Hardware Transcoding is not working

[SVRUM]

Operating SystemS: TrueNAS Scale Electric Eel 24.10.1 / Windows 11 Pro
CPU: Intel i3-8100T
Integrated Graphics: Intel® UHD Graphics 630
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i
Motherboard: Dell Precision 3630 Tower Motherboard IPCFL-TB
RAM: 1 x 32GB DDR4 ECC Ram
Primary Drive: Kingston A400 120GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Seagate IronWolf 18TB 7200RPM HDD
Tertiary Drive: Seagate IronWolf 18TB 7200RPM HDD
GPU: None (Using integrated graphics)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G2 80+ Gold Fully Modular Power Supply
Optical Drive: LG WH16NS60 Optical Drive

Installation Location: TrueNAS - default Windows 11 - C:/Program Files/Jellyfin

Virtualization is enabled, Intel Graphics are enabled in BIOS, Intel graphics drivers have been updated to Intel® Graphics Driver 31.0.101.2134, transcoding setting QSV is selected in Jellyfin,

I thought this was initially an issue with TrueNAS Scale, but I also installed Windows 11 Pro on my media server bare metal to make sure. CPU usage sits at 50%-70% while iGPU usage sits at 0-1% while transcoding a single 4K H264 video to a lower resolution. I followed all of these instructions up to "Verify on Windows" https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/admini...tion/intel
   
Here is my player info, I average 50%-70% CPU usage while using chrome/firefox.
   

[gnattu]

Because it is not transcoding at all.

[SVRUM]

Because it is not transcoding at all.

So Jellyfin just casually uses 70% CPU usage when direct streaming?

[gnattu]

Because it is not transcoding at all.

So Jellyfin just casually uses 70% CPU usage when direct streaming?

I can't see it is using 70% from your screenshot though. On most systems it won't use too much CPU for audio processing and video coping, but when it does it may have some reason behind that. But your video is really not transcoding that's why you won't see any iGPU usage.

[SVRUM]

Because it is not transcoding at all.

So Jellyfin just casually uses 70% CPU usage when direct streaming?

I can't see it is using 70% from your screenshot though. On most systems it won't use too much CPU for audio processing and video coping, but when it does it may have some reason behind that. But your video is really not transcoding that's why you won't see any iGPU usage.

My screenshot was taken while I was typing out this post, I wanted to show what my GPU task manager looked like, not the CPU in the corner.

Alright I guess my iGPU won’t be used when Direct Streaming, but why would my CPU usage be so high when all Direct Streaming does is transcode audio? Direct Streaming and Direct Play are two different things apparently.

[SVRUM]

Looking a bit further it looks like it's just using direct stream on all of my devices, and only transcoding audio, so I guess you are right @gnattu, I shouldn't be using any iGPU, I guess that is fine then. Why would my CPU usage be so high for simply transcoding audio? I have multiple audio streams available to me when I ripped my UHD Blu-Ray (7.1, 5.1, Stereo) , is Jellyfin transcoding every single one at the same time? CPU usage remains high even when using Stereo which my device shouldn't need to do anything with?

[SVRUM]

It does seem to be an issue with audio transcoding, other users have similar issues: https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-high-cpu-us...ranscoding

[SVRUM]

Testing Swiftfin iOS app shows it’s an audio specific issue. Jellyfin on iOS transcodes .ac3 to .aac causing 50%-70% CPU usage. Swiftfin iOS app allows iPhone to play .ac3 (which it’s capable of doing natively) and results in 1-2% CPU usage and 0% iGPU usage on a 4K 10 bit stream. I haven’t tested on desktop app but I assume it would be the same, since browsers are forced to transcode to .aac.

50%-70% CPU usage sounds really high to transcode a single audio stream but I’m new to all of this so I have no idea if I am incorrect or not. @gnattu

[gnattu]

> Jellyfin on iOS transcodes .ac3 to .aac causing 50%-70% CPU usage.

Jellyfin on iOS does support ac3 natively though, it is just iOS only supports up to 6 channel audio so the 8 channel audio is getting downmixed. Can you verify that? And please don't check the use native player option in app settings, that player is worse than the web player.

> 50%-70% CPU usage sounds really high to transcode a single audio stream but I’m new to all of this so I have no idea if I am incorrect or not.

If you have a weak CPU (which probably is if you are running 8100T at its TDP which is only as fast as an N100), multi-channel audio processing could be quite intensive depending on the contents especially when it is both transcoding and down-mixing. But 70% overall is still a bit too high. Does the CPU run at max clock it could when having this usage and does most of the usages comes from ffmpeg?

[TheDreadPirate]

In my experience, with my 12100 anyway, audio transcoding does not cause the CPU to clock up.  It stays at ~800Mhz.  In this screenshot, it is transcoding 8 channel TrueHD to 2 channel OPUS.