Plex Version: 1.5.6.3790-4613e077
DSM: 6.1.1-15101 Update 4
NAS Model number. DS916+ 8G ram
I am having a concern of my CPU usage going up about 97% when using Plex streaming 1080p movies. I tested the same movie on my friend’s DS415+ and his usage only went up to around 35%. Both of our transcoding settings are the same.
Hi there,
So apparently I’m the friend OP is referring to :). As he mentioned, my CPU usage isn’t as high. I’m running the Plex Client on my Windows machine. Not sure if that makes a difference in the transcoding. And my server version is 1.5.6.3790-4613ce077.
Here’s the info OP passed onto me:
Media
Video Resolution 720p
Duration 1:57:36
Bitrate 2525 kbps
Width 1854
Height 800
Aspect Ratio 2.35
Container MP4
Video Frame Rate 24p
Web Optimized No
Audio Profile lc
Has 64bit Offsets 0
Video Profile high
Part
Duration 1:57:36
Size 2.07 GB
Audio Profile lc
Container MP4
Has 64bit Offsets 0
Web Optimized No
Video Profile high
Codec H264
Bitrate 2198 kbps
Bit Depth 8
Chroma Subsampling 4:2:0
Color Range tv
Color Space bt709
Frame Rate 23.976 fps
Height 800
Level 4.1
Profile high
Ref Frames 5
Stream Identifier 1
Width 1854
Codec AAC
Channels 5.1
Bitrate 327 kbps
Language English
Audio Channel Layout 5.1
Profile lc
Sampling Rate 48000 Hz
Stream Identifier 2
Codec MOV_TEXT
Language English
Stream Identifier 3
Codec MOV_TEXT
Language English
Stream Identifier 4
Codec SRT
Language English
Seems like mobile devices are very efficient with testing 1080p video.
iPhone
Apple TV 4
where cpu usage is around 3% to 40%
but with
Mac OSX / Chrome cpu usage goes up to 97% for both of our NAS
Hey Andy,
Thanks for the explanation. For some reason, I always thought Plex would always do the transcoding. I guess it’s smarter now to only transcode when necessary. But after you explained that it will attempt to do Direct Playing, then it makes sense why my PC client had no problem playing those files.
There are a couple of things that puzzle me… I have VLC on my mac and it plays MKV files just fine. Doesn’t that set up the codec in MacOS like it does in Windows, or is the playback encoding just limited to within the VLC app?
Also, Apple TV and tvOS doesn’t seem to support MKV files either, yet when I’m streaming to my Apple TV, there’s hardly any CPU usage. Thoughts?
Thanks.
–Chris
Hey Andy,
Thanks for the explanation. Yeah, I’m not surprised that it takes up a lot of CPU to transcode the files on the fly. It was just surprising to me that Apple TV didn’t have any issues with it, whereas the Mac did, even though they’re both Apple products and only support the limited formats. At any rate, as long as it works on Apple TV without much of a performance hit, then I’m pretty happy.
Thanks again, and looking forward to the HW Acceleration in the future!
–Chris
@trumpy81
I have recently become aware of this problem on my synology 1815+, which has an Intel Atom C2538 with 16Gb of RAM. I have over 1000 movie file most of which are ,mkv and just playing back from my andriod phone cause 97% cpu usage. I heard that I could use the hap codec which requires very low cpu usage but not sure if synology/plex supports that codec. Rather than re-encode all my movies to .mp4 or a hap codec if that worked I wonder if it would be easier to just use a desktop which links to my synology drives but houses the plex media server. Thoughts please ???
@trumpy81 I’m going to do some tests tonight. My other question is when I installed PMS on my windows 10 machine I can’t seem to get remote access. I have it on my synology but not windows 10. On the synology I’m using port 3400 as my manual public port on the windows 10 I used a self assigned. When i hit retry it lights up green for about 2 seconds then back to red. When I change my synology port( in the software and on the router port fwding) it does the same thing. No matter what port number I use it goes green then back to red unless I use 3400. When I try 3400 on windows 10 it still doesn’t work and I can’t port fwd the same port on my router to 2 different IP adresses. Any suggestions??
It took a couple hours but I finally realized that the port forwarding on the AT&T Pace router needed me to out in the host port number 3400. Once i did that everything worked out fine. Thank you @trumpy81 for your continued support. I’ve decided to use a separate desktop for transcoding. Feel free to impart any processor/motherboard suggestions
@trumpy81 That’s the conclusion that I came to as well thank you. Can you possible tell me how to get to these setting below on my PMP it seems to elude me. I went to settings but never see them. I’m running PMP ver 3.57.1
@trumpy81 it is but it doesn’t show up there
for me all I see is this
Do I need plex pass? I have a home theater and need to enable pass-through mode
OMGosh I cant believe all this time and I’m just finding this. I feel so dumb right now! Thank you yet again for the help!!!
Unfortunately I don’t have any answers, only problems. I was wondering if anyone could help me. My CPU is also running at about 97% when using PMS and videos buffer A LOT during playback. I have found that I have less problems with buffering when connected via Ethernet vs wifi. I’m not having any issues with small/DVD quality files, only with larger/BD quality files. I am not a computer savvy person but was able to set everything up and get it working for the most part with basic research and youtube videos. Thank you in advance for any help that can be provided. Please see below for set up.
Synology DS1618+
20GB RAM
1TB cache
playing MKV files - most between 15GB - 30 GB
PMS used via Xbox One
Over both Ethernet and wifi
The C3538 CPU does not support Quick Sync Video so therefor will perform all transcoding in software (in the CPU).
It is common for 90+% CPU utilization on the C-series CPUs.
The better choice would have been a J-series CPU such as the DS918+
I see. Thank you for the response.
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