Thank you for the reply, Luke.

Prior to the DSM firmware update, my hardware accelerator screen (when selecting the 'Advanced' option) would allow for me to select specific preferred encoders and decoders, akin to what this user had for check boxes, but obviously for what was supported by my NAS. In looking at my prior Emby configuration backups, I had the following selected (and recognized) in this area in the encoding.xml file:

Quote

  <CodecConfigurations>
    <CodecConfiguration>
      <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>
      <Priority>100</Priority>
      <CodecId>V-D-mpeg2_vaapi-vaa-devid12677</CodecId>
    </CodecConfiguration>
    <CodecConfiguration>
      <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>
      <Priority>100</Priority>
      <CodecId>V-D-h264_vaapi-vaa-devid12677</CodecId>
    </CodecConfiguration>
    <CodecConfiguration>
      <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>
      <Priority>100</Priority>
      <CodecId>V-D-vc1_vaapi-vaa-devid12677</CodecId>
    </CodecConfiguration>
    <CodecConfiguration>
      <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>
      <Priority>100</Priority>
      <CodecId>V-D-vp8_vaapi-vaa-devid12677</CodecId>
    </CodecConfiguration>
    <CodecConfiguration>
      <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>
      <Priority>100</Priority>
      <CodecId>V-D-hevc_vaapi-vaa-devid12677</CodecId>
    </CodecConfiguration>
    <CodecConfiguration>
      <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>
      <Priority>100</Priority>
      <CodecId>V-D-vp9_vaapi-vaa-devid12677</CodecId>
    </CodecConfiguration>
    <CodecConfiguration>
      <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>
      <Priority>100</Priority>
      <CodecId>V-E-h264_vaapi-vaa-devid12677</CodecId>
    </CodecConfiguration>
    <CodecConfiguration>
      <IsEnabled>true</IsEnabled>
      <Priority>100</Priority>
      <CodecId>V-E-hevc_vaapi-vaa-devid12677</CodecId>
    </CodecConfiguration>
  </CodecConfigurations>

Easier to read format of the decoders/encoders above:

mpeg2_vaapi-vaa
h264_vaapi-vaa
vc1_vaapi-vaa
vp8_vaapi-vaa
hevc_vaapi-vaa
vp9_vaapi-vaa

I no longer see any of these options within the Emby GUI nor in the encoding.xml file of the current configuration. It is almost as though Emby no longer recognizes the available hardware accelerators?

Edited by TalNum
Formatting
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TalNum

Bumping for visibility.

@Luke or anyone on the admin team looking into this? Apologies for the quick reply, I am just dead in the water without transcoding abilities. Thanks again.

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Hi, I'm not sure. Did you make sure the emby system user is assigned to the video group? Our install package normally takes care of that for you. Perhaps you inadvertently removed it or have made some other change on the system preventing it, but the likely scenario is the server is not being given access to the gpu. I have assigned this to our Synology package developer but he's out for another week just fyi.

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TalNum
2 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, I'm not sure. Did you make sure the emby system user is assigned to the video group? Our install package normally takes care of that for you. Perhaps you inadvertently removed it or have made some other change on the system preventing it, but the likely scenario is the server is not being given access to the gpu. I have assigned this to our Synology package developer but he's out for another week just fyi.

Hi @Luke. Thank you for the reply.

In my own research, I did come across that as a potential reason for this issue occurring, as the hardware log does indicate that Emby cannot see the associated hardware; line 23:

Quote

"Message": "Failed to open the drm device /dev/dri/renderD128"

I double checked both with the DSM GUI and via SSH that the user "emby" was part of the video group and this is the case. One thread references renderD128 as having the wrong permissions and sure enough, that file has a 660 permission associated with it. Just as a means of a band aid until your Synology package developer can investigate in a week, would you recommend I attempt changing the permissions on this file to 666? Perhaps even install the 4.6.30 beta? I am open to either suggestion in the mean time.

Appreciate you getting your Synology package developer on this all the same.

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Quote

would you recommend I attempt changing the permissions on this file to 666? 

Hi, I don't know the answer, sorry. It has always just worked for me on my test nas.

Quote

Perhaps even install the 4.6.30 beta?

You can, there's a lot of transcoding related changes in the beta, just be aware you can't go backwards once you do that.

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TalNum
32 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, I don't know the answer, sorry. It has always just worked for me on my test nas.

You can, there's a lot of transcoding related changes in the beta, just be aware you can't go backwards once you do that.

Thanks, @Luke. I think in the interim I will give the beta package a try, considering that stable is giving me issues. One quick question - for installing the beta, is this a simple matter of stopping the current Emby package in DSM then manually installing the beta SPK file over top of it? Or do I need to fully uninstall the stable first?

Thanks again.

EDIT: Just went for it and installed the beta over top of the stabled and after a NAS reboot, it worked out fine. Added (major) bonus? My preferred encoders/decoders are now listed once again. Super strange issue this one all around, but I am happy the beta has at least got me back in order for the time being.

Edited by TalNum
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  • 3 weeks later...
halvdan

I have exactly the same problem.

I'm on DS +218 though.
6GB Memory
Firmware: 6.2.4-25556
Emby: 4.5.4.0

There have been several DSM updates lately. Likely something to do with that perhaps.

Any workaround untill next emby release? I'm not to keen to update to the beta version since I managed to mess up my settings the last time I tried that.

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TalNum
6 minutes ago, halvdan said:

I have exactly the same problem.

I'm on DS +218 though.
6GB Memory
Firmware: 6.2.4-25556
Emby: 4.5.4.0

There have been several DSM updates lately. Likely something to do with that perhaps.

Any workaround untill next emby release? I'm not to keen to update to the beta version since I managed to mess up my settings the last time I tried that.

From what @Luke was saying, the Synology developer for Emby was supposed to look into this issue sometime this prior week:

On 3/7/2021 at 10:51 AM, Luke said:

Hi, I'm not sure. Did you make sure the emby system user is assigned to the video group? Our install package normally takes care of that for you. Perhaps you inadvertently removed it or have made some other change on the system preventing it, but the likely scenario is the server is not being given access to the gpu. I have assigned this to our Synology package developer but he's out for another week just fyi.

Thus far, I haven't heard anything from this developer.

To be honest, I am making the educated guess that firmware updates to DSM have definitely caused this issue in some form or another. My assumption was this might be a permissions issue with renderD128, but rather than tinker with that via SSH, I just manually updated to the beta. I had tried almost everything else I could think of up until that point and the installation of the beta version was the only thing that got my hardware encoding/decoding back.

I can't speak to your situation specifically, but after stopping Emby from within the dashboard, then installing the SPK file from within DSM, everything went extremely smooth. It took 5-10 minutes to get everything back up and populated after installation and restarting Emby, but that is the only issue I can note in my upgrade.

Sadly, until the Synology developer looks into this, we may never know the definitive answer to this. I can only hope that future DSM updates don't break Emby once again, otherwise this could get cumbersome.

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He mentioned that he resolved it by updating to the beta server, so I took that to mean he was all set.

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4 hours ago, halvdan said:

I have exactly the same problem.

I'm on DS +218 though.
6GB Memory
Firmware: 6.2.4-25556
Emby: 4.5.4.0

There have been several DSM updates lately. Likely something to do with that perhaps.

Any workaround untill next emby release? I'm not to keen to update to the beta version since I managed to mess up my settings the last time I tried that.

Hi there, let's start from the beginning. Please attach the emby server and hardware detection log files. thanks.

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halvdan
9 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi there, let's start from the beginning. Please attach the emby server and hardware detection log files. thanks.

I'm not comfortable posting the log files as there are server details included. I could remove those beforehand, but there is fear that I might have missed some.

Like op I decided to upgrade to the beta, and hardware transcoding is working again.

 Is it possible to upgrade from the beta to the next stable version when it comes out?

 

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Quote

Is it possible to upgrade from the beta to the next stable version when it comes out?

Yes it is.

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halvdan
2 hours ago, Luke said:

Yes it is.

Great. I think I will just do that and consider this resolved in my case.

Thanks

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TalNum

@Luke - Apologies for digging up my old thread, but I felt it important to share.

My initial issue has returned yet again after upgrading DSM from 6.2.4-25554 to 6.2.4-25556. All of my aforementioned hardware encoders/decoders have disappeared once again. I was running beta version 4.6.0.35 and all was working again after my initial noted issue.

Additionally, once again, the only way that this was remedied was to upgrade to the latest beta version of Emby that was just released (4.6.0.36), which brought back all of my hardware encoders/decoders.

It has become obvious that something in all of the DSM updates is breaking Emby's ability to see the hardware encoders/decoders that are available.

@Luke please have your Synology developer look into this ongoing issue as soon as possible. This could become an even bigger headache as time progresses. I would be more than willing to PM any staff any information that might help inform as to why this is happening repeatedly.

For any fellow Synology users experiencing the same issue noted in my original post - do not upgrade DSM unless you have a newer version of Emby to manually install post-DSM update.

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Quote

 

Additionally, once again, the only way that this was remedied was to upgrade to the latest beta version of Emby that was just released (4.6.0.36), which brought back all of my hardware encoders/decoders.

Hi, if you're running the beta to begin with, then it's expected that you keep updating to each new build and provide testing feedback. Thanks for your feedback in helping us test the changes.

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  • Solution
TalNum
40 minutes ago, Luke said:

Hi, if you're running the beta to begin with, then it's expected that you keep updating to each new build and provide testing feedback. Thanks for your feedback in helping us test the changes.

Hi, thanks for your reply. While it is indeed true that I am running the beta version currently (not by choice), if you refer to my OP I was running the 4.5.4.0 stable version of the server when this exact same scenario occurred previously. That issue was never addressed fully and was only solved by upgrading to the latest beta version.

I believe this issue to be systemic across both stable and beta versions of the server with each incremental DSM upgrade. If the official response is to keep providing feedback without intervention from the developer, then please feel free to close this thread. Thank you.

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Hi, it dropped from the beta because we've made some major internal packaging changes recently and some devices were impacted by that. As we became aware of the issues, we resolved them in subsequent builds.

As for 4.5.4, we didn't get to the bottom of it so I'm not quite sure what the issue is there. It could be a defect, or it could be something we hadn't added support for yet.

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  • 1 year later...

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