@AmazingRando24 said:
If your file isn’t naturally compatible with what your end device can play, PMS will convert (this is called a transcode) the file to make it compatible. There is no need to set anything like that up. Plex handles it automagically. Part of the brilliance of Plex.
The end devices I use is compatible with my media files. I have a laptop, iPad, and Android phone (which I rarely use with Plex so far) I only use Plex for video files so far. Direct Play of course.
So, it sounds like I don’t need to transcode at all if I make sure to have the correct file format? If that’s the case, then ANY computer should be fine along as Im not doing transcoding. I technically don’t even need a good GPU. Therefore, I could buy a cheap computer with any processor and hook up an external to it if I’d like.
@nigelpb said:
You really don’t want to transcode if at all possible not least because it rescues the quality. Choose decent clients & you can Direct Play everything. Your Plex server can be very modest. I used to run PMS on a 4TB Seagate Personal Cloud which must be the lowest powered NAS available that can run PMS & I successfully tested this with five simultaneous 1080p video streams (all Direct Play of course).
How do you know if you are transcoding or not? Will it be obvious? I normally just have files that are common video formats.
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