I am looking for the ultimate transcoding hardware for under $1000. I already have a NAS with plenty of storage, but when I have more than one transcode running the server can’t keep up. I don’t want to have to commit to a single media format so I think I just need to buy/build something that will take care of it for me. I have looked at this NUC Config but I have never used one and don’t know if it will meet my needs.
I’m comfortable building a system but would like people’s input on what would be the best for my money. I’m looking to keep it under $1000, but could go a bit over if the performance gain is significant.
I have looked into it, but it isn’t an appealing solution for me. I currently only have one system with a CPU powerful enough to convert the library in a semi-reasonable amount of time. The problem is that is the system that is currently my Plex Server. If I were to have that system reencode my library it wouldn’t have enough power left to support a single transcode stream.
I’m hoping to have a mixed approach by purchasing or building a new server that can handle any on the fly transcoding required while my current server is re-purposed to optimize my library in the background.
You already have a Windows PC of some relatively recent vintage? Something with an i5 or better processor?
That combined with something like Handbrake would be the faster way of doing re-encoding. It could presumably be scripted so and so wouldn’t be a lot of manual effort.
Yeah, you can throw hardware into a new PMS server (something with a high Passmark) but with re-encoding you could likely keep your existing PMS installation on the NAS and not have to deal with the database migration consequences.
The best transcoder power right now you’ll get with CPU’s which have a high clock rate.
Or to put it another way: if you have several cpu contenders with comparable overall passmark score, then pick the cpu which has less cores but higher ‘single thread rating’.
Plex’s ‘Transcoder’ isn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, but if you Handbrake Direct Play Versions that make you happy, you don’t have to suffer through whatever Plex decides is best - and gets it wrong most of the time.
Your ‘Not A Server’ can deliver as many Direct Play streams as you have bandwidth for… probably… and it’s paid for… probably.
Once you find those magic settings that work across your devices (pretty easy, actually) you can keep dropping items on Handbrake and keep Adding Them To The Queue. The sooner you get started the sooner you get done, but if you never get started you’re out $1000 and still have to suffer through Plex’s Transcoder Dumbness Issues.
I have an I7 Skull NUC as my PMS server with a NAS for my storage.
Skull + 250 SSD + 16 gb = $800 ish
Most of my media is coded to stream to most clients with no transcoding.
I have had 7 connectios at one time with the Skull CPU only bouncing upto 20%
This should not be hard, considering my entire unified NAS+PMS box was under $800 sans hard drives, and has more than enough power for several simultaneous 1080P transcodes.
If you’re considering at all converting your media check out the scripts in my sig/thread. You could run them on your Server as a low priority. So anything else on the box such as Plex would get first access to the CPU. Essentially it would just convert things in the background.
If you real-time transcode via Plex you’ll never get the same quality you can get with a finely tuned conversion.
Just saying,
Carlo
PS you should not have a problem building/purchasing a computer to run Plex on for $1K.
@sap995 said:
I am looking for the ultimate transcoding hardware for under $1000. I already have a NAS with plenty of storage, but when I have more than one transcode running the server can’t keep up. I don’t want to have to commit to a single media format so I think I just need to buy/build something that will take care of it for me. I have looked at this NUC Config but I have never used one and don’t know if it will meet my needs.
I’m comfortable building a system but would like people’s input on what would be the best for my money. I’m looking to keep it under $1000, but could go a bit over if the performance gain is significant.
How many clients are you wanting to support?
Are these clients all in house or are there quite a few remote users?
If all your streaming was in your home, I’d look at buying better plex clients that could DIRECTPLAY anything and avoid having to buy server hardware to support transcoding.
@cayars I have looked into the scripts that are in your signature and they seem like they would work very well. My problem is I do not have a windows machine presently and I am not skilled enough to figure out how to run your scripts on a MAC.
I will try to explain my overall goal and maybe someone can tell me how to achieve it. I am open to spending what I need to to obtain the goal. However saving money might save me some time explaining to my wife why I spent another $1000+ on computer parts .
I have Plex setup at my house and frequently have family over for movie nights. They have all started to ask if I would share my server with them. Initially I didn’t want to do this specifically because I didn’t want to upgrade my hardware. Fast forward 2 years and I am in a better place to invest in my Plex setup allowing me to share it with a very select few individuals. My problem now is that I don’t want them calling and saying something isn’t playing well on their device. I also don’t want my experience to be degraded by someone else watching something while I am trying to watch something.
My current setup consists of a late 2014 Mac Mini and a 32TB Western Digital PR4100. Since my original post on the thread I have hardwired all local clients; this has helped slightly, but not fixed all issues. My solution to this problem is to either spend a lot of time optimizing my library or spend some money to get a transcoding work horse. Since I haven’t had a lot of time lately I am leaning toward getting a transcoding work horse that runs windows. That way I can allow it to meet my immediate need as well as overtime run @cayars scripts to optimize my entire library.
Here is what I have spec’d out as my new server. If there is anything on this list that should be swapped out, at a reasonable price difference, please let me know. I would like to get the maximum impact for my spend.
I have not added a graphics card as most of what I have read says plex does not use the GPU for transcoding and only uses the CPU.
From what I have read this should be overkill for what I am looking for and handle the streams as well as the library optimizations.
If there is anything I should swap out to get similar performance for roughly the same price please let me know. I am not an expert by any means and have picked everything here based on some light reading, mainly the recommendations from Newegg’s product pages.
@sap995, you can convert your media using Handbrake (it’s available on OSX). It isn’t automated like cayars script, but it does exactly the same thing. You can go through each of the files and add the conversion to the queue, then start the processing and come back when it’s done. It won’t impact your current Plex server performance. Here’s what I would do: pick a group of movies that is very popular among your family, that they tend to watch more than the others, and convert those first. Then, create a new library on your Plex server that will ONLY have the converted files in it. Then, stop sharing all other libraries and only share that one. That’s what I did when I decided to convert my movies using Handbrake (to take the load off my server when my friends are watching remotely) and I haven’t had any complaints.
^^ That seems like a sound approach. The Handbrake Guide in my sig should apply to all versions of the same release family, but if there are slight differences they should be easy to sort out.
As far as quality use the bit rate method (predictable file sizes and as you might expect - bit rates), not the constant quality method (wildly unpredictable file sizes and bit rates). Figure in the number of possible users likely to be using remote access at any given time, divide that into the available upload pipe and extrapolate a ‘best use case quality’ to shoot for.
If you have the upload pipe for it, Netflix or Amazon Content ball parks between 3500Kbps and 4500Kbps for 720p-1080p. Most would agree that’s ‘good enough’, but if you have to go a bit lower, run a few test files and create a bottom line for yourself.
When having the remote clients set their quality Plex is very annoying in the fact that it transcodes based, not on bit rate, but on resolution. If you have a 1080p file wih a bit rate of 4Mbps (roughly 4000Kbps) it’s going to look pretty good, but if your friends set their remote quality at 4Mbps-720p - Plex stupidly transcodes a file it absolutely should not touch. Have your remote clients use 8Mbps-1080p and convert to stay under that bit rate. All should Direct Play or at worst, Direct Stream to convert a rogue audio track if necessary - easily done in most cases by nearly any server.
Not even close to the same thing. The scripts make individual decisions based on the media itself and not just some set of canned profiles setup that may or may not be correct for the media you are trying to process. As a simple example take a few DVR recordings or a mix of Bluray/DVDs and try processing them. You need to treat each differently for good results. 720 resolution broadcast (in the US) is always progressive while 1080 is interlaced. Similar with BlueRay vs DVD. Different formats/standards and they need different processing settings. Sure you can view the material, make a decision and then process the files or just apply a set of filters to all media but that doesn’t produce quality videos.
Handbrake is so time consuming to use and you have to view each video to determine how to process the files correctly to get good results. What’s the refresh rate? Is it progressive or interlaced? PAL/NTSC (old name) based? If interlaced what filter to use based on the media to deinterlace it properly. Do you need to change the bitrate, or the level? Is the aspect ratio correct or does it need adjusting? Do you want to remove audio languages you don’t care about (same with subtitles)? Did someone previously “crop” the video and screwed up the true aspect ratio and do you need to fix it? Is the audio in the correct format you need or does it need an additional audio track such as 2 channel stereo? Did someone previously down sample muti-channel audio to 2 channel audio throwing out channels and foo-bared the volume so general talk is quite low while action scenes are extremely loud? What about the fps or refresh rate? These are all basic things to take into consideration to convert your media properly to a format that is pleasing to use and consistent from file to file.
Some of these things are trivial while others more for personal enjoyment. Example, how often do you have to adjust your volume from movie to movie as one is low and the next very loud?
Handbrake is stupid as well. It always re-processes everything when it could just remux many files. It doesn’t do any audio processing such as normalization either.
If you must do files one by one then try a much better program such as XMedia Recode instead of Handbrake as it doesn’t have the flaws that Handbrake has. Or use an older version of Handbrake. The newer versions make bad choices especially on older content ripped from DVDs.
Far better to setup a workflow suited to your environment needs and then just point it at your media and be done with it. Forget trying to process files one by one via HB or similar program as that would get tiresome quickly and would take an eternity to do.
Of course that’s just my opinion and I’m quite biased
Carlo
PS @sap995 forget about a 3rd party GPU. That i7 will support hardware based transcoding for Plex (or handbrake or my scripts) once released. There is also a HW transcoding beta that any Plex-Pass user can run right now that would take advantage of it.
You probably don’t need the water cooler. Go without it first and check temps. Very few people really ever need this. Good ventilation should be fine. You could add the BR player after the fact if need to save a few bucks. I believe that motherboard is limited to 4 SATA connections. Might want to check out asrock boards as well.
Oh, i just thought of something but already closed the pages. Your SSD is NVMe so make sure the motherboard you purchase support this. Don’t assume that since it says M.2 it will work.
@cayars said:
Not even close to the same thing. The scripts make individual decisions based on the media itself and not just some set of canned profiles setup that may or may not be correct for the media you are trying to process. As a simple example take a few DVR recordings or a mix of Bluray/DVDs and try processing them. You need to treat each differently for good results. 720 resolution broadcast (in the US) is always progressive while 1080 is interlaced. Similar with BlueRay vs DVD. Different formats/standards and they need different processing settings. Sure you can view the material, make a decision and then process the files or just apply a set of filters to all media but that doesn’t produce quality videos.
Handbrake is so time consuming to use and you have to view each video to determine how to process the files correctly to get good results.
It’s like ‘War and Peace’ - the graphic novel version - with pictures even. The ‘guesswork’ and ‘years of learning’ has been baked right out of this cake. I wrote it with Plex in mind, for Plex Users. It IS BulletProof, and produces reliable, predictable results - every - single - time.
I use the experience I have gained over YEARS of learning how to do it (not that easy - as you point out) to create awesome content every day here at JuiceTown Studios. I have 1 in the queue right now with 6 On Deck. I need the full power of the server box for an hour or two between Handbrake sessions today - trying for those last few Steam Achievements for Wolfenstein The New Order. The server can serve up Direct Play material while that’s happening, but I don’t need a Handbrake Job going on in the background.
I am not contesting the validity of your scripts. I’ll even say with some certainty that your scripts should probably be several magnitudes of improvement over Plex’s Transcoder (that’s the dumbest thing on the Planet). I just prefer the GUI approach and in case other users do as well The Handbrake Guide was written for them.
In the end we’re all using the same ffmpeg in one way or another. How we get there may be different.
@cayars Thanks for the input. The Product page says that the MB supports NVMe Raid. Glad you mentioned it as I did assume that M.2 would just work. Either way it looks like I am in the clear.
As for the liquid cooler I am mainly getting that to try and cut down on noise.
I will get this put together in the next couple of weeks and try out the HW transcoding and report back. I think between the overpowered CPU and your scripts I should be pretty close to the optimal Plex experience; for myself and my family.
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