EDIT: Looks like QSV is the new transcoding api for Intel CPUs. My info was out of date. VAAPI is in Intel chips: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/devel

EDIT: Looks like QSV is the new transcoding api for Intel CPUs. My info was out of date. VAAPI is in Intel chips: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/linuxmedia-vaapi.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t... It represents parts of the CPU optimized to transcode video. The newer CPUs support HEVC/h265 which would otherwise introduce a huge load on a machine when done in a normal CPU. Having the "hardware transcoder" as part of the chip means you can transcode huge videos without consuming huge amounts of system resources. Jellyfin includes this, or more accurately exposes the ffmpeg implementation of this, whereas Plex charges for it.