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.

Update plex media server on freebsd