Plex Megathread: Your .ASS Is Getting Transcoded

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

Chillmatic: Jul 25, 2003; always seeking to survive and flourish

Speaking of ytdlp--is there a way to both use sponsorblock as well as getting subtitles for youtube videos? When I've tried this in the past the portions of the video that sponsorblock removes causes issues with subtitles being off.

# ? Mar 6, 2024 15:31

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# ? May 17, 2024 07:57

Enos Cabell: Nov 3, 2004

Anyone have any ideas what could be causing my home screen to take 5-10 seconds to load? It happens both on and off the local network. I can scroll down to movie or tv libraries and those come up instantly.

# ? Mar 6, 2024 15:52

Cheston: Jul 17, 2012; (he's got a good thing going)

I've been streaming from my gaming PC to our TV for a week or two now. I occasionally have sync or skipping issues that go away when I switch to a resolution/bitrate below the maximum. Is this a common problem? Would it go away if I got a dedicated media server?

# ? Mar 6, 2024 16:11

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

EVIL Gibson posted:

You can mark the sections as chapters instead and hit double right to skip.

You use sponsorblock-mark instead of sponsorblock-remove

You will not get an offer but you'll be able to skip the rest of the 1:30 minute in-video sponsor

So if you do SponsorBlock-mark intro it will keep the intro but flag it for skipping in Plex, like a TV show intro?

e: actually, I stood up a TubeSync container and it seems to work, except the SponsorBlock portion, though I have everything checked in the settings and the download works correctly when running yt-dlp --sponsorblock on the CLI. Is there something I need to configure in TubeSync?

PRADA SLUT fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Mar 6, 2024

# ? Mar 6, 2024 17:50

EVIL Gibson: Mar 23, 2001; Internet of Things is just someone else's computer that people can't help attaching cameras and door locks to!; Switchblade Switcharoo

PRADA SLUT posted:

So if you do SponsorBlock-mark intro it will keep the intro but flag it for skipping in Plex, like a TV show intro?

e: actually, I stood up a TubeSync container and it seems to work, except the SponsorBlock portion, though I have everything checked in the settings and the download works correctly when running yt-dlp --sponsorblock on the CLI. Is there something I need to configure in TubeSync?

I never said it would auto skip. I said marking it would show up as a chapter and you can skip it just like when skip chapters on a Blu-ray/DVD/mkv with chapters when you press the following button:

At least it should. Not really experienced with not removing parts and leaving them in but marked.

I remove everything except for the creators that make really good sponsorship ads like Internet Historian or Pint

# ? Mar 6, 2024 19:23

Warbird: May 23, 2012; America's Favorite Dumbass

Ah perfect, thanks!

# ? Mar 6, 2024 19:48

astral: Apr 26, 2004

Cheston posted:

I've been streaming from my gaming PC to our TV for a week or two now. I occasionally have sync or skipping issues that go away when I switch to a resolution/bitrate below the maximum. Is this a common problem? Would it go away if I got a dedicated media server?

Are you using a native TV plex app or plex on a streaming device?

# ? Mar 6, 2024 19:55

Cheston: Jul 17, 2012; (he's got a good thing going)

astral posted:

Are you using a native TV plex app or plex on a streaming device?

The PS5 app.

# ? Mar 6, 2024 20:42

deong: Jun 13, 2001; I'll see you in heck!

With regards to yt-dl, is there a prefered webgui front end?
I'm using : https://github.com/marcopeocchi/yt-dlp-web-ui : with tailscale and it works well enough. But if there is a better full featured webgui that'd be rad. Or is it better to just use cli+flags? Not really sure if/what i'm missing tbh. But since it got mentioned!

# ? Mar 6, 2024 20:50

kri kri: Jul 18, 2007

deong posted:

With regards to yt-dl, is there a prefered webgui front end?
I'm using : https://github.com/marcopeocchi/yt-dlp-web-ui : with tailscale and it works well enough. But if there is a better full featured webgui that'd be rad. Or is it better to just use cli+flags? Not really sure if/what i'm missing tbh. But since it got mentioned!

I use Tubearchivist for channels and playlists, and metube for one offs. Both containers on unraid.

# ? Mar 6, 2024 22:08

Weaponized Autism: Mar 26, 2006; All aboard the Gravy train!; Hair Elf

Chillmatic posted:

Speaking of ytdlp--is there a way to both use sponsorblock as well as getting subtitles for youtube videos? When I've tried this in the past the portions of the video that sponsorblock removes causes issues with subtitles being off.

I had this working reasonably well last time I was using yt-dlp, but yeah there are sync issues with ffmpeg when it comes to subtitles and sponsorblock. Chopping up the audio and re-syncing it, I've seen stuttering and audio sync issues. I haven't tried this in a few months though, maybe it's gotten better.

code:

yt-dlp https://www.youtube.com/@TheLinuxEXP/videos --embed-metadata --sponsorblock-remove sponsor,intro,outro,music_offtopic --embed-chapters --embed-thumbnail --write-subs --convert-thumbnails png --progress --concurrent-fragments 5 --ffmpeg-location /home/linuxuser/youtube/ffmpeg/bin/ffmpeg --download-archive /home/linuxuser/youtube/archive.txt --playlist-end 3 --dateafter today-1day -P /home/linuxuser/youtube/ | tee -a /home/linuxuser/youtube/ytdlp_output.log

This script simulates a subscription. It checks for the latest 3 videos in a channel within the last 24 hours, pulls down metadata, thumbnails, subtitles, and applies the sponsorblock criteria you give it. It also keeps a history (very important) of downloaded videos so it doesn't re-download the video again. Make sure you get the yt-dlp recommended ffmpeg fork. This example is for just one channel, you can just replace the beginning part with the channel name. Put this in a bash script and set up a cronjob. I had mine run every 15 minutes to ensure it pulls new videos relatively quickly. I also write out all output to a log, a nice to have for checking errors. It can fill up quickly though so just be aware of that. Whichever folder you're saving the videos to, set that up in Plex and it makes a somewhat decent alternative to using YouTube directly.

# ? Mar 6, 2024 22:40

astral: Apr 26, 2004

Cheston posted:

The PS5 app.

Wired/wifi?
Bitrate of the file?

# ? Mar 7, 2024 01:53

cruft: Oct 25, 2007

Plex downloads are turning out to be pretty useful on a Chromebook.

If Plex refuses to play the file it downloaded, I can just open up a Linux shell and run ffmpeg to transcode it into something it will play.

What could be easier

# ? Mar 7, 2024 03:42

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

kri kri posted:

I use Tubearchivist for channels and playlists, and metube for one offs. Both containers on unraid.

Is this the best Youtube PVR around now? I installed TubeSync but it has a bunch of issues.

My only reqs are like:

1) Plex can read the folder without all sorts of dumb poo poo and workarounds
2) Support for Sponsorblock and basic remuxing (like the yt-dlp cli)

# ? Mar 7, 2024 04:58

Cheston: Jul 17, 2012; (he's got a good thing going)

astral posted:

Wired/wifi?
Bitrate of the file?

It should all be wired, 6 Mbps.

**the media's on a 5200rpm disk drive, that might do something?

Cheston fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Mar 8, 2024

# ? Mar 7, 2024 20:54

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

EVIL Gibson posted:

I know when a variable bit rate is used for audio, it will cause sync issues over time.

To confirm this or possibly find other issues use the following two commands

For extracting audio:
ffmpeg -i PRECIOUS VIDEO\ MOMENTS.mkv -vn -c:a copy PRECIOUS_VIDEO_MOMENTS_audio.ac3

For extracting video:
ffmpeg -i PRECIOUS VIDEO\ MOMENTS.mkv -an -c:v copy PRECIOUS_VIDEO_MOMENTS_video.mkv

Look at the length of the video and audio in whatever you want. If they are the same then what I do is just dump both files into a video editor like Premiere and see what it looks like.

If the audio turns out to be shorter in Premiere, I just rate extend the audio track to meet the end of the video and make sure to choose CBR when encoding out.

If you need PEAK "professionally-mastered content" (read the editor used filters and up selling fake HDR.) then change the above ffmpeg export commands above to use mpeg2 as the video format and flac for the audio for that Criterion collection quality

In handbrake drop the glistening glossy files in and make sure to set the audio bitrate ABOVE what it normally was and super double confirm that it isn't using CBR and not VBR. CBR equals "Constant Video Bitrate"

Then bless the hell out of that holy as all hell file that has now been kissed by Baby Jesus in Pampers and see if the sync is gone.

So FYI I ended up doing the audio rate extension and CBR encode in Audacity+ffmpeg and had to mux back into an MP4 before Handbrake would load it. The muxed file reports a royally hosed up audio length so taking a couple steps back to see where that happened.

Yeah none of that worked / got extremely messy so now I'm attempting a video stream copy and CBR AAC reencode through ffmpeg as it doesn't seem that the length was off.

e2: nope, might have to lock the video framerate in Handbrake too

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Mar 10, 2024

# ? Mar 10, 2024 19:10

EVIL Gibson: Mar 23, 2001; Internet of Things is just someone else's computer that people can't help attaching cameras and door locks to!; Switchblade Switcharoo

Shumagorath posted:

So FYI I ended up doing the audio rate extension and CBR encode in Audacity+ffmpeg and had to mux back into an MP4 before Handbrake would load it. The muxed file reports a royally hosed up audio length so taking a couple steps back to see where that happened.

Yeah none of that worked / got extremely messy so now I'm attempting a video stream copy and CBR AAC reencode through ffmpeg as it doesn't seem that the length was off.

The experience is I have seen applications have would legit straight up lie about lengths. Now this experience was from like 10 years back, so it might be better but I always encode CBR because I have seen youtube videos longer than 2 hours do the same thing (mainly vids from Channel Fireball specifically by LSV)

# ? Mar 10, 2024 20:00

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

EVIL Gibson posted:

The experience is I have seen applications have would legit straight up lie about lengths. Now this experience was from like 10 years back, so it might be better but I always encode CBR because I have seen youtube videos longer than 2 hours do the same thing (mainly vids from Channel Fireball specifically by LSV)

Without getting too far into it, I suspect the originator of this file slapped VBR-everything on a >3hr source and called it a day without bothering to skip to the end of their finished product. CBR audio had almost the exact same delay so we'll see how a total re-do as NVENC H.265 fares with constant framerate and CBR audio (though Handbrake detected 192k CBR AAC as 160k for some reason??)

# ? Mar 10, 2024 20:05

univbee: Jun 3, 2004

Weird question but are the audio and video recorded from the same source?

I do a lot of mixing-and-matching to make best-of files for certain movies and I've definitely seen some weird things throw off synchronization because of that.

It's not that uncommon for two sources where one is "drop frame" (so 23.976fps) and the other is "non-drop frame (so 24 fps) which results in a difference of a few seconds for a full-length movie, but if you "spot-check" using the first few minutes it's not desynced enough to really notice.

I've also seen weirdness with old films, because of how they were traditionally split between film reels. Some films have a moment where it does a full "fade to black" type of thing and then cuts back in on the new frame with a completely new scene, and the exact duration of the "black" can be variable depending on how each source got their material. So it's like the first half of the film is 100% fine, and then you have to actually trim/add silence to resync it after that.

# ? Mar 11, 2024 16:39

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

The file did show edit metadata that I stripped out with ffmpeg so you might be onto something.

# ? Mar 11, 2024 18:00

Arson Daily: Aug 11, 2003

Im new to linux and am trying to set up a plex server using ubuntu and having it read data off of my synology NAS. i can mount the drive and point the tv or movies folder at the mount but nothing shows up. i can see the files sitting there using the command line but plex doesnt show them there. what gives?

# ? Mar 12, 2024 01:22

Warbird: May 23, 2012; America's Favorite Dumbass

Permissions issue I drat near guarantee it.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 01:26

Well Played Mauer: Jun 1, 2003; We'll always have Cabo

Your user account can see it but the user accountthat plex uses probably can't. If you look to see which group the plex user belongs to it probably isn't in the same group as your user. Your user and group id is usually 1000 and 1000 respectively. You can either create a group that your account and the plex account both belong to (I put them both in a group called plexgroup) and give the group ownership over the directory you use to mount the drive to,or you canv do some nfs shenanigans and create a plex user on the host system but honestly for home use samba/cifs is easier and sufficient.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 02:46

Arson Daily: Aug 11, 2003

Well Played Mauer posted:

Your user account can see it but the user accountthat plex uses probably can't. If you look to see which group the plex user belongs to it probably isn't in the same group as your user. Your user and group id is usually 1000 and 1000 respectively. You can either create a group that your account and the plex account both belong to (I put them both in a group called plexgroup) and give the group ownership over the directory you use to mount the drive to,or you canv do some nfs shenanigans and create a plex user on the host system but honestly for home use samba/cifs is easier and sufficient.

Awesome thanks for the insight. I'll see what I can do with regard to the whole permissions aspect. Heres another question that will probably open up a huge can of worms: is there a distro that is better or worse for doing this kind of thing? I'd like to run a few of the .arrs and plex and maybe pihole and tailscale and would want to do it as painlessly as possible.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 06:32

kri kri: Jul 18, 2007

Arson Daily posted:

Awesome thanks for the insight. I'll see what I can do with regard to the whole permissions aspect. Heres another question that will probably open up a huge can of worms: is there a distro that is better or worse for doing this kind of thing? I'd like to run a few of the .arrs and plex and maybe pihole and tailscale and would want to do it as painlessly as possible.

Anything that runs containers

# ? Mar 12, 2024 13:17

Deathlove: Feb 20, 2003; Pillbug

Arson Daily posted:

Awesome thanks for the insight. I'll see what I can do with regard to the whole permissions aspect. Heres another question that will probably open up a huge can of worms: is there a distro that is better or worse for doing this kind of thing? I'd like to run a few of the .arrs and plex and maybe pihole and tailscale and would want to do it as painlessly as possible.

I used Debian 12 and ran https://yams.media/ to get a framework up and going quickly. Just add the PiHole and stuff down the line.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 13:44

Well Played Mauer: Jun 1, 2003; We'll always have Cabo

Yeah distro isn't as important as it used to be since pretty much everything you wanna run has a docker container associated with it. You'll want to get familiar with docker compose (it's just yaml). I'd recommend sticking with something popular so it's easier to google your way out of problems. Ubuntu server and vanilla Debian are both very popular. I have both going on various homelab things.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 15:03

IShallRiseAgain: Sep 12, 2008; Well ain't that precious?

Well, if they are running the *arrs, and have a Synology NAS, I suggest just running them off the NAS, it should be powerful enough for that. They'd probably want to run Plex on something else though.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 15:32

EVIL Gibson: Mar 23, 2001; Internet of Things is just someone else's computer that people can't help attaching cameras and door locks to!; Switchblade Switcharoo

kri kri posted:

Anything that runs containers

I must be the only person that loathes containers. It must be because I was the first to try out the first implementation of docker and found it as or more "configury" to the point that it seemed much worse to use than comparatively making a new user and doing that.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 19:14

acksplode: May 17, 2004

I don't loathe containers but I'm just installing .debs on Ubuntu and haven't had a need to introduce Docker yet

# ? Mar 12, 2024 19:21

Motronic: Nov 6, 2009

EVIL Gibson posted:

I must be the only person that loathes containers. It must be because I was the first to try out the first implementation of docker and found it as or more "configury" to the point that it seemed much worse to use than comparatively making a new user and doing that.

Nah, I'm with you. And to make things worse there are a lot of projects I've tried out that are hiding a mirad of setup/config/dependency sins in their containerization. It's certainly much easier to handle for people not steeped in keeping a unix box going so that's something, but sometimes when something goes wrong it makes thing even worse to troubleshoot.

I've dealt with lage scale container deployments in hybrid cloud environments, so this isn't a complaint about the concept. It's more about the implementation in some of the small project open source side of things.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 19:44

Warbird: May 23, 2012; America's Favorite Dumbass

IShallRiseAgain posted:

Well, if they are running the *arrs, and have a Synology NAS, I suggest just running them off the NAS, it should be powerful enough for that. They'd probably want to run Plex on something else though.

It�s important to mention that they check, and then double check that they haven�t shot themselves in the foot via running the app(s) on a storage volume using the ZFS-alike and aren�t using checksum checking for the specific share as both will tank your performance. Ask me how I know.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 20:19

Chillmatic: Jul 25, 2003; always seeking to survive and flourish

EVIL Gibson posted:

I must be the only person that loathes containers.

Chillmatic posted:

docker is basically a hard enforcement of �it works on my machine so you�re gonna have to replicate the state of my machine to make this single app work."

Chillmatic posted:

docker sucks and if you disagree then put ur dumb opinions into a container full of people who care

# ? Mar 12, 2024 21:20

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

We really doing this again?

# ? Mar 12, 2024 21:38

Chillmatic: Jul 25, 2003; always seeking to survive and flourish

Maybe it's ok if people joke around and let off steam in a thread that's not exactly busy.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 21:44

Cygni: Nov 12, 2005; raring to post

Theres no way on the server side to push a client to a higher quality, right? Short of disabling transcoding?

I can see in Tautulli that i've got multiple friends whose players (mostly TV native apps on wifi) are bonking down to 720kbps, and they arent savvy enough to know to go into the player settings and set it to maximum and disable bandwidth recommendations.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 21:46

Mechanical Fiend: Sep 5, 2011; How'd that asshole get a white robe?!

Cygni posted:

Theres no way on the server side to push a client to a higher quality, right? Short of disabling transcoding?

I can see in Tautulli that i've got multiple friends whose players (mostly TV native apps on wifi) are bonking down to 720kbps, and they arent savvy enough to know to go into the player settings and set it to maximum and disable bandwidth recommendations.

You could always try sending them this link https://mediaclients.wiki/

# ? Mar 12, 2024 22:07

Motronic: Nov 6, 2009

lol what a hilariously tone deaf way to present that content. Someone who needs that kind of help is going to be fumbling about a wiki format like that.

# ? Mar 12, 2024 22:14

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

Mechanical Fiend posted:

You could always try sending them this link https://mediaclients.wiki/

Or you could just talk to them and help them step by step instead lol.

# ? Mar 13, 2024 01:30

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# ? May 17, 2024 07:57

Scruff McGruff: Feb 13, 2007; Jesus, kid, you're almost a detective. All you need now is a gun, a gut, and three ex-wives.

Cygni posted:

Theres no way on the server side to push a client to a higher quality, right? Short of disabling transcoding?

I can see in Tautulli that i've got multiple friends whose players (mostly TV native apps on wifi) are bonking down to 720kbps, and they arent savvy enough to know to go into the player settings and set it to maximum and disable bandwidth recommendations.

There used to be a way to do this via an API but apparently it no longer works unless you're watching plex from your own domain instead of Plex.tv. Apparently that same guy linked above has a way to implement this via a cloudflare worker but that sounds like way more work than anyone should have to do.

# ? Mar 13, 2024 01:54

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