I was wondering if there is a way to share the plex library with another user and allow that user’s server to do the transcoding before delivering the media to external user’s client.
For example, I have a fellow tech friend, let’s call him Jim. Jim has a nice home server to support streaming for his small family. I also have a modest server, but it’s just powerful enough to serve my own needs. But I really want to share my library with him (and vice versa). Neither of us can spare the transcoding power, so right now we resort to giving each other ro access to each other’s media. What we really would like is for my server to allow Jim’s server to transcode media from my library for delivery to his clients (like a transcode proxy for his clients).
Is an option like this available? If not, where do I post to get this feature requested?
There is no way to accomplish this. You can try to post in feature requests, but his clients cannot access your server anyways without them being invited by you, and vice versa… This is implemented this way for quite a few reasons, the biggest being (Imagine he had 40+ users, and was invited to your server, then all of a sudden you have 40 new users taking away from your bandwidth and processing power which degrades the experience for your users). Servers are managed and handled by a single admin, and it’s up to that admin to manage the hardware and clients… This will never be the way you want it to be, and for many good reasons…
his clients cannot access your server anyways without them being invited by you
I think I should clarify, I like the way Plex has it now, where you have to be invited. I dont want that to change.
I simply want where the transcoding takes place to change. If an authorized, invited user of my server wants to watch something on my server but s/he has his own server, let his server do the transcoding. That’s the only change.
Possibly an extension of the Distributed Transcoding request? The servers would have to have knowledge of each other to hand off transcoding. Also use knowledge of who “owns” each server to make decision on where to transcode media (not just based on load).
You basically want to give Jim access to your media files. If you have the upload bandwidth (read symmetrical Gigabit Internet), you could create VPN tunnel and allow him access via a file sharing protocol to access your media files and vice-versa.
This is what we are doing, but the feature request (which I will post in a bit) is to not rely on third party tools or file sharing protocols to share the media. I’d love to implement a feature that allows plex to do it securely, all in one place.
You would still need the bandwidth even if something were created to do this. Does bandwidth exists between you two that would support reading the original media remotely before transcoding it?
the only way this would work is if you both have fast enough bandwidth to direct play the content. Then the local server would simply be a proxy for the remote server.
And if you both have high enough bandwidth, you can avoid transcoding in the first place, by simply setting the proper quality settings on both servers/clients.
clients should have remote quality = maximum
servers should have upload bandwidth set to whatever your upload speed is, and any remote quality setting to maximum/original quality.
then you should both direct play from each other server (no transcoding), unless your clients are not compatible with the content (ie trying to play 4k content on 1080 player/tv).
Although I get what you mean, this completely misses the mark. If this is the best way to do it, then why have transcoding at all. The fact is, not all devices can play the various formats out there, which is why we have transcoding. I simply want some flexibility on who is required to transcode.
This is pretty much what I’m going for. A way to push the responsibility of the transcode off to the remote server of the invited user accessing my server.
Well, as achilles suggests, it is unlikely that plex will attempt to re-invent the wheel, when a solution is already available.
Besides the fact this is such an esoteric idea that would only be of use to those which have extremely high internet speeds, and plex servers of poor power.
In any case, feel free to submit an actual feature request in the applicable forum, and hope that you get enough votes and support that plex would feel it is worth investing the engineering and man hours of programming over any of the other existing feature requests that are not yet implemented.
Otherwise, like I suggest above, increase your quality settings to avoid transcoding, and/or get better playback devices which are compatible with more media, and/or buy/build more powerful plex servers that can cope with any necessary transcoding loads for your local and remote users.
Your situation is not any different than any other plex user with under-powered servers.
