Plex Megathread: Your .ASS Is Getting Transcoded

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

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

I've recently gotten in to Plex as a result of trying to share my library with family members and friends. I originally tried it out on my Symology and it worked fairly well, but only for those people who had enough horsepower in bandwidth and CPU to stream the content without needed any transcoding. I also was a bit mad that I still couldn't do any mkv's to my iphone/ipad.

I ended up building a new htpc that runs Plex Media Server has plenty of CPU headroom and basically unlimited bandwidth. I've had 5 transcoding streams going at one time and it handled it all really, really well. The iOS apps are also pretty amazing for what they are and it's well worth $5.

The new sharing feature is something I'm excited to see catch on. That really could be useful down the line. I thought about starting a sharing thread but I think that IYG is public.

suddenlyissoon fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Mar 29, 2014

# ¿ Mar 29, 2014 13:48

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:13

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.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2014 20:50

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.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 02:01

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.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2014 17:12

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

With the cost increase, if I buy the yearly pass this year at 29.99 will it renew at 29.99 or at the 39.99 new price?

# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 17:00

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

The Gunslinger posted:

Lifetime passes have never worked out well for me, every single has seen a company either go bust a few years later or the product just tails off slowly. I think the only one I can recall that has worked out for anyone else was the TiVo. None of the Plex Pass features scream "go sub now!" to me either.

Yeah, I did the yearly pass. Lifetime is a bit of a gamble...it'll probably end up working out for everyone though since I didn't buy it.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2014 14:27

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Soysaucebeast posted:

I got Plex a few months ago so I could stream stuff to my PS4. At first it worked great through the internet browser. About a month or so ago, though, it stopped working completely. I'm using the same IP address, and the same web address that I've had bookmarked, but my PS4 says it's unable to connect to the server. I can use the internet otherwise just fine. It's just not wanting to connect to my Plex server, and gives me an error message of "Cannot connect to the server. (WV-33899-2)".

Anyone know how to fix this?

Did you update your router by chance? Are you going through localhost:32400 (or whatever port you have it set to)?

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 19:38

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Soysaucebeast posted:

Yea, everything is as it was when I got it all set up originially. No router updates or IP address changes or anything like that.

This is probably stupid but when you go to the plex server page it has the green check mark next to the port number, right? And you have port forwarding set up in your router?

# ¿ Sep 30, 2014 20:14

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Heners_UK posted:

What sort of upload speeds do people have for remote streaming? It chugs on my 1mbit up

It's just as much about the quality of the remote download as it is the local server upload. I have symmetrical gigabit, more than enough bandwidth for the users I have at one time but I've had people on different providers in town and 100 miles away have issues with a simple 3mps 720p stream. Others that are 200-300 miles away but have a more reliable download have no issues using the unlimited option.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2014 10:55

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

porktree posted:

I'm using the Plex android app, controlling my Chromecasts and it's all working pretty well. But I noticed there's a Plex widget - is anyone using this? I can't get it to add to a screen because it wants a Player (which I'd thought would be my Chromecast), if I just tell it 'ok' it complains that "No Player Selected", but pressing "Select Player" only shows me "Play On" and no player list. Is the widget broken, or am I?

You have to have a source. It can be the web player, the Android app, iOS app, any of the apps really.

edit: Now I'm confused as I've re-read your question and you're on the Plex app. Try going to the web and trying the chromecast from there.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2014 17:02

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

I had previously been using the solution of a Synology NAS that fed the content to an HTPC (i5 4570s). It worked pretty well but I wanted to expand and I was getting some stuttering when feeding multiple clients out of my network either through the i5 or due to the network setup (two different locations and it's passed between two different switches). Because of that, I decided I would build my own NAS and settled on using Xpenology with an Xeon e3-1241. The Synology Plex package is pretty old but you can do a manual update to the Plex Pass version really easily. The system as a whole is amazingly stable and I couldn't believe how easy it was compared to FreeNAS. The fine people of the NAS thread might can help but they're solutions are less entertainment and more storage.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2014 18:01

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Unacknowledged posted:

So this month or next I'm planning on moving to a more permanent solution for plex, downloads, storage, and other stuff that isn't my primary machine. It's a more expensive route, but I'm leaning towards a newer mac mini and a drobo. Anyone have any experiences to talk me out of this? I'm open to hearing other suggestions if anyone cares to share any with me. Mac will have more of a purpose than just a plex server / PHT box, eventually anyway.

The big question is if your going to be using this new box as a client as well as a server. If so, then yes, a 2012 Mac Mini or a Intel NUC might work (assuming you're using USB drives). However, if you're thinking about this just being a server, I'd look in to a Synology (if you're not going to be transcoding), an Asustor or building your own and using xpenology or freenas.

I previously was using a PC as the Plex client (for transcoding) and it was connected to my 2-bay synology. However, it ran into issues with more than a couple transcoding clients or if I had multiple people pulling 1080p files. My current server is one that I've built and it runs xpenology. It does multiple plex transcoding without an issue and has been rock solid.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 20:00

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Zeitgueist posted:

If you share your libraries with other users remotely, is it possible to only share some, like 1 library?

Yes, you can specify the library. I share my video folder but not my photo folder with users.

# ¿ Dec 23, 2014 22:33

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Ok, I guess I'm dumb but why would you want your Plex to run through PIA? Is it just to obscure your home IP from shares?

# ¿ Dec 28, 2014 23:21

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

gypsyshred posted:

Ok I'm at wits end. I love Plex and I've grown to rely on it for my TV watching so I'd rather fix it than replace it, but I'm not sure what else to do. Since last month, nothing new has populated. It was around the same time I replaced my gpu if that remotely matters. I have removed the dir from my list, and re added the dir, and it just repopulated with the stuff it had already found. I completely uninstalled the media server and reinstalled, same old database, no new items found. What else can I do to fix it?

When you force a full rescan what does the message say? If you try to play some of the old stuff that shows up, does it play? Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling Plex using a different library name?

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 14:28

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

emocrat posted:

OK Plex people, I am having some issues and am hoping to get some guidance, I will just include all information that may be relevant so this may be a little long.

I have PMS set up on my HTPC running Windows 7, it is an older gaming rig and should be plenty powerful. i5, 8GB RAM etc. Media is stored on that device on a WD 4TB RED connected via SATA. It is connected to my network via Ethernet and goes into a 8 port gigagbit switch. Inside the building I have a Roku 3 connected to my HDTV. The Roku is also connected to the network via Ethernet, into the same switch.

When watching movies (MKV) on the Roku the picture gets dropped intermittently. I am not sure I would say it is buffering, just that the display suddenly drops back to the page where you tell it to play the movie, for like a second at most, then flashes the little "loading" bar then resumes playback. This does not happen with every file, but there does not seem to be any particular pattern.

The files that I am playing are full size Blu Ray rips from my collection. I use makemkv and then do not compress at all. So, they are huge, 25-40GB generally. This problem persists when I direct play, as well as transcode at 20 and occasionally at 12. I haven't had an opportunity to really test comprehensively, but it seems to clear up as I force transcoding at lower bitrates.

Some googling around seems to imply that the Roku may not be capable of handling the incoming stream at these very high bitrates, does that sound correct? If so, would either of its competitors (Fire TV / Nexus Player) be able to handle it better? Am I fighting a losing battle trying to do this at max quality with anything other than a true HTPC? Or is there some other point of failure I am not considering? Thanks.

edit: as I write this apparently the post above seems to confirm that the Roku just cant handle it. Any thoughts on Fire TV / Nexus?

I think you did solve your own question. Most people aren't using full blu-ray rips like you are! The transcode issue means either your CPU or Network aren't able to cope either. You need to check the CPU load & the network load in order to confirm that though. I'm assuming it's your network since you're able to watch at lower bitrate/qualities without a problem.

Direct Play means that the Roku is not capable of decoding the file on its own. I don't think the Fire TV/Nexus could handle it either because they're using the basic android build and my FireTV sometimes had issues with larger encodes & higher bitrates even when on my wired gigabit network. I think you're going to need something like the i3, maybe even i5 NUC in order to pull off full sized MKV's with direct play.

suddenlyissoon fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Jan 26, 2015

# ¿ Jan 26, 2015 18:00

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Apparently if you're using the Plex app on your Samsung tv you'll be interrupted, while your video is playing, every 8 to 30 minutes with a Pepsi commerical! Samsung really is trying to push the limits between this and the "always listening" accusations.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2015 18:10

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

I actually got in to the legal section of smart hub menu in my hu8550 and found 4 or 5 sections in which you could disagree or opt-out of advertisements. Still, the fact that it exists on a 2500 TV pisses me off.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 03:26

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

notwithoutmyanus posted:

That is completely lawsuit material. Maybe this is why politicians are investigating already.

I'd be down for a lawsuit. It completely pisses me off that they would even think that is remotely ok on a full price tv and then they bury the ability to turn it off way down in the menu. It's not like a kindle where they sell a discounted "ad-supported" version this tv was full freaking price (not to mention how Samsung participates in the unilateral pricing (cough, cough, price fixing). This would be like buying a Kindle, starting a book and every 8 pages you get a full screen ad for a Taylor Swift album.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2015 01:48

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

porkface posted:

On what grounds?

I have absolutely no idea but they did add this poo poo in after the TV came out without warning. Is that something?

# ¿ Feb 11, 2015 11:49

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Zogo posted:

This would give me great pause before buying a "smart TV" in the future.

Sadly, it's the only option if you want 4K content.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2015 22:41

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

notwithoutmyanus posted:

This is incorrect. There is no option that involves 4K content, because most 4K content is going to be requiring HDCP 2 (think how bad ultraviolet and bluray DRM was and now remember they want to do that with 4K aka terrible copy protection) and every tv that exists is basically not compatible.

So there is only one option for 4k content: 4k monitors. 4K tv's? gently caress no.

Article from July 2014 that is still accurate: http://www.cnet.com/news/hdcp-2-2-what-you-need-to-know/ Even crutchfield is showing how this is completely loving stupid. Thus, if you want 4K? Enjoy! http://www.crutchfield.com/S-F919Z2GGw6m/learn/what-you-need-to-know-about-hdcp-2-2.html

I have a HU8550 and it has both HDMI 2.0 & HDCP 2.2.

I only meant that outside of downloading youtube clips, you have to have a smart TV to get to Netflix, Amazon, etc.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2015 04:35

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

havenwaters posted:

chromecast/fire tv/whatever usually does a better than the smart tv for netflix, etc.

This was in reference to 4K tv's. You cannot get 4K Netflix, Amazon, etc on any external device right now. You have to use the tv's built in apps.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2015 14:33

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

withak posted:

Does anyone else have problems with Plex on a Fire TV in the last few days? There was some thing a few days ago where the app was stuck in an endless loop of messages saying that you were required to purchase it but that you couldn't purchase it because you had already purchased it. They released an update that fixed that but now everything that I try to play just pops up an error message saying "Can't play this video".

My in-laws got hit with this issue last week and after some digging I found out through their forums it was due to a bad update.

https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/148852-forced-to-buy-plex-pass/page-9#entry869267

Supposedly the fix is out there but some people are still having issues.

https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/151349-fire-tv-version-3910331-still-giving-activate-prompt/

# ¿ Mar 8, 2015 12:46

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Anyone having issues with Plex this morning? All of a sudden it decided it couldn't connect outside of my network. I've gone through the normal stuff or resetting my box, router, checking ports, etc but can't find any issues.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 13:21

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

It appears that my Server settings page just silently updated and there are some new features. Did this happen to anyone else?

edit: Plex tweeted me an answer that the web player got updated: https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/46075-plex-web/page-7#entry889563

According to the logs I lost connection outside of my network right after the update went through. I had to stop the server, "disconnect remote access" in the connection settings, then restart it in order to get it to work again.

suddenlyissoon fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Mar 25, 2015

# ¿ Mar 25, 2015 21:12

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

savesthedayrocks posted:

I bought one from their eBay store about 4 days ago for 199. I'll report back when I receive it but it was well regarded from other suggestions.

Mind sharing what os you used? I've been waffling between xpenology and freenas.

I'm using Xpenology on the server I built with a Xeon processor. I did it because I had previously used Synology and was more comfortable continuing to use it that learning how to use FreeNAS as it scared the poo poo out of me. It's worked well but it's not without hiccups. For example, just this past weekend I finally upgraded to DSM 5.1. I had to wait this long (and keep my fingers crossed) because they were unable to figure out the bugs/security features for months and when they did, they still had issues. Just over the past couple of weeks has it become somewhat stable, enough that I'd risk my data for it.

If I had it to do over again, I'd probably go for FreeNAS though.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2015 15:01

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

savesthedayrocks posted:

This is exactly my hold up. I'm moving from a windows home server where I had to learn nothing. Thanks for the advice.

I will say that I took a spare computer home from work and got it up and going without much trouble. Even had a few jails/plugins. My worry was more based on "what if?" because of the scary poo poo that comes out of the freenas forum.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2015 16:39

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

sellouts posted:

Can you mobile sync to iOS yet?

Yes, you can as long as you have Plex Pass. I've been syncing shows to my iPhone so I can use it offline at the gym.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2015 20:18

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Plex really needs to allow you a way to create "channels" out of playlists...like a Kodi-PseudoTV variant. That's really the only thing I miss about Kodi anymore due to the convenience of Plex.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2015 15:03

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Tyson Tomko posted:

I've seen this mentioned in the Plex forums but wanted some goon opinions.

Is there an easy way to actually disable remote access? I have it setup and it works great, but I decided to disable it last night and realized even after clicking "disable" on the server options screen, I was still able to access it just fine with IP:port/web and was able to change anything and everything. The only way I could full on disable it was to disable the port forwarding I've got setup on my router. The reason I want to do this is so someone with a little knowledge doesn't go in and jack with my setup on accident/purpose.

It's not a really really big deal but I'm just confused what it's actually disabling if I can still get in there fine. I don't have a plex pass so I'm not able to (as far as I know) mess with any user permissions so I'm at a loss.

People you share with don't have access to your server settings. It's only people listed in the "my home" section that can access your server settings.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2015 21:03

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Really like the interface of the new player but drat if it doesn't have some user issues/bugs that need serious attention. Mainly my problem is with sync and how I can't just turn off my data at the gym and see my synced content from the home screen.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 00:49

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Is there some place I can configure processor allowance for sync conversions? I use xpenology on an e3-1241v3 and any time I want to sync a show that's .mkv it freaks out and basically tells me it'll take 300 minutes. This processor is much, much more than is necessary to convert this file.

# ¿ Sep 2, 2015 11:48

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

FlyingCheese posted:

Bandwidth limits should be a server setting and not a client one (or both). I'm not sure what the Plex guys were smoking when they came up with that one.

I agree, especially since I'm the one pumping out the files. I'd force most in to 720p as I know a few people who stream from me on "original". Thank God I have gigabit and unlimited bandwidth.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2015 15:09

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

I really don't like this new update. When watching HD content from the web I'm seeing the orange "spin" show up while my video is playing quite a bit. Never had this happen before I applied to update yesterday.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 20:05

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

TheScott2K posted:

My point was that bringing in-laws into one's piracy universe probably isn't worth the headaches.

I'm sure they're just watching Big Buck Bunny.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2015 11:57

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Laserface posted:

How does plex handle multiple versions of the same film?

I have 2 copies of a movie, one is a regular 700mb rip and the other is a 4.6GB HD rip. I only see one entry in Plex when I go to view my list of movies.

There are a couple of options. If you don't do anything both films will be lumped together and it will have a orange "2" on the poster.

If you want them separate, just click in to the detail, hit the ellipses and go to "split apart". I generally do this when I have a regular & a 3D movie. I also change out posters for one of the movies too.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 16:11

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

Fuzz posted:

Wow this app is not good at streaming 1080p files.

Completely you man. I stream just about everything on "original" remotely since I have gigabit. Transcode or not, it works.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 15:24

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

melon cat posted:

I'm buying a NAS for my Plex-running home media server, and had my eye on the Synology DS214play. Is there a better (and potentially less expensive) choice for my NAS options, as far as media streaming goes?

FCKGW posted:

Newegg has the HP Proliant ML10 Server on sale for $189 if anyone is looking for a cheap, low power Plex Server

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=2RC-001A-000R5

This is a better deal, especially if you need it to transcode media.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 23:55

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 10:13

suddenlyissoon: Feb 17, 2002; Don't be sad that I am gone.

spincube posted:

I can't get Plex to pull down info for this series from the TVDB - it's just Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3 etc. As far as I can tell the file and naming structure is fine, and there's no metadata in the files muddying the waters. Where am I going wrong?

Try going to the series level and selecting "fix incorrect match"?

# ¿ Mar 10, 2016 20:10

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