A question :
With home bandwidth of around 15 Mbps, reception of NetFlix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming content providers is hassle-free.
So why is reception from my server in the Cloud, located in a DATA CENTER connected in gigabits, so bad, or even sometimes impossible?
I specify that my server, equipped with SSD disk of a processor Xeon 8 cores and 32GB of memory has nothing to do other than being a PLEX server, that even when it does conversions from a media MKV 4K to HD1080P is far from being 100% exploited.
It seems that Plex is unable to properly optimize its management of data flow to the client.
Okay ; sometimes it works: in particular if we set very low flow limits (2Mb), but beyond: it is hypothetical and above all the adjustment aimed at adapting to the transport capacity of the network never manages to give good result (it ends with a message like: “the server cannot send you your movie”)
Do I have to ask the server to optimize all media?
That’s not a lot of cores for transcoding, especially when you’re transcoding:
I would imagine it IS getting 100% exploited. Even with 16 virtual cores + GPU transcoding with a 1070Ti I can only crack about 75 fps (3x the rate of the video) using the fastest 4K encoder I’ve found (StaxRip)… All other encoders by comparison hover around 60-65fps.
But again, that’s WITH a GPU AND all 16 cores (8 True cores 8 Virtual Cores). 8 Cores of a Xeon simply may not be enough to hang.
I stream multiple 4K Direct Play streams outside of my network all the time on Google Fiber, I commonly am sending out at 700Mbps to my remote viewers. So this is definitely not the case.
This indicates some sort of choke point to me, Wifi is a possibility, the TV’s decoding processor is another…
No, you can optimize everything yourself to be as compatible as possible with your devices using something like Handbrake and StaxRip. I would keep 4K files in a separate Library, and only play them on devices capable of 4K with the bandwidth necessary to be played in 4K. 4K Remuxes I’ve seen go as high as 150Mbits.
NetFlix, Amazon Prime, and Other streaming service providers also have 5 copies of everything in various resolutions and it seamlessly moves from one resolution to the other based on network bandwidth. They’re not relying on a transcoder to transcode at various resolutions. Their content is also heavily encoded to lower bitrates… Native 1080 from BluRay is typically Anywhere from 20-40Mbit depending on the movie, Amazon’s files, by contrast, are usually down to 5-10Mbit. Native 4K from a UHD is commonly around 70-90Mbit with Bursts up to 150Mbit, Netflix and Amazons are down around the 15-25Mbit arena.
I hope this information gives you some guidelines or some more understanding of what it is you’re actually dealing with/facing. But a 15Mbps download speed isn’t really enough to watch full 1080 content from a BluRay, you’ll need to transcode your media to a more manageable bitrate.
My 4 vcore VPS is also able to properly direct play 4k material and transcodes 1080p just fine, at Bluray Bitrate it starts to sweat, but it works.
So I also guess that 4k transcode is the problem here.
Very important: Where?
If the data center is on a different continent, you’ll get long packet roundtrip times. And that’s detrimental to good throughput if you’re streaming lots of tiny packets (which is what comes out of plex server if it has to remux or transcode).
There is a reason why all globally operating video streaming portals are hosting their data always in several datacenters which are distributed around the globe.
