Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

FlyingTexan

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 13, 2015
963
829
For a plex server I’m wondering if the M1 mini has hardware acceleration for transcoding. My server can only do software (Ryzen) so may need to add something to better serve.
 
For a plex server I’m wondering if the M1 mini has hardware acceleration for transcoding. My server can only do software (Ryzen) so may need to add something to better serve.
I have never done the PLEX server thing so I'm clueless but I remember watching this video on YouTube so maybe it will help?

 
For a plex server I’m wondering if the M1 mini has hardware acceleration for transcoding. My server can only do software (Ryzen) so may need to add something to better serve.
I don't know about Plex but if you use the M1 native version of Handbrake, you can use the hardware supported h.264 and h.265 codecs for transcoding. In Handbrake they are H.264 (VideoToolbox) and H.265 (VideoToolbox). If you add them to the config in FFMPEG they work there too.
 
They have the hardware, the question is whether Plex supports it.
 
For a plex server I’m wondering if the M1 mini has hardware acceleration for transcoding. My server can only do software (Ryzen) so may need to add something to better serve.
I was curious about this myself. Did you ever get an answer or find out first hand?

I was also wondering if hardware transcoding was even necessary due the m1 processing power that's utilized with software transcoding.

I have the 2018 i7 mini and it's fairly beefy but the m1 apparently blows the doors off it in both single and multi-core. sounds like it's all upside from what I understand.
 
I was curious about this myself. Did you ever get an answer or find out first hand?

I was also wondering if hardware transcoding was even necessary due the m1 processing power that's utilized with software transcoding.

I have the 2018 i7 mini and it's fairly beefy but the m1 apparently blows the doors off it in both single and multi-core. sounds like it's all upside from what I understand.
Comparing transcoding in Handbrake between the videotoolbox hardware accelerated h.264 and h.265 vs the pure software versions, the hardware accelerated speed is 10x with a considerable loss of either quality or compression size.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.