Playback & Transcoding Issues Ubuntu

[burrsg101 3]

This I assume is 2 different issues, but I am having some pretty heavy playback issues using Emby Theater. First issue is trying to play locally, everything seems to play perfect on my laptop that I use to play on the big TV and stereo setup in the living room. This is run out of the laptop using HDMI into a home theater processor and then out from there into the TV. When I try to play on my PC however which is just running 2 channel audio and has multiple monitors running in a mix of HDMI and DisplayPort, it will not play any of the "better" movie files I have (HDR video content and uncompressed audio tracks (TRUEHD or DTS-HD MA)). It makes it through the trailers fine but when it goes to play the movie it just sits at a blank screen and at 0 seconds.

They are both very similar in terms of hardware with the laptop being one generation back from the PC (Ryzen 9 5900 series with RX 6800M Discrete GPU, while the PC is Ryzen 9 7900X3D and RX 7900 XTX). Both are also on the same versions of Windows 10, and both running the latest AMD graphics driver 24.8.1. Both are hardwired with the laptop running a standard 1000BASE-T and the PC running a 10GBASE-LX. Some of that may be a bit unnecessary, but I'm trying to get at that they are both VERY similar devices. Both are running Emby Theater that was downloaded directly from the Emby website, not the one from the Windows store.

Another issue that may or may not be related that I am suddenly running into is with transcoding. Everything has been working fine until sometime this last month. It appears so far that anything that requests tone mapping fails, while regular transcoding continues to work fine. I have tried with 3 different devices (my Android phone and 2 different Samsung TVs) and all behave the same. Nothing in my server has changed (aside from basic minor software updates) in almost a year at this point. I'm running a VM in VMWare with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS which is running on an HP ML350 gen9 with twin Intel E5-2697 v4 and an Intel ARC A750 that is setup in direct passthrough to the VM (no sharing or virtualization of any kind for the GPU). When I first got this GPU up and running and for the better part of the last year it has been functioning fully with 0 issues. Recently it has suddenly run into issues now. I've been pouring through some kind of similar issues others have had lately and have tried installing the latest beta version of Emby server 4.9.0.30 with no change. I have also tried changing my tone mapping options from Extra-T to VAAPI again with no change. I have the "Allow subtitle extraction on the fly" unchecked and have for quite some time.

I see in the ffmpeg logs that it mentions an opencl error consistently, and I have verified that I'm running the latest version on my Ubuntu server as well as graphics drivers for the Intel GPU.

Not sure if these should be 2 separate threads or not since both issues seem to have started recently around the same time.

ffmpeg-transcode-3e4c2a04-10e3-4345-a87c-dd4fffd90176_1.txt embyserver(1).txt

[Luke 42077]

Hi @burrsg101are you still seeing this with Emby Server 4.8.10 ?

[burrsg101 3]

As I stated in the original post, per a previous thread with similar issues I found I upgrade from 4.8.10 to the 4.9.0.30 beta. It made no difference.

[burrsg101 3]

Now it appears that it is not utilizing my GPU for transcoding at all anymore despite it showing up as normal in transcoding settings. I've attached the most recent ffmpeg logs showing the failure and fallback to software transcoding.

ffmpeg-transcode-58b9e6d9-5a9a-45df-bef0-49c8ed4a49d7_1.txt

[Carlo 4560]

Hi,

23:37:50.952 [AVHWDeviceContext @ 0x212f880] Failed to get number of OpenCL platforms: -1001.

Please upload your Emby Server log as well.

[burrsg101 3]

This is another example from tonight of both logs.

ffmpeg-transcode-b9889a97-c0db-4859-ba00-01d4c5d80dc9_1.txt embyserver.txt

[Carlo 4560]

@softworkzCan you take a look at this.

Error in ffmpeg is:
21:51:29.078 [AVHWDeviceContext @ 0x12557c0] Failed to get number of OpenCL platforms: -1001.

GPU is a DG2 Arc A750

[yocker 1247]

What kernel are you using ?

[burrsg101 3]

This is a VM running Ubuntu server 22.04 LTS, kernel 6.8.0-47.

[Carlo 4560]

You need to pass through the device and possibly drivers as well.

What is the host OS?
What are you using to run VMs?

[burrsg101 3]

This was all in my original post. This also worked perfectly fine for about a year up until recently.

On 9/5/2024 at 9:07 PM, burrsg101 said:

I'm running a VM in VMWare with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS which is running on an HP ML350 gen9 with twin Intel E5-2697 v4 and an Intel ARC A750 that is setup in direct passthrough to the VM (no sharing or virtualization of any kind for the GPU).

 

[Carlo 4560]

Sorry about that, I see that now.

Assuming you shut down and backup the VM first I'd try these as sudo:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
test
apt-get full-upgrade
test
apt-get autoremove
apt-get autoclean
test

[yocker 1247]

The 6.8 kernel has problems with Intel Arc cards. Basically tone mapping plus some power saving stuff doesn't work.
Sounds like it might be the cause of your problem.

NEOReadDebugKeys=1
OverrideGpuAddressSpace=48

Is needed to fix it or another Kernel.

[burrsg101 3]

Dang, I thought that had fixed it, but tone mapping still fails. Regular transcoding is back now however with those variables added.

ffmpeg-transcode-ba571611-3d15-4b46-8248-37064eedd21f_1.txt embyserver(1).txt

[burrsg101 3]

Also of course 6.8 has issues with these intel cards, I'm starting to regret trying this Intel card out. It has been problematic from the beginning in many ways. I had to force my kernel from 5.x to 6.7 just to get the card to work at all. Apparently my auto updates moved it to 6.8 at some point recently. It appears many are downgrading back to 6.7 for now, I may join them if I can't get this to work otherwise.

[yocker 1247]

I don't know if it will work in Ubuntu but..

Adding:

"NEOReadDebugKeys=1" and "OverrideGpuAddressSpace=48" as variables for Emby run in a docker will normally fix the problem in 6.8.
(Edit: Sorry, missed your other post, so ignore this bit.)

I just downgraded my kernel to 6.6 my self this morning and it fixed the problem.

https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/issues/710

Edited October 21, 2024 by yocker

[Luke 42077]

@burrsg101 has this helped?

[yocker 1247]

@burrsg101I've been investigating this a bit, hard since i know little about Ubuntu, i found this:

https://github.com/intel/compute-runtime/releases/tag/24.17.29377.6

This should fix the problem according to some.
Please remember though, i know little of Ubuntu so.. Use at your own risk and all that!

[burrsg101 3]

After some extensive research it appears a few things are happening here.

1. Intel changed their repositories for Ubuntu GPUs somewhat recently and my list had not been updated. This results in a GPG error for no public key available when trying to run apt update for the Intel GPU repository. This was blocking a LOT of opencl and other related dependencies from updating for some time it seems. This falls on me I suppose for being too reliant on the GUI updater as it does not report these types of issues.

2. As we've already discussed kernel 6.8 broke a growing list of features related to Intel openCL. It appears jumping ahead prematurely to kernel 6.9 allegedly fixes this (this kernel is released on the non LTS variant of Ubuntu already, and is rumored to be released officially for 24.04 LTS later this year). The other choice is to roll back to 6.7. I have not updated to 24.04 yet, but I will try to do both that and forcing in the early update of the 6.9 kernel and report back.

As far as the repositories go, the fix is to get into your repository list, delete the entry(or 2 entries for some) for intel-gpu.
cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d
ls -l  *List current repositories in folder
sudo rm *Your intel-gpu list name
After this follow the instructions here to add the new key and repository back in
https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/driver/client/overview.html

That includes a few different versions of Ubuntu so follow the appropriate one.

After doing this I had 48+ upgrades waiting when running apt upgrade
After installing these, transcoding non HDR streams is back to working, however tonemapping still fails with the same OpenCL error and reverts to software transcoding. This is without the NEOReadDebug and OverrideGpuAddress variables in place.

I'm currently updating my Veeam server infrastructure to a new version and I don't want to try to make a major jump such as upgrading to 24.04 and kernel 6.9 without having my backups to revert back to. As previously stated I will try these upgrades a bit later and report back.

[yocker 1247]

@burrsg101You can't just update the intel compute-runtime?

Sorry if it's a stupid question but i really do have little to no knowledge on Ubuntu.
 

[burrsg101 3]

@yockerThat's actually part of the install process in the document I linked from Intel. The compute-runtime is the intel-opencl-icd package.

Update here, upgrading to 24.04 LTS made no difference (didn't expect it to as its still on kernel 6.8). I cannot however upgrade to a newer kernel as I thought earlier aside from using an unofficial kernel from mainline which I am not comfortable with doing.

As it stands, regular transcoding works, trying to use tonemapping with HDR video streams nets the same opencl error from my previous logs, and it reverts to software tonemapping. I'm sick of messing with this as it seems there is no real solution in sight, aside from going back to kernel 6.7 or earlier which is not possible with 24.04 as its built on 6.8. I've allotted 40 CPU cores to my Emby VM, and will just be letting it give my CPUs a run for their money when transcoding with tonemapping for now until they officially release kernel 6.9 later this year. I will try to report back what happens at that point. If it's still broken I'll likely be throwing this GPU in the trash and going a different route, as it has been a headache from the start and Intel's customer support is VERY poor and unhelpful.

[yocker 1247]

5 minutes ago, burrsg101 said:

@yockerThat's actually part of the install process in the document I linked from Intel. The compute-runtime is the intel-opencl-icd package.

Update here, upgrading to 24.04 LTS made no difference (didn't expect it to as its still on kernel 6.8). I cannot however upgrade to a newer kernel as I thought earlier aside from using an unofficial kernel from mainline which I am not comfortable with doing.

As it stands, regular transcoding works, trying to use tonemapping with HDR video streams nets the same opencl error from my previous logs, and it reverts to software tonemapping. I'm sick of messing with this as it seems there is no real solution in sight, aside from going back to kernel 6.7 or earlier which is not possible with 24.04 as its built on 6.8. I've allotted 40 CPU cores to my Emby VM, and will just be letting it give my CPUs a run for their money when transcoding with tonemapping for now until they officially release kernel 6.9 later this year. I will try to report back what happens at that point. If it's still broken I'll likely be throwing this GPU in the trash and going a different route, as it has been a headache from the start and Intel's customer support is VERY poor and unhelpful.

Yeah it's sad that a bug like this would give this much trouble for an other wise great product.
Can't find a more capable card for the money for sure if the card actually worked.

I'm sure the Linux community is on top of it, can't say the same for Windows as it's 100% reliable on Intel to actually fix it and they haven't for almost a year now.
I dread the day Unraid might upgrade to a kernel that doesn't work with the card because it's working perfectly for me (for now...).

[Luke 42077]

OverrideGpuAddressSpace has been added on the beta channel. Thanks.

[burrsg101 3]

This appears to be an issue again. I noticed today that I am seeing OpenCL errors again in the transcoding logs when attempting to transcode a movie that requires tone mapping, and it fails and falls back to software transcoding.

I am on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and still running the Intel Arc A750 GPU.

ffmpeg-transcode-3b9315d1-8fc8-4277-a599-c25793b81683_1.txt