Publishers and marketers have had to adjust to this and forego traditional media in favor of digital media. Indeed, 80% of consumers would rather watch a live video than read a blog. People are more prone to watch a stream than read a blog post. In other words, video is dominating the world and marketing industry. A lot of things have contributed to this, especially consumers’ needs and wants. As video became the most popular content type, technology has made it possible to stream movies, series, and broadcasts while we are on the go. Gone are the days when we were only able to catch this medium on big screens or TVs. Reducing the CPU usage by using hardware acceleration, could allow your Plex server to do more than just stream media files.Video technology has come a long way. If your Plex server has either an Intel integrated graphics card, or a standalone NVIDIA graphics card, it might be worthwhile to enable hardware acceleration.
To use it with Plex requires some advanced configuration that can be search for online.įor many people, the benefit of switching from software to hardware transcoding can make a difference when streaming videos.
Windows services run in session 0, which doesn't have access to the graphics card. In addition to the limitations mentioned above, there are a few instances where you won't be able to use hardware transcoding with Plex. If the (hw) value is not beside the word Transcode, then the server isn't using hardware transcoding.
When a video is being transcoded on the Plex server, you will see Transcode (hw) in the Plex activity monitor. The 'Use hardware acceleration when available' setting in Plex
How to enable hardware transcoding in Plex? Intel QuickSync may produce lower quality video, especially for older chipsets.
Videos below 480p will use software for transcoding.