so is it possible for Plex to add a archive encoding feature?
such as, for watched movies, shows that no episodes are watched, or just files untouched for X amount of time, Plex will consider them as ‘archived’. and then maybe during nights Plex can re-encode them into h.265 and delete the original files. by this we may reduce the disk space consumption since h.265 takes much less space than h.264 which most videos are in…
I hope this never sees the light of Plex Day…
H265 is too fraught with issues for even some high end hardware. There’s a plethora of threads about this codec itself. A simple search will yield more results than most people would care to look at. Look here for some of the issues: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/272940/h-265-anyone#latest
and this is still on the first page.
And as for archiving? Isn’t that the admin’s job to move stuff or delete it if it’s not being used? I don’t want an app to delete something just because I haven’t looked at it in a few months… It was stretching Plex’s limits a bit to have the ability to delete media in the Web App and on clients. And then it’s only for the admin account. Having Plex do this automatically would be against the policies the Plex Team has stated, and against what a lot of users want.
If you want something that deletes stuff, check out the auto delete scripts in the 3rd party forums. I personally haven’t (and won’t) tried it, but it seems to have a following.
Another thought is to open a Google Drive account or similar that is supported by Plex Cloud. You as a Plex Pass customer can setup a cloud server for no additional charge.
This way you can MOVE you older content to Google Drive and it will free up your local storage but still keep the media available via your Cloud Server. You can search both servers at the same time from the search box.
I don’t know what you think of this idea but it’s another way you could archive media and keep it available at the same time without the downside of h.265 that Mike mentioned.
@MikeG6.5 said:
I hope this never sees the light of Plex Day…H265 is too fraught with issues for even some high end hardware. There’s a plethora of threads about this codec itself. A simple search will yield more results than most people would care to look at. Look here for some of the issues: https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/272940/h-265-anyone#latest
and this is still on the first page.And as for archiving? Isn’t that the admin’s job to move stuff or delete it if it’s not being used? I don’t want an app to delete something just because I haven’t looked at it in a few months… It was stretching Plex’s limits a bit to have the ability to delete media in the Web App and on clients. And then it’s only for the admin account. Having Plex do this automatically would be against the policies the Plex Team has stated, and against what a lot of users want.
If you want something that deletes stuff, check out the auto delete scripts in the 3rd party forums. I personally haven’t (and won’t) tried it, but it seems to have a following.
well, first we must have huge difference on how one manages PLEX. in most situations, there’s no such thing as admin, there’s just husband who set up PLEX, and shares it with wife and kids. and the husband doesnt have so much time and energy to manually ‘move stuff or delete it’. that’s why he wants something automatic.
and h265 may be a little problematic at this point, that’ why we don’t want to convert the entire library to h265, only those archiving files, those files are not very likely to be needed, but we just don’t want to delete them.
say I’m a big fan of ‘the lord of the rings’, and I ripped and watched all of them. I know I’m not gonna to watch them in a while, but I still wanna keep them. I keep them so that one day when I want to watch them again, I don’t need to search all over the internet and who knows if I’m still gonna find them. meanwhile, since I’m not gonna watch it anytime soon, it would certainly be beneficial for me if it could take less space.
@cayars said:
Another thought is to open a Google Drive account or similar that is supported by Plex Cloud. You as a Plex Pass customer can setup a cloud server for no additional charge.This way you can MOVE you older content to Google Drive and it will free up your local storage but still keep the media available via your Cloud Server. You can search both servers at the same time from the search box.
I don’t know what you think of this idea but it’s another way you could archive media and keep it available at the same time without the downside of h.265 that Mike mentioned.
sure, if we can have a reliable cloud solution that will be the solution to everything, no need to invest in expensive hard drives, servers, etc.
however, the problem is, Plex cloud is not any more reliable than h.265, and given the history Plex just pulled ACD support, I’m not sure how long the deal between PLEX and google/dropbox will last.
also, encryption/copyright is a big problem. currently Plex cloud does not support encryption, and the encrypted solution (rclone) is extremely completed, and not reliable as well (amazon just revoked rclone access, google limits API access per day). without encryption, how are you going to protect yourself if/when they decide to look into copyright contents? can you still find the receipt of which you rented a DVD 5 years ago from the store nearby and ripped it?
@garyleecn said:
also, encryption/copyright is a big problem. currently Plex cloud does not support encryption, and the encrypted solution (rclone) is extremely completed, and not reliable as well (amazon just revoked rclone access, google limits API access per day). without encryption, how are you going to protect yourself if/when they decide to look into copyright contents? can you still find the receipt of which you rented a DVD 5 years ago from the store nearby and ripped it?
If you do something illegal, you have to be prepared to face the consequences. Putting anything on the internet, regardless of encryption, is at your own risk. Also, the rental DVD is a poor example, since copying a rental has never been even remotely considered allowed since you don’t own it.
@garyleecn said:
say I’m a big fan of ‘the lord of the rings’, and I ripped and watched all of them. I know I’m not gonna to watch them in a while, but I still wanna keep them. I keep them so that one day when I want to watch them again, I don’t need to search all over the internet and who knows if I’m still gonna find them. meanwhile, since I’m not gonna watch it anytime soon, it would certainly be beneficial for me if it could take less space.
You have the original disc, so you can always rip it again. Certainly you aren’t pirating content, right?
@kegobeer-plex said:
@garyleecn said:
also, encryption/copyright is a big problem. currently Plex cloud does not support encryption, and the encrypted solution (rclone) is extremely completed, and not reliable as well (amazon just revoked rclone access, google limits API access per day). without encryption, how are you going to protect yourself if/when they decide to look into copyright contents? can you still find the receipt of which you rented a DVD 5 years ago from the store nearby and ripped it?If you do something illegal, you have to be prepared to face the consequences. Putting anything on the internet, regardless of encryption, is at your own risk. Also, the rental DVD is a poor example, since copying a rental has never been even remotely considered allowed since you don’t own it.
The problem is, there’s hardly any “legal” way to upload any content to your plex library.
Say you bought a DVD, first you can bring the disc to your friends house, but you cannot rip it. Copying the content off the disc is illegal already
Second, what if you lost the DVD disc, what if you lost Thebes’s receipt of purchase?
Or you purchased it on iTunes, you are not supposed to get it out of iTunes, and remove DRM
What you are referring to I believe is DVD and BluRay discs with movies and TV Shows on them encrypted with DRM. This is a gray area as it depends on where you live on the planet. In the US you have technically broken the law as soon as you use any method to break or circumvent the DRM protection. If however you live in parts of the UK it’s been legal to make copies of CD, DVD, BluRay, audiobooks, etc, since 2014 including the breaking of DRM. “You are permitted to make personal copies to any device that you own, or a personal online storage medium, such as a private cloud. However, it is unlawful to give other people access to the copies you have made, including, for example, by allowing a friend to access your personal cloud storage.”
The US has come close to adapting to the UK “standard” as well. They vote on DCMA exceptions every 3 years and there is a good chance this will change on the next vote.
I have a ton of media that I or my family has recorded from years and years of video camera use and now smartphone recording. I have tons of pictures as well from digitized photos to those taken on digital cameras and smartphones. I’ve got tons of music albums I’ve legally ripped from music discs. I’ve got tons of movies and TV shows I’ve recorded over the years from different DVR/PVR systems I’ve used (Myth TV, Beyond TV, Plex & Sage TV to name a few). I’ve got every NFL game recorded since 2012 for example as I’m a Huge American football fan.
So it’s quite easy to have a huge library of media you build up over time for you and your family without breaking any laws.
@cayars said:
What you are referring to I believe is DVD and BluRay discs with movies and TV Shows on them encrypted with DRM. This is a gray area as it depends on where you live on the planet. In the US you have technically broken the law as soon as you use any method to break or circumvent the DRM protection. If however you live in parts of the UK it’s been legal to make copies of CD, DVD, BluRay, audiobooks, etc, since 2014 including the breaking of DRM. “You are permitted to make personal copies to any device that you own, or a personal online storage medium, such as a private cloud. However, it is unlawful to give other people access to the copies you have made, including, for example, by allowing a friend to access your personal cloud storage.”The US has come close to adapting to the UK “standard” as well. They vote on DCMA exceptions every 3 years and there is a good chance this will change on the next vote.
I have a ton of media that I or my family has recorded from years and years of video camera use and now smartphone recording. I have tons of pictures as well from digitized photos to those taken on digital cameras and smartphones. I’ve got tons of music albums I’ve legally ripped from music discs. I’ve got tons of movies and TV shows I’ve recorded over the years from different DVR/PVR systems I’ve used (Myth TV, Beyond TV, Plex & Sage TV to name a few). I’ve got every NFL game recorded since 2012 for example as I’m a Huge American football fan.
So it’s quite easy to have a huge library of media you build up over time for you and your family without breaking any laws.
a few problem among your own example.
0. I believe personal photo and home videos are not why most people use PLEX, so lets just forget about them.
- it’s rather easy to record tv show, sports, but the amount of movies is limited (comparing to tv/sports), so I guess the majority of movies comes from Blu-ray/online.
- I was talking about US, so I assumed we all lived in the US. of course country/region will affect a lot of things, like if you download TRON in North Korea or Cuba, I doubt you will get in trouble because of copyright.
- another big problem is, how can you prove you obtained the media legally. you may bought the Blu-ray and ripped (say, in UK), or you may DVRed it (and cut the commercial). but one day, the cloud service provider just emails you, saying “hey, we found a lot of copyright material under your account, we are gonna delete all of them and report to the authority”. what are you going to do, are you going to carefully keep all the receipts of your blu-ray/CD purchase? then what about the DVRs? how can you prove you DVRed them yourself, not some John Doe did the DVR and posted it online?
I know legally you probably don’t need to prove you are innocent, but still google/amazon/dropbox may just close your account, and you loose all of your Plex library. our goal is to make everything easier, simpler, safer, a simple encryption can help a lot.
ok, above is why we need encryption, if we are going to use cloud storage.
and here’s some other disadvantages of cloud storage itself.
- upload is going to be a huge problem. if you use Comcast, your typical upload is just 5mbps or 10mbps, which will make it a painfully long process to upload your library.
- also, if you are using Comcast, the download speed may also be terrible during prime hours. I used to have Comcast, 150mbps download plan, and during prime hours even on weekday, I would be lucky to get ~10mbps down.
- after all, using cloud storage is using others’ service, they may someday change policy, raise the price, or even ban you. I’d rather control my own data myself.
You bring up some valid points I thought would get mentioned. 
I guess how many TV Shows and Movies you can record depends on if your are OVA or cable. I’m on FIOS/cable and have over 250 channels configured. I recorded 4 movies yesterday that I didn’t have that seemed worthy.
TV Shows are much easier since you can just setup the series and be done with them vs Movies which you will need to monitor. But you could probably easily record a 1000 movies a year this way (I do).
While it’s not proof, it stands to reason that most if not all of your recorded content will have network logo watermarks in them which is a strong indication you legally recorded it via broadcast. Also your copy of a recording and everyone else’s copy will almost assuredly have different hash codes and will be unique. This well keep these files from showing up during a scan of known hash codes that torrents/Usenet files will share. The hash codes are a dead giveaway of illegal files.
The biggest thing is simply do not openly share your content ever. Private sharing to a few family/friends will keep you off the radar screen. Having shares on your amazon/google drive account are a NO NO if you are trying to lay low.
Yes encryption would be nice and I wish we had this feature via Plex cloud but we don’t. Right now if you play direct a file from your cloud drive Plex can hand off the “source location” and give the client the google drive location of the file itself sort of stepping out of the way allowing for faster access to the file. We would not be able to easily do this if the content is encrypted and all media would have to flow through the server in order to be de-encrypted. Plus there are other issues that would come into play. Both the Plex server and the client you use to upload files would need to speak the exact same type of encryption. This would almost surely force us to standardize on one or two different client side transfer programs.
There are definite obstacles to cloud computing in this manner. Some people roll their own cloud server using VPS or dedicated servers so that they can fully control both the server and how/if the data is encrypted.
