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teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

FCKGW posted:

Short Plex on Amazon Fire TV video here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCZNsACFJuU

The Fire TV UI is pretty slick.

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Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008
Good to know as I was about to pick up a roku stick for the 'has a remote, just turn it on and it just works' item.

EDIT: Many reviews have good points. Between this and a roku box I'm pretty soured on Fire TV

Roundboy fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Apr 4, 2014

cletus42o
Apr 11, 2003

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
College Slice
Plex app for iOS is currently broken if you use the syncing feature (PlexPass only I believe).

Don't update it if you can help it. :(

App crashes immediately on opening, unless you turn WiFi off. So best case you can only watch content you've synced to your device.

1997
Jan 20, 2008

calmer than you are
Sometime in the future I want to set up an Amazon Fire TV with a NAS that I can install Plex server on. Does anyone have any experience with any disk less NAS I can do that with?

rock2much
Feb 6, 2004

Grimey Drawer

FCKGW posted:

RARFlix on Roku (a modified Plex install) has the ability to continuously play random episodes from a specific series.

What! Nice, thanks for the heads up. Great for those times I just want to doze off to random 90s sitcoms. Thanks!

ringu0
Feb 24, 2013


1997 posted:

Sometime in the future I want to set up an Amazon Fire TV with a NAS that I can install Plex server on. Does anyone have any experience with any disk less NAS I can do that with?

I don't have any relevant experience, but I was exploring this topic a little while ago, and found this: NAS Compatibility List. Hope this helps/

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

1997 posted:

Sometime in the future I want to set up an Amazon Fire TV with a NAS that I can install Plex server on. Does anyone have any experience with any disk less NAS I can do that with?

What do you mean by a diskless NAS? I have Plex installed on my iMac and it mounts network shares from my NAS that sits plugged in into the basement. It works fantastic with both Chromecast and Roku and will let you know how with the FireTV this weekend.

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004

Arrrr ye landlubber

TraderStav posted:

What do you mean by a diskless NAS? I have Plex installed on my iMac and it mounts network shares from my NAS that sits plugged in into the basement. It works fantastic with both Chromecast and Roku and will let you know how with the FireTV this weekend.

He means a consumer NAS that can run packages like Plex directly. Synology, QNAP etc.

Usually they're sold either disk less or optionally bundled with drives, so I assume he reused the term from product descriptions.

Leaving a desktop on all the time is for amateurs.

suddenlyissoon
Feb 17, 2002

Don't be sad that I am gone.

1997 posted:

Sometime in the future I want to set up an Amazon Fire TV with a NAS that I can install Plex server on. Does anyone have any experience with any disk less NAS I can do that with?

I used Plex on my Synology for a short while but grew frustrated with the lack of transcoding. You think you wouldn't need it but when you realize you can watch stuff on your smartphone/tablet away from home you really want transcoding.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

Did they remove the small player from the Plex.tv web app? Whenever I play a video, it fills the width of the entire browser window automatically, and my only other option is to make it full screen. My web app version is Version 2.0.24

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004

Arrrr ye landlubber

suddenlyissoon posted:

I used Plex on my Synology for a short while but grew frustrated with the lack of transcoding. You think you wouldn't need it but when you realize you can watch stuff on your smartphone/tablet away from home you really want transcoding.

You needed a more powerful Synology.

suddenlyissoon
Feb 17, 2002

Don't be sad that I am gone.

eddiewalker posted:

You needed a more powerful Synology.

Yeah, at that point it was most cost efficient to build a new server...which is what I ended up doing. Plex works perfectly now and I've not been able break it even with 5 transcoding streams at top quality.

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008

suddenlyissoon posted:

Yeah, at that point it was most cost efficient to build a new server...which is what I ended up doing. Plex works perfectly now and I've not been able break it even with 5 transcoding streams at top quality.

What is the hardware to transcoding ratio? I have ffmpeg running like a topnto transcode TiVo streams inn> real time, but plex chokes on transcoding to a lower bitrate.. Its why I have everything set to max and let the network dice roll.

I would rather not redo my core 2 duo Linux machine into a i5 box for transcoding alone, as previously a hyperthreaded p4 did me fine

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man
Are there any media organizer applications I could use to get my library set up? I wouldn't mind saving some time renaming/refiling the several thousand files I have.

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008
How screwed up with is screwed up? I found plex has been fairly robust in picking up on things. Unless you like inception folders within folders

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man

Roundboy posted:

How screwed up with is screwed up? I found plex has been fairly robust in picking up on things. Unless you like inception folders within folders

All my media files are in one big folder: music, tv, movies :v:

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008

SyHopeful posted:

All my media files are in one big folder: music, tv, movies :v:

Well time to learn regex :). Anything with S##E## goes in TV. Anything #### goes to movies. I think plex assigns different naming conventions to the folder type specified.

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man

Roundboy posted:

Well time to learn regex :). Anything with S##E## goes in TV. Anything #### goes to movies. I think plex assigns different naming conventions to the folder type specified.

I know about the naming conventions, I guess I should be clearer. Right now I'm doing a lot of cutting and pasting to move each individual file from c:\media to c:\media\movies\movie\ and c:\media\tv shows\show xx\season xx\, and I was wondering if there was something similar to iTunes' library sorting feature for Plex. Just to save me a bunch of folder reorganizing.

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008

SyHopeful posted:

I know about the naming conventions, I guess I should be clearer. Right now I'm doing a lot of cutting and pasting to move each individual file from c:\media to c:\media\movies\movie\ and c:\media\tv shows\show xx\season xx\, and I was wondering if there was something similar to iTunes' library sorting feature for Plex. Just to save me a bunch of folder reorganizing.

There is no need to sort shows by season folder, and I *think* you can even get away with not putting them in show folders either.

At this point I would dump all 100% TV into a single folder and see what plex.TV/web doesn't translate.

But no,plex does not create folder structures for you, that I have found

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man

Roundboy posted:

There is no need to sort shows by season folder, and I *think* you can even get away with not putting them in show folders either.

At this point I would dump all 100% TV into a single folder and see what plex.TV/web doesn't translate.

But no,plex does not create folder structures for you, that I have found

Well Plex is pretty clear about your media organization, and I did as you suggested last night and because all my media is in one folder that was no sorting by movie/tv show/etc. With quite a few files that makes it tedious to do all the scrolling via tablet or other mobile device.

I know Plex doesn't create those folder structures or have an ability to help auto-sort files, hence my original question :angel:

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

I spent an hour or so organizing about 6TB of files before I loaded them into Plex libraries. Tedious as gently caress, but worth it in the end because I barely had any incorrect matches pulled from the database agents.

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008

SyHopeful posted:

Well Plex is pretty clear about your media organization, and I did as you suggested last night and because all my media is in one folder that was no sorting by movie/tv show/etc. With quite a few files that makes it tedious to do all the scrolling via tablet or other mobile device.

I know Plex doesn't create those folder structures or have an ability to help auto-sort files, hence my original question :angel:

Sorry, I reread your original question. And no, even Google is wishy washy on returning results to organize video media. I would maintain that any program would need metadata to move based on type and name, but to do that, it needs to correctly parse what the name/type is anyway... So by doing that plex is already there.

I feel your pain though, it seems everyone focuses on music folders and not video

SyHopeful
Jun 24, 2007
May an IDF soldier mistakenly gun down my own parents and face no repercussions i'd totally be cool with it cuz accidents are unavoidable in a low-intensity conflict, man

Roundboy posted:

Sorry, I reread your original question. And no, even Google is wishy washy on returning results to organize video media. I would maintain that any program would need metadata to move based on type and name, but to do that, it needs to correctly parse what the name/type is anyway... So by doing that plex is already there.

I feel your pain though, it seems everyone focuses on music folders and not video

Well, thanks for trying!


teagone posted:

I spent an hour or so organizing about 6TB of files before I loaded them into Plex libraries. Tedious as gently caress, but worth it in the end because I barely had any incorrect matches pulled from the database agents.

I'm in the process of doing that right now :sigh:

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004

Arrrr ye landlubber
Sickbeard can automatically sort your existing media folder if the files have somewhat parse-able names.

It can even give everything a consistent naming scheme and add ep titles to file names.

kri kri
Jul 18, 2007

SyHopeful posted:

Well Plex is pretty clear about your media organization, and I did as you suggested last night and because all my media is in one folder that was no sorting by movie/tv show/etc. With quite a few files that makes it tedious to do all the scrolling via tablet or other mobile device.

I know Plex doesn't create those folder structures or have an ability to help auto-sort files, hence my original question :angel:

Filebot is pretty decent.

On another note, does anyone know of a program that can pull subtitles for me? The built in plex opensubtitles plugin basically never works, and using plex tools to download subs is tedious as hell. I miss this so drat much from xbmc...

The Gunslinger
Jul 24, 2004

Do not forget the face of your father.
Fun Shoe
Filebot and The Renamer are both good, the latter has a terrible custom UI but once you figure it out its probably the most accurate I've found.

kri kri
Jul 18, 2007

Ha I didn't even realize filebot had added subtitle downloading. Ignore me!

Rooted Vegetable
Jun 1, 2002

The Gunslinger posted:

Filebot and The Renamer are both good, the latter has a terrible custom UI but once you figure it out its probably the most accurate I've found.

And further to this, the typical output on both of these options worked well when I fired up plex on my media library. It was already (mainly) organised by The Renamer but FileBot looked like it would do the trick well too.

Mighty Horse
Jul 24, 2007

Speed, Class, Bankruptcy.
Anyone else having issues with @midnight? I've tried naming it both at midnight and with the @ and for some reason plex totally doesn't acknowledge the files even exist...

eddiewalker
Apr 28, 2004

Arrrr ye landlubber

Mighty Horse posted:

Anyone else having issues with @midnight? I've tried naming it both at midnight and with the @ and for some reason plex totally doesn't acknowledge the files even exist...

Have you tried adding a character the the front of the folder name?

(Before the @)

Stugazi
Mar 1, 2004

Who me, Bitter?
Shared my library with a non techy friend who streams via a Chromecast from her house.

My PMS is a Mac Mini so horsepower on my side should be OK.

Newer media that needs to be transcoded refuses to stream on the remote Chromecast. It fails immediately when attempting to play with a very quick "failed to cast" error.

If I try to play the media to my phone and not cast it the media plays pretty well.

Not sure where to begin troubleshooting.

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008

Stugazi posted:

Shared my library with a non techy friend who streams via a Chromecast from her house.

My PMS is a Mac Mini so horsepower on my side should be OK.

Newer media that needs to be transcoded refuses to stream on the remote Chromecast. It fails immediately when attempting to play with a very quick "failed to cast" error.

If I try to play the media to my phone and not cast it the media plays pretty well.

Not sure where to begin troubleshooting.

Look up the FAQ to see where logs are stored for your OS, and take a look at the " Plex Media Server.log" file. It contains a record of all requests to PMS and how streaming/transcoding went.

Its a good first step. You should be able to directly relate the media id to the one seen on the plex.TV/web interface, when you view info about a particular thing.

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008
Im reading some of the plex transcoding FAQ, and they give a very general, reccomended benchmark for a server doing transcoding. I see that my core2Duo setup is 7(!) years old at this point, and benchmarks at 800-1200 on a scale where 2000 is where i should be.

I'm considering an i7 for the extra cores, and threaded processes but will I see a bigger difference over i5 ? I will stream single transcoding 80% of the time, but i can see 3-4 streams at a time a small percentage of the time. Also this is my main server, so some other processes will be running.

I'm looking for real world benchamarks as I cant get a reliable handle on what plex is actually chugging on. But the difference in processor cost is like $60-$80

oblomov
Jun 20, 2002

Meh... #overrated
I finally installed Plex and it's been pretty good with the exception of PS3, which has whole bunch of stuttering issues using DNLA.

I have a decent dual 2.4/5 wi-fi router... but both the server and ps3 are on cat5. Another few systems have no issues with streaming, whether hardwired or wireless. That includes my gamin PC, iPad, Roku3, couple Android phones and couple laptops.

The server has 3rd Gen i5 running at 4K my and 16gb of ram. So.. Anyone having similar issues by any chance?

Devian666
Aug 20, 2008

Take some advice Chris.

Fun Shoe
PS3 runs fine for me by wireless (note that it's only about 3 m from the router. I do have a PC which runs like crap but it's near some metal shelving and a stack of old hardware. It'll have terrible reception so it stutters badly.

Your server is also considerably better than mine as I'm only running on an Athlon X4 3GHz and it's running in a virtual machine.

Chin Strap
Nov 24, 2002

I failed my TFLC Toxx, but I no longer need a double chin strap :buddy:
Pillbug
So does the initial library processing need to happen before the server is officially seen as connected or something? Both going from plex.tv and from my phone when off my local network my account says I have no servers connected. I could see the progress happening on processing from the local IP address on my PC and I could also play stuff it had already processed from my phone when on the local network. I have the two green checkmarks that say it should be sharing fine.

Will all this just sort itself out once the initial processing is over?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Not sure if anyone can offer insight, but I figure I'll throw my issue out there and see if anyone has had this issue.

This happened both with casting from my wife's iPhone to our Chromecast and with the new Amazon FireTV. We have Plex Media server (was 9.9.5 when this occurred) on my iMac which is on a wired connection. Plex was working fantastic for weeks but yesterday it was randomly freezing. Pausing and hitting play would do nothing but if I backed out of the movie/show it'd start right back up where I left off with no problem. After we got fed up and switched to HBO Go to finish our show last night I rebooted the iMac and updated PMS to 9.9.7 (why isn't this doing this automatically? check for updates did nothing!) but haven't had time to see if the problem persists. Has anyone encountered this? What other things should I try to repair?

FCKGW
May 21, 2006

Roundboy posted:

Im reading some of the plex transcoding FAQ, and they give a very general, reccomended benchmark for a server doing transcoding. I see that my core2Duo setup is 7(!) years old at this point, and benchmarks at 800-1200 on a scale where 2000 is where i should be.

I'm considering an i7 for the extra cores, and threaded processes but will I see a bigger difference over i5 ? I will stream single transcoding 80% of the time, but i can see 3-4 streams at a time a small percentage of the time. Also this is my main server, so some other processes will be running.

I'm looking for real world benchamarks as I cant get a reliable handle on what plex is actually chugging on. But the difference in processor cost is like $60-$80

I was streaming single streams fine on my Celeron G3220 and moved up to the cheapest i3 4130 only because I wanted to do multiple streams. I think the i7 is totally overpowered for what you want and a high end i3 or low-mid i5 should handle multistreams fine

I've found the Plex forums to be a pretty decent source to get an idea of what is needed. Haswell is very good for 1080p streaming at low wattage now.

FCKGW fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Apr 8, 2014

Roundboy
Oct 21, 2008

FCKGW posted:

I was streaming single streams fine on my Celeron G3220 and moved up to the cheapest i3 4130 only because I wanted to do multiple streams. I think the i7 is totally overpowered for what you want and a high end i3 or low-mid i5 should handle multistreams fine

I've found the Plex forums to be a pretty decent source to get an idea of what is needed. Haswell is very good for 1080p streaming at low wattage now.

Right, this is the biggest debate. I need a new CPU, and its come down to a $190 i5 4670k (or slightly cheaper low power 4570S) vs a i7-4770. The price difference is just $50-$60, but will I see benefit in multi-threaded applications much like plex is. I intend to have this hardware for many years to come, so I'm banking on the upcharge over years. Haswell is pretty good, but will those extra 4 HT cores give me benefit running multiple transcoding streams, at the same time my server is running other intensive things (torrents, minecraft server, etc)

$60 is pretty meh over a 5+ year lifespan.

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suddenlyissoon
Feb 17, 2002

Don't be sad that I am gone.

Roundboy posted:

Right, this is the biggest debate. I need a new CPU, and its come down to a $190 i5 4670k (or slightly cheaper low power 4570S) vs a i7-4770. The price difference is just $50-$60, but will I see benefit in multi-threaded applications much like plex is. I intend to have this hardware for many years to come, so I'm banking on the upcharge over years. Haswell is pretty good, but will those extra 4 HT cores give me benefit running multiple transcoding streams, at the same time my server is running other intensive things (torrents, minecraft server, etc)

$60 is pretty meh over a 5+ year lifespan.

My new system was built with a 4570S and it has absolutely zero problems transcoding multiple streams. Being on 24/7 I felt like the power/heat trade off was just right with it. I was also able to play titanfall while a stream was transcoding without much issue.

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