Plex Megathread: Your .ASS Is Getting Transcoded

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

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

Is there a good guide/product out there for ripping DVDs targeted at tagging them for Plex? I'm still trying to figure out what my server solution is going to be, but i'd like an idea of what my lift is going to be to get all 20 seasons of Law & Order into it

Thanks

# ¿ Apr 5, 2020 22:28

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 16:54

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

TheScott2K posted:

The best thing that ever happened to my Plex server's reliability was setting Windows task scheduler to reboot the server app every night at 3am. All the dumb, undiagnosable gak that builds up after weeks of uptime that leads to weird behaviors just isn't an issue anymore.

would you be willing to show screenshots of how you did that? are you running it as a service, or just as a logged in user?

# ¿ Jun 28, 2020 14:00

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

calandryll posted:

I have a bunch of Beavis and Butt-head episodes that I'd like to get into Plex. However they are number 1-whatever. No season info or anything like that. Easiest way to do it?

I find Rename My TV Series pretty helpful, as it's a tool to use the TVDB API to rename files (and figure out what you could name folders too)

https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/rename-my-tv-series-v2/

# ¿ Jul 3, 2020 00:40

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

Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:

What's the easiest way to deal with TV show extras?

For example, I have the King Turd Beavis and Butt-head collection, and there's a ton of stuff that doesn't show up as "season 0". I'd like to be able to just dump them all in a folder and look through each video individually. I don't care about tags or it showing up with metadata.

Also I ripped all 4 seasons of my Wildboyz DVD sets and there's a ton of extras. However, I can't figure out how to get them to show up in Plex. For season 1 extras I put them in D:\TV\Wildboyz\Season 01\Scenes but that didn't work. I also tried dumping them in D:\TV\Wildboyz\Scenes but that didn't work either.

Sorry if this is a dumb question. This is what I've been doing with movies but TV shows seem like a different beast according to Plex.

Long story short, extras are supposed to be treated as episodes in the Season 00 bucket

So that stuff all falls under Specials or Season 00, if they don't show up in this list https://thetvdb.com/series/wildboyz/seasons/official/0

then give them an episode number above that range, and name them accordingly

see: https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/#toc-3

# ¿ Jul 12, 2020 14:46

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

I use Windows Server 2012 R2, that doesn't try to restart on it's own

# ¿ Jul 17, 2020 18:46

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

Probably won't help anyone, but if you're on windows, don't install the latest update (1.15.0.1354-d31489f0), it breaks playback entirely across the board

# ¿ Jul 23, 2020 02:45

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

i would assume the agent you use determines the image you get?

# ¿ Aug 5, 2020 18:56

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

Motronic posted:

You shouldn't be deleting the torrents immediately - that's a hit and run. Kinda makes the system not work.

Deluge has the capability to move (and rename) the file, but it's still known by deluge as the file referenced by the torrent. so it doesn't strictly have to be a hit and run

# ¿ Sep 1, 2020 19:41

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

I�ve started putting the year on the show folder just reflexively

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 02:09

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

EL BROMANCE posted:

Oof 9mbps really shouldn�t be too much to ask. If that�s what your kind of needed bandwidth is, have you considered powerline adapters? They didn�t suit my needs but in my house gave me a constant 25mbps or so which would be enough for most 1080p non remux.

If you happen to have unused coax in your house, another option is ethernet over coax/MoCA. I use a version of these https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088KV2YYL/ to get from my inconvenient fiber drop to where i want my router

My Plex server itself sits on the other side of powerline adapters from the router, actually

# ¿ Nov 23, 2020 03:48

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

Here�s a handy tip if you�re trying to use a Amazon Fire device when your internet is down (and you have a local plex device with all the auth set up to allow offline), meaning you just get a rude message about Home not being available. Go to Settings => Applications => Manage Installed Applications.

Scroll down to Plex, select it, then select Launch Application. Congrats, you�re watching Plex

# ¿ Dec 7, 2020 21:48

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

Shumagorath posted:

My powerline adaptors haven't been cutting it because the link quality, after an initial strong showing, keeps oscillating between great and terrible. They're getting on a decade old; will newer models possibly overcome the problem if I'm getting a link? I figure if the house wiring was completely inhospitable I wouldn't be able to transmit at all.

I definitely had better reliability and speed with a newer set. I am using TP-Link AV1000s

# ¿ Dec 9, 2020 05:03

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

Shumagorath posted:

Coax feeds the TVs / internet so I assume that's out...? Why does HomePlug / Powerline degrade over time? When I hooked these up they were handling Plex easily and died off within days.

I believe MoCa doesn't work if you have cable internet, as it's in the same frequencies as that? I'd have to find the instructions for my adapters (i too have fiber so nothing on my coax)

# ¿ Dec 9, 2020 22:23

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

univbee posted:

You will have to mount the network folder as a drive letter, I'm assuming you're using Windows? If so open File Explorer and hit the "Computer" tab along the top bar, there's a "Map Network Drive" option right there.

I'll put this in the same column as "Plex won't run as a Windows service" to suggest the devs support windows servers only grudgingly

# ¿ Jan 1, 2021 17:12

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

I believe you can put the start year on each file name, and that should match properly?

# ¿ Feb 14, 2021 03:42

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

Run a Windows Server version :shrug:

# ¿ Mar 18, 2021 17:43

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

Did you try searching for subtitles through the plex interface? They pull from OpenSubtitles and are usually srt?

# ¿ Apr 25, 2021 02:55

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

How does the local syncing to an iOS device work with Plex? Trying to load this thing up before an extended road trip for my kid. Will I need to authenticate or anything? I likely won�t have any network connection at all

I have plex pass (and also paid for the app ages ago, lol)

# ¿ Jun 23, 2021 02:53

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

Have you tried the Plex app? It�s available on the Plex site, might be able to handle the mpeg2 without you doing a bunch of work to re-encode them

# ¿ Jun 30, 2021 22:07

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

EL BROMANCE posted:

Just came across a neat little feature that's kinda tucked away and is only applicable for a handful of things, but I'm guessing a lot of people don't know about it.

If you edit a Season of a TV show and type something in the Title box, this replaces the words 'Season x' in the listings. Most shows naturally don't need this, but some do! For example - https://www.thetvdb.com/series/the-last-drive-in-with-joe-bob-briggs - as you can see in the side bar, Season 2 is listed as Season 7 because of the mini-seasons they run between each regular one. So now I have all the correct names reflecting the content inside.

Oh that�s slick, maybe it will get my kid to watch all the drat Pok�mon he had me put on the plex

# ¿ Aug 5, 2021 03:50

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

Is there any reason to even have notifications from the Plex app at all?

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 12:25

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

Our pals at Plex apparently broke the updater, so now that there's a new version out, my desktop (windows) client was crashing the client every 3 minutes or so. Manually pulling the new update fixed it

# ¿ Sep 24, 2021 00:59

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

Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:

I just spent the better part of a day finding every episode of HowardTV (Howard Stern's old OnDemand TV show that no longer exists so downloading from usenet is literally the only option) and I managed to track down and obtain 1,802 episodes.

There's no way Plex is going to get even 1% of the episodes tagged properly, which is fine. But is there any way to get the HowardTV entry under my TV shows to show all of the episodes, even if it's just filenames like "HowardTV - Riley Martin & Eric (99) - CPA.avi" ?

Or am I going to have to watch these through Kodi? (which would kind of suck, I'd love to be able to "watch" these while at work or outside the house).

i'll shill again for https://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/rename-my-tv-series-v2/ which you could use to rename all those episodes to a Plex friendly format. Obvious this will take time, but less than renaming the tags manually, or writing a script to sneak them into the plex db with the file name

# ¿ Dec 7, 2021 17:11

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

Mr/Mrs 4ever97 is spending more time worrying about how to do this than they would spend just tagging them all properly imo

# ¿ Dec 9, 2021 00:26

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

univbee posted:

Assuming you have a Windows box, it's easy but time-consuming. Here's a rough list of steps:

Use MakeMKV to rip your Blu-ray discs. This takes about an hour to do. You'll need to feed MakeMKV a new beta key from their forum once every 2 months and there's sometimes a brief gap of like a day or two where you can't use the software because they're late to get a code up.

From there, you can remux into an MKV using MKVToolNix, which only takes a few minutes, or re-encode using something like Handbrake, which generally doesn't take that long unless you use higher quality encoding settings. Once you've figured out how you want to do things it's pretty turnkey.

Dealing with subtitles is more time-consuming unless you go to one of those subtitle sites and find a working .srt you can use. If that's not an option, you'll need to use software like DVDSubExtrator to OCR the subs, unless you burn them into your video during a re-encode.

I don't re-encode or remux my bluray rips, and they're fine in plex, they also usually already have a subtitle track from the disc itself

but yes, MakeMKV is the way to go.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2021 18:57

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

MikusR posted:

MakeMKV already makes MKVs

Source???

# ¿ Dec 11, 2021 22:47

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

The Diddler posted:

Blu ray or DVD, your choice

So you�re telling me, MakeMKV can just �make� �MKVs� I don�t believe it

I didn�t even scare the poster about 4k blurays and how you have to get the right drive and maybe install some rolled back firmware

# ¿ Dec 13, 2021 18:00

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

I know it helps a little to have the year of the tv show on the series folder name?

# ¿ Feb 13, 2022 21:05

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

I don�t see this as the same thing as �muffins for the twin towers.� CNNs twitter links to their streams. Plex was linking to actual news?

# ¿ Feb 25, 2022 03:23

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

now if they were promoting the Arnold-Jim Belushi classic "Red Heat" being free to watch in that tweet, I could see the concern

# ¿ Feb 25, 2022 18:36

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

BaseballPCHiker posted:

My plex server is a small Lenovo ThinkCentre M93. I think its an i5, 8 GB RAM, and a small on board HD with a USB drive plugged into it.

Works well at everything but transcoding to play over the internet, even then it works it just sounds like a jet engine taking off. I think I spent like $120 for it off of eBay. It'll do BluRays just fine locally as well.

I paid 200 something for a similar model (though I guess mine is a tower?). Lots of not even that old business desktops on ebay. I rapidly required pairing it with a NAS though

# ¿ Mar 29, 2022 13:13

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

https://www.howtogeek.com/303282/how-to-use-plex-media-server-without-internet-access/

This is the guide I used to make sure I was good to go with internet

# ¿ May 2, 2022 02:54

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

nexus6 posted:

Does anyone else have issues using SRT subtitles? With burn set to 'automatic' they don't appear but if I change to 'always' the video doesn't play at all - just a loading spinner for ages. I played the same video with subtitle track in Kodi to test and it will worked perfectly.

fake edit: is there a good list of movies with non-english parts anywhere? It's annoying to get an hour into a movie to find out there are no subtitles and when you do get some they don't even show in Plex.

What client are you using? I recall reading that some clients are picky about srt files? And if they don�t terminate with a newline or something they won�t read?

# ¿ May 18, 2022 01:15

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

I have scheduled task that runs a batch file that restarts plex nightly and that mostly solves my �Plex is bad on windows�

# ¿ Jul 1, 2022 12:40

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

Blooster posted:

The scheduled task isn't a bad idea but I would imagine it sucks if you happen to be watching Plex in the middle of the night when it goes out for a bit.

If I am watching plex at 3 am I have bigger problems

Edit: also the client will probably reconnect on its own anyways

# ¿ Jul 1, 2022 16:27

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

EL BROMANCE posted:

Feelin personally attacked by this post

friend, you can schedule it for whatever terrible time you choice to regularly not need plex mine is apparently actually scheduled for 5 am :shrug:

Here's the script:

code:

TASKKILL /IM "Plex Media Server.exe" /f /t
TIMEOUT /T 10
START "PLEX" /d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Plex\Plex Media Server" "Plex Media Server.exe"

If I don't remote into the server regularly, you get a hilariously long chain of phantom Plex logos in the notification area

It's pretty easy since you have to leave the desktop open ANYWAYS for plex, you don't have to worry about updating a password, since Task Scheduler will handle "run while user is logged in" without any hassle

# ¿ Jul 1, 2022 17:16

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

MikusR posted:

No.

it's an application, that requires being run in a desktop session under supported usage, so there's a "GUI" if you want to call the icon in the notification area a gui. You can't get rid of it entirely, unless the program isn't running

# ¿ Jul 1, 2022 21:47

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

TraderStav posted:

Getting ready for a long vacation, forgot how poo poo �Downloads� are compared to Sync. Items failing left and right with no good reason (or error provided to help). Anyone have tricks to make this work better? I think in the past I just kept hitting retry and eventually they worked.

Depending on your library, you might be trying to pull very large files? I know my kids iPad was trying to pull the full Blu-ray rip for a few things

# ¿ Jul 18, 2022 17:20

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

CopperHound posted:

I've been too lazy to do it, but here are some instructions for it:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/local-files-for-trailers-and-extras/

If you go with the tag at the end of the file name, make sure you take extra care you spell everything right or it shows up as a separate file option for the parent movie

# ¿ Jan 23, 2023 14:11

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 16:54

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

Blue On Blue posted:

In my experience when I add something that has additional features, it shows up as a version.

From the main menu click the 3 dots bottom right corner, and Play Version...

Then it shows up there (although I haven't figured out the naming it just displays the bitrate and quality of the file

Example :

That's my copy of CaddyShack. 1080p is the movie proper, 720p is the inside story , and 480p is another behind the scenes

So if I ever watch it I just have to remember which version to play

https://support.plex.tv/articles/local-files-for-trailers-and-extras/#toc-2

go in and rename stuff using this guide, it'll then show below the actors listing, instead of your memory dance

# ¿ Jan 24, 2023 13:22

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