Plex Megathread: Your .ASS Is Getting Transcoded

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Plex Megathread: Your .ASS Is Getting Transcoded

HKR: Jan 13, 2006; there is no universe where duke nukem would not be a trans ally

acksplode posted:

Why wouldn't Plex dedicate much front page space to hosting your own media, a niche market that isn't growing and that they already dominate? Let's read deeply into that. It's only listed third?? They're probably gonna tear that feature out next month. Hold your loved ones while you can.

It's a far cry from the earlier days

I don't think they're going to shutter the ability to host your own media, but I can see a crackdown on paid plex servers and a tightening on the ability to share your library with other plex users. As a venture capital funded company likely looking to be acquired (the logical conclusion to all VC funded tech companies), trying to shed the image that plex = piracy is probably a huge focus for the company as a whole.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 00:14

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# ? May 22, 2024 17:49

acksplode: May 17, 2004

HKR posted:

As a venture capital funded company likely looking to be acquired (the logical conclusion to all VC funded tech companies), trying to shed the image that plex = piracy is probably a huge focus for the company as a whole.

As someone whose career has mostly been working at venture backed companies, I agree that they're looking to get bought, and I'm certain their concerns are entirely around growth, which is how an unprofitable business sells at a high price. Potential acquirers won't be interested enough to care about piracy if Plex can't demonstrate growth. Acquirers won't be concerned about piracy wrt vague things like image, they'll be concerned specifically about legal and financial liability, and Plex has (as demonstrated by this recent event) been careful and proactive about limiting their exposure. Plex is pushing streaming prominently in their marketing because it's the only direction their business can grow.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 00:21

Takes No Damage: Nov 20, 2004; The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.; Grimey Drawer

I just hope we aren't in the late stages of some lovely :capitalism:

cycle where they collect up millions of users by facilitating grey-area filesharing, then get acquired / "go legit" causing their entire userbase to jump ship.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 00:44

IOwnCalculus: Apr 2, 2003

Counterpoint: if Plex forces the issue, that will be a massive shift in userbase for the competing open source solutions - surely one that would drive enough interest and community support to rapidly improve that level of polish they lack.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 01:09

acksplode: May 17, 2004

I'm confident Plex under its current management won't drop media server -- it can't cost much to maintain vs streaming bandwidth, and server owners are incidentally evangelists that push the app on their friends which makes it easier for Plex to sell them streaming. But all bets are off if they get bought. They aren't gonna get bought for media server, so I could see an acquirer shedding it.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 01:13

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

It�s a shame you�re kinda locked in to Plex having their servers up to use it fully, otherwise I�d be happy enough to stay on the current version for the foreseeable future.

The competitors in the open market feel years off being comparable, and that�s being kind. I can�t see any of them actually ever hitting the level of polish that sadly closed sourced products tend to have.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 01:17

Motronic: Nov 6, 2009

EL BROMANCE posted:

It�s a shame you�re kinda locked in to Plex having their servers up to use it fully, otherwise I�d be happy enough to stay on the current version for the foreseeable future.

The competitors in the open market feel years off being comparable, and that�s being kind. I can�t see any of them actually ever hitting the level of polish that sadly closed sourced products tend to have.

Have you used Jellyfin lately? And I mean like for more than just browsing through it for a bit? Because I'm find it's getting reasonably comparable at least on the web client and windows clients. The Roku client is lacking on live/IPTV big time.

I mean, I get we all use this stuff a bit differently and therefore have features that I don't care about that are deal breakers for you, but I really don't feel like it's years off.

It's absolutely shittier to administer and to get people attached to (something that will have to be sorted to replace the "set up your non-technical family members" thing). Defaults aren't all that sane, plugins are needed for what should be basic functionality, sometimes after large library additions it's just.......doing "stuff" for a long time and you need it out, sometimes it just absolutely screws up with metadata or otherwise and you ahve to forse refreshed to fix things. But those all feel minor/solvable.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 01:32

Takes No Damage: Nov 20, 2004; The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.; Grimey Drawer

EL BROMANCE posted:

It�s a shame you�re kinda locked in to Plex having their servers up to use it fully, otherwise I�d be happy enough to stay on the current version for the foreseeable future.

Is there really a technical reason/advantage for this, for home libraries at least? For sharing locally it shouldn't matter and even I was smart enough to figure out how to get a Lets Encrypt cert for a DuckDNS URL into an nginx server that forwarded stuff along to my Plex VM.

Obviously not AS easy as just adding friends in Plex's global servers, but eventually something like Jellyfin could come with an web server bundled in that would automate most of the steps to get your library securely shareable to individuals.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 01:47

Khablam: Mar 29, 2012

This isn't even news and absolutely no one should care.
When plex was forced off Amazon AWS, Google drive and dropbox it didn't mean the end of anything for plex, it was just the very very very obvious reality if you gave it more than 2 seconds thought.
This is just the same thing.

To be honest as a plex user this is something you want to happen. No amount of home-users sharing 5 films is going to make any legislators care about it. Is it functionally different than loaning someone 5 DVDs or blu-rays? Not really. Should anyone care? Probably not. Is it harming anyone? Also probably not. [new tech] allows copies to be made and shared is an argument long passed.
However there's absolutely people out there scaling plex et al using cloud compute in ways that absolutely will garner the wrong sort of attention.
Then when some dumb legislator is shown 2500 films on a server for $3 a month they'll pass a law that says you can only have 5 films on a system that has remote access and regardless of how this could be enforced with FOSS the good/paid solutions disappear and you're left saying "no mom its SUDO /sys/kernel/config/install.sh ... mom, mom stop crying there's only three more steps"

# ? Sep 16, 2023 02:20

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Motronic posted:

Have you used Jellyfin lately? And I mean like for more than just browsing through it for a bit? Because I'm find it's getting reasonably comparable at least on the web client and windows clients. The Roku client is lacking on live/IPTV big time.

I watched a bunch of comparison videos recently to see what the state of play was, then rolled out an install of the server myself as I wanted to see if the IPTV implementation was more usable than Plex�s, which is massively swayed in favor of content providers. It managed to be worse!

quote:

I mean, I get we all use this stuff a bit differently and therefore have features that I don't care about that are deal breakers for you, but I really don't feel like it's years off.

It's absolutely shittier to administer and to get people attached to (something that will have to be sorted to replace the "set up your non-technical family members" thing). Defaults aren't all that sane, plugins are needed for what should be basic functionality, sometimes after large library additions it's just.......doing "stuff" for a long time and you need it out, sometimes it just absolutely screws up with metadata or otherwise and you ahve to forse refreshed to fix things. But those all feel minor/solvable.

Yeah I think your second paragraph answers the first really. OSS has a place and is often crucial, but by nature of its design it always feels designed by committee, part time coders, nobody with any real UX experience. If by magic it one day solves all its problems, has a wide range of high quality client support and becomes just as easy for regular rear end people as CJs to run then I�ll happily move over.

Takes No Damage posted:

Is there really a technical reason/advantage for this, for home libraries at least?

I mean if they were to theoretically sell it off and whoever purchases decides home media had to go. I don�t think it�s a likely to happen thing, but I do feel useful features might get stripped like they bailed on podcasts, pictures etc. We�re all essentially stuck with whatever they want to do.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 02:24

cruft: Oct 25, 2007

Last time I surveyed the field, Emby looked like the best alternative.

Anybody tried Emby lately?

# ? Sep 16, 2023 02:26

Motronic: Nov 6, 2009

Takes No Damage posted:

Is there really a technical reason/advantage for this, for home libraries at least? For sharing locally it shouldn't matter and even I was smart enough to figure out how to get a Lets Encrypt cert for a DuckDNS URL into an nginx server that forwarded stuff along to my Plex VM.

Obviously not AS easy as just adding friends in Plex's global servers, but eventually something like Jellyfin could come with an web server bundled in that would automate most of the steps to get your library securely shareable to individuals.

The reason is control and sharing. There is even a backup proxy in there. It's all quite well thought out.

Jellyfin already is/has a web server. So it's already very easy to port forward/share and is totally compatible with all the rest of the things that do this from DDNS clients to reverse proxies. I'm sure someone could cook up a plugin for the few people who might need that/want jellyfin to be the thing that controls all that on their network, but since normies don't run jellyfin that's just not really required at the moment.

I see all of that kind of polish as being the easiest to accomplish because there are a ton of people who know how to do that stuff since it's applicable to all kind of things. The hardcore media server stuff is a much more specialized developer skillset.

EL BROMANCE posted:

Yeah I think your second paragraph answers the first really. OSS has a place and is often crucial, but by nature of its design it always feels designed by committee, part time coders, nobody with any real UX experience. If by magic it one day solves all its problems, has a wide range of high quality client support and becomes just as easy for regular rear end people as CJs to run then I�ll happily move over.

Yeah, that's a good point. I was mostly separating the "how one uses it" from "how one administers it". The users UI is definitely lacking, but usable. That admin stuff is still pretty bad, but I care less about that since I don't interact with it as much.

Motronic fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Sep 16, 2023

# ? Sep 16, 2023 02:28

Organic Lube User: Apr 15, 2005

cruft posted:

Last time I surveyed the field, Emby looked like the best alternative.

Anybody tried Emby lately?

Emby is dog poo poo. Every device I run it on just constantly locks up and freezes.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 02:55

Motronic: Nov 6, 2009

Organic Lube User posted:

Emby is dog poo poo. Every device I run it on just constantly locks up and freezes.

That was my experience for the various rokus I have as of 2 years ago when I gave up on it as a "maybe this is the plex alternative?" and tried jellyfin. It was absolutely more polished then from a UI perspective then jellyfin is now. I would be happy to try it again if core and client stability as significantly increased.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 03:04

Takes No Damage: Nov 20, 2004; The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.; Grimey Drawer

EL BROMANCE posted:

I mean if they were to theoretically sell it off and whoever purchases decides home media had to go. I don�t think it�s a likely to happen thing, but I do feel useful features might get stripped like they bailed on podcasts, pictures etc. We�re all essentially stuck with whatever they want to do.

Fair, at one point I was going to try and use Plex to host image files from manga and comics before discovering Ubooquity, and the few times I tried to navigate through to a certain point in a podcast episode were a nightmare.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 04:44

FCKGW: May 21, 2006

Takes No Damage posted:

I just hope we aren't in the late stages of some lovely cycle where they collect up millions of users by facilitating grey-area filesharing, then get acquired / "go legit" causing their entire userbase to jump ship.

We�re in it now. Plex�s FAST (free, ad supported television) advertising stream is growing super fast and I wouldnt be surprised if their ad revenue already outpaces subscription fees.

This was just posted today, 39% of all content watched on Plex is their ad-supported content, up from 25% last year. It�ll be the majority of media played by next year. They�re just another Tubi or Pluto that also supports local content at this point.

https://thestreamable.com/news/plex-sees-54-percent-increase-in-fast-viewers-over-2022-64-percent-rise-in-global-channel-count

# ? Sep 16, 2023 06:46

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Takes No Damage posted:

Fair, at one point I was going to try and use Plex to host image files from manga and comics before discovering Ubooquity, and the few times I tried to navigate through to a certain point in a podcast episode were a nightmare.

In case you�re still looking for a solution, for the podcasts I keep local copies of because you can�t trust poo poo to just stay in one place, I�ve redone the mp3 tags from scratch and made a library on Plex, then playback via Prologue on my iphone. Free app with some paid features, it works really well.

I�ve read that audiobookshelf is really good for audio books and podcasts, but there�s no native server for my OS and I don�t use docker so haven�t played with that one.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 06:57

Matt Zerella: Oct 7, 2002; Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)

Say what you want about plex but the way it handles encryption with let's encrypt is very clever and works well. Jellyfin pushes this onto the end user and that means most people won't use it because no one understands certificates. I'm also not wild about reverse proxying video, I'd much rather see the encryption happen directly on the container.

I'm also not wild about exposing a non OAUTH/SSO protected endpoint from my home IP and because auth and video go out from the same endpoint, I can't use a cloud flare tunnel. Plea's system here is another big plus (I wish I could force SSO though).

What I'd love to see is an auth/login/setup server separate from the media server part so I can split the two up.

# ? Sep 16, 2023 14:20

Sir DonkeyPunch: Mar 23, 2007; I didn't hear no bell

Sir DonkeyPunch posted:

This HD HomeRun option appeals to me, because my Plex Server is not exactly in the most antenna friendly location

For those keeping up at home, HD Homerun is connected and working really well, thanks for the advice; DirecTV Stream is now also feuding with the CBS affiliate in my area, so that�s two dead channels replaced

# ? Sep 17, 2023 00:02

Zero VGS: Aug 16, 2002; ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE; Lipstick Apathy

On Sonarr I'm trying to use the Release Profiles code:

code:

/\b([xh].?265|hevc)\b/i

To make it prefer HEVC, but every drat time someone requests a TV show it's like "lol I'll just grab these h.264 at 8GB an episode".

Is there a way to tell it "no, look harder and spend more time searching for for HEVC, and you can grab h.264 as a last resort but even then I want you to keep trying to replace things I already have with HEVC versions"

# ? Sep 29, 2023 20:23

Burden: Jul 25, 2006

Zero VGS posted:

On Sonarr I'm trying to use the Release Profiles code:
code:
/\b([xh].?265|hevc)\b/i
To make it prefer HEVC, but every drat time someone requests a TV show it's like "lol I'll just grab these h.264 at 8GB an episode".

Is there a way to tell it "no, look harder and spend more time searching for for HEVC, and you can grab h.264 as a last resort but even then I want you to keep trying to replace things I already have with HEVC versions"

I have mine set up as a profile and I give all the x265 naming 100 on the preferred search terms and 0 on the x264 search terms so it prefers them. I then create a tag called x265 that I use on what shows I was to be x265. Giving x265 search terms gives it a higher rating to get those. You can see how I have mine set below.

# ? Sep 29, 2023 22:15

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

I could've sworn you couldn't make a collection out of individual TV episodes, but now I seem to be able to. Is this new or was I just wrong all along?

# ? Oct 5, 2023 21:27

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

EL BROMANCE posted:

I could've sworn you couldn't make a collection out of individual TV episodes, but now I seem to be able to. Is this new or was I just wrong all along?

Oh man I know way too much of this.

So if you are using the plexapi at a minimum the EpisodeEdit does have the Collection Mixin and you can add the episode to the collection. However they're not as useful because you can't create a smart playlist with an episode collection, only with a shower collection.

But if you want I just did this:

code:

>>> shows = plex.library.section(TARGET_LIBRARY).all()
>>> shows[0].episodes()[0].addCollection('quill18creates')
>>> shows[0].episodes()[0].collections
[<Collection:Quill18creates>]

Then went to the collection tab for that library, saw there's a quill18creates collection, clicked it and it contains 1 episode, the one that I added above and from that I can watch it. But as above when you go to create a smart playlist of a library, episode collection isn't an option, and the collection doesn't show up since no shows are in it.

But I've spent the last two weeks going mindbogglingly deep into plex and the plexapi, writing my own scanner, and dozen of scripts to manipulate it the way I want. AMA!

# ? Oct 7, 2023 08:03

cruft: Oct 25, 2007

Hughlander posted:

AMA!

Do you regret your hobby decisions?

# ? Oct 7, 2023 08:06

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

cruft posted:

Do you regret your hobby decisions?

Not at all! This is been all yak shaving. I took a screenshot for discord earlier and called it a thing of beauty.

# ? Oct 7, 2023 08:10

teagone: Jun 10, 2003; That was pretty intense, huh?

If I needed to transcode 4K video to burn in PGS or rear end format subtitles, a Core i3-12100 should be enough to do that even without hardware transcoding, right? Putting together a build for a new Plex server that doesn't have Plex Pass.

# ? Oct 8, 2023 04:24

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

teagone posted:

If I needed to transcode 4K video to burn in PGS or rear end format subtitles, a Core i3-12100 should be enough to do that even without hardware transcoding, right? Putting together a build for a new Plex server that doesn't have Plex Pass.

It's not prettied up or graphed yet, but:
https://gist.github.com/ironicbadger/5da9b321acbe6b6b53070437023b844d

Has a bunch of time/fps/wattage for using quicksync to transcode

code:

CPU       TEST            FILE                        BITRATE     TIME      AVG_FPS  AVG_SPEED  AVG_WATTS
i3-12100  h264_1080p_cpu  ribblehead_1080p_h264       18952 kb/s  57.530s   60.43    2.15x      N/A
i3-12100  h264_1080p      ribblehead_1080p_h264       18952 kb/s  14.777s   230.78   7.95x      3.64
i3-12100  h264_4k         ribblehead_4k_h264          46881 kb/s  54.994s   62.23    2.28x      3.64
i3-12100  hevc_8bit       ribblehead_1080p_hevc_8bit  14947 kb/s  50.198s   68.18    2.38x      3.42
i3-12100  hevc_4k_10bit   ribblehead_4k_hevc_10bit    44617 kb/s  167.581s  21.52    .72x       3.65

so h264_4k is at ~62FPS transcode, dropping down to 21FPS for h265.

(Methodology at https://blog.ktz.me/i-need-your-help-with-intel-quick-sync-benchmarking/)

# ? Oct 8, 2023 04:55

PRADA SLUT: Mar 14, 2006; Inexperienced,
heartless,
but even so

weekly reminder to name your media folder with imdb numbers so you can rematch on another platform without issue

# ? Oct 8, 2023 21:36

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Hughlander posted:

Oh man I know way too much of this.

So if you are using the plexapi at a minimum the EpisodeEdit does have the Collection Mixin and you can add the episode to the collection. However they're not as useful because you can't create a smart playlist with an episode collection, only with a shower collection.

Oh interesting, I�ve never had to deal with the API so have zero knowledge on that but now I�ll know to check back here if I hit issues in the future!

# ? Oct 8, 2023 21:44

Motronic: Nov 6, 2009

PRADA SLUT posted:

weekly reminder to name your media folder with imdb numbers so you can rematch on another platform without issue

If you're using the *arrs you really don't need to worry about this as you can rename on the fly if and when necessary. And what platform are you using that is so dumb about matching that you need to do that? Jellyfin and Emby have had no problem with my Plex media structure.

# ? Oct 8, 2023 22:24

calandryll: Apr 25, 2003; Ask me where I do my best drinking!; Pillbug

I've been using a R710 for my NAS and other things for my home network. I had originally purchased it to do some bioinformatics work, but I haven't used it for that for several years. Since it's just wasting energy, I figure it's time to retire it and use an older system for basic file serving. I have a i5-4590 with 32 GB of RAM, will host my 'arrs and Plex, as well as general NAS duties. Is the i5-4590 going to struggle with Plex? A friend did give me a P400 that I can toss in there to help with transcoding, etc.

# ? Oct 9, 2023 12:14

CatHorse: Jan 5, 2008

calandryll posted:

I've been using a R710 for my NAS and other things for my home network. I had originally purchased it to do some bioinformatics work, but I haven't used it for that for several years. Since it's just wasting energy, I figure it's time to retire it and use an older system for basic file serving. I have a i5-4590 with 32 GB of RAM, will host my 'arrs and Plex, as well as general NAS duties. Is the i5-4590 going to struggle with Plex? A friend did give me a P400 that I can toss in there to help with transcoding, etc.

What ancient stuff you are using to watch Plex that it needs transcoding.

# ? Oct 9, 2023 13:29

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

MikusR posted:

What ancient stuff you are using to watch Plex that it needs transcoding.

Some subtitle stuff seems to always push back transcoding to the media server.

A newer than 2020 Amazon Fire stick is not reliably good enough to transcode in this situation which I had to deal with as well.

# ? Oct 9, 2023 13:49

Wibla: Feb 16, 2011

calandryll posted:

I've been using a R710 for my NAS and other things for my home network. I had originally purchased it to do some bioinformatics work, but I haven't used it for that for several years. Since it's just wasting energy, I figure it's time to retire it and use an older system for basic file serving. I have a i5-4590 with 32 GB of RAM, will host my 'arrs and Plex, as well as general NAS duties. Is the i5-4590 going to struggle with Plex? A friend did give me a P400 that I can toss in there to help with transcoding, etc.

Fourth gen i5 is not great, quality wise. Use the P400 for transcoding.

# ? Oct 9, 2023 14:50

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Yeah it�s usually more down to client than anything, plus friends streaming on slower lines.

Looks like that chip is Haswell and has quick sync so while not exactly new, it might be fine.

# ? Oct 9, 2023 14:55

Matt Zerella: Oct 7, 2002; Norris'es are back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (fox Howl)

As said, the P400 will cover any transcoding needs and you'll be fine. It's also not super power hungry either.

# ? Oct 9, 2023 15:11

Medullah: Aug 14, 2003; FEAR MY SHARK ROCKET IT REALLY SUCKS AND BLOWS

Are there any integrations with apps like Letterboxed or TV time? I like to track what I watch and I keep forgetting to update them when I'm done

# ? Oct 9, 2023 15:14

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Trakt premium has webhooks for that but I don�t know how good it is. I miss the old plugin that did it in the background.

# ? Oct 9, 2023 15:16

CatHorse: Jan 5, 2008

EL BROMANCE posted:

Trakt premium has webhooks for that but I don�t know how good it is. I miss the old plugin that did it in the background.

There is https://github.com/Taxel/PlexTraktSync

# ? Oct 9, 2023 18:07

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# ? May 22, 2024 17:49

EL BROMANCE: Jun 10, 2006; COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬

Neat, when I next have some time for messing around with new scripts I�ll give that a whirl. Thanks

# ? Oct 9, 2023 18:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Plex Megathread: Your .ASS Is Getting Transcoded

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