QNAP 451+: Hardware Accelerated Transcoding

I’m having problems with Plex using too much CPU to transcode files. Actually, I’m not sure why it’s transcoding to an AppleTV 4, it should be able to Direct Stream .mkv files. I’m trying to go ahead and use the QNAP hardware accelerated transcoding engine.

First problem, all transcode requests are returning, “Failed: File read/ write error“. No logs for the failure, so off to ssh I go. The transcode command lives in: /mnt/ext/opt/medialibrary/bin. There are three commands we care about:

  • mfytranscodesvr
  • mytranscodecmd
  • myvatranscode

Running the first seems to indicate it already running, and the second seems to kick-off another failing transcode. The third command is interesting because it appears to the be accelerated version. It’s actually a symbolic link to: /mnt/ext/opt/QDMS/bin/myvatranscode.

A quick check shows that the entire /mnt/ext/opt/QDMS directory is missing. This is apparently because I turned off DLNA streaming. By re-activating the “Media Streaming Add-on”, the accelerated streaming appears to be working now.

We’ll have to see if Plex is smart enough to pick-up the transcoded version when available.