Please add the feature to disable the transcoding totally! QNAP has not enqough CPU to transcode one or more simultaneously.
1 Like
@Plex105 said:
Please add the feature to disable the transcoding totally! QNAP has not enqough CPU to transcode one or more simultaneously.
IF your media is properly prepared (optimally pre-processed for your players (tv, tables, etc) , transcoding wonāt be necessary and there will be no need to intervene.
If you completely disable the transcoder, e.g. remove the executable, youāre left with a web streamer (Direct Play only) which would mandate you make video and audio 100% playable to all devices.
@ChuckPA said:
IF your media is properly prepared (optimally pre-processed for your players (tv, tables, etc) , transcoding wonāt be necessary and there will be no need to intervene.
If you completely disable the transcoder, e.g. remove the executable, youāre left with a web streamer (Direct Play only) which would mandate you make video and audio 100% playable to all devices.
I donāt mean to be rude but that reasoning is a bit narrow minded. Some of us want all our users to be able to play our pre-processed media from anywhere as long as they have a compatible device and the bandwidth for it. If they donāt but decide to try anyway, that shouldnāt put a low-powered server on its knees (usually in vain), and we shouldnāt have to ask every user to set their account for direct play only.
5 Likes
@keldian said:
I donāt mean to be rude but that reasoning is a bit narrow minded. Some of us want all our users to be able to play our pre-processed media from anywhere as long as they have a compatible device and the bandwidth for it. If they donāt but decide to try anyway, that shouldnāt put a low-powered server on its knees (usually in vain), and we shouldnāt have to ask every user to set their account for direct play only.
I also donāt wish to seem rude. I recognize this is a sensitive topic (the cost of our equipment) versus what we can reasonably expect from it. Iām the same about my equipment. I expect a lot but supporting Plex as I do, Iāve learned what the processors are actually capable of and what to expect fro mthem.
That said, how did I misunderstand the OPās request to disable the transcoder completely ?
I stated what has to be done (remove the executable) and what the ramifications are.
It canāt be disabled by a user-facing setting.
The term ālow poweredā is subjective. You mention not putting the processor āon its kneesā but Video, not knowing any specifics of the source material, is demanding. A quantitative list of NAS processors, as shown in the NAS compatibility list,
shows this very clearly. I can augment this list by stating my i7-3740qm desktop computer (8000 passmarks) can transcode 2 streams easily at my average bitrate (15 Mbps). It can accomplish this because it has 4 cores. Transcoding is largely single-core (two thread) intensive (the actual video encoding core). The input demuxer, audio processing, and output remux tasks will take another ācoreā of resources. Some formats require two cores to do the video processingā¦ This is why I can get two simultaneous transcodes in most cases but not three (quad core, eight logical threads)
The typical NAS cpu is low powered. Most are grossly under powered as it pertains to the demands of transcoding video on-demand (realtime or better throughput processing). They can handle audio and some SD video. They can also handle container conversion (known as DirectStream). Actual bit rate reductions are out of realm of possibility for most units.
The typical laptop can manage one stream provided the transform (reduction in bitrate / change of encoding) delta is reasonable. Transcoding 4K HEVC HDR to mobile-consumable 720p isnāt possible on anything except the latest KabyLake and GeminiLake processors using Hardware transcoding.
Iām willing to work through this with you given quantitative examples with actual numbers.
My general statement of putting someone into DirectPlay only when the transcoder is no longer present is the precise result of removing / disabling it. It wonāt be able to convert audio or video. DirectPlay it is.
Please clarify where I am in error?
Iām a bit lost here. You recognize that some devices simply canāt handle transcoding, but you maintain that thereās no need to ever disable it completely. I have gone through the proper amount of testing and come to the conclusion that transcoding is detrimental with my setup, and so have others, so why beat around the bush by discussing numbers? What does the development team have to lose by introducing a simple toggle that can disable the transcoder altogether without affecting anything else?
6 Likes
Excuse me, I do not maintain there is no need to disable it.
First I stated what must be done to disable the transcoder completely and what happens when you disable it.
Next you refute my statement and tell me Iā wrong.
I reiterate my statement
My general statement of putting someone into DirectPlay only when the transcoder is no longer present is the precise result of removing / disabling it. It wonāt be able to convert audio or video. DirectPlay it is.
How am i maintaining there is no need to disable it? I am stating fact, not opinion.
Regarding a user-facing setting to enable or disable transcoding, there is none. Itās been requested and rejected by engineering.
1 Like
Fair enough. I guess I misunderstood you.
My first postā¦ 
If, as stated, the client knows when transcoding isneeded, why in my scenario does it happen???
I have a Windows Server 2016 with 16GB RAM and two big RAIDs. This server is connected via 10GB to a Cisco switch and a 1GB cable to the TV Set (Samsung Series 6, 4K/UHD with the built in PLEX clientā¦).
I started a 4k Movie and the server almost jumped out of the rackā¦
Why in all the world does the client thinks he needs transcoding??? Netflix streams with 4k over the internet, PLEX canāt over 40m 1GB cable?
Please helpā¦
1 Like
Is it 4K (8 bit) or is it HEVC HDR (10 bit) ?
4K (8 bit) streaming is āeasyā when Direct Play and is just fine for even the smallest of processors (e.g. Synology DS1813+)
4K (8 bit) streaming with audio and/or video transcoding requires a SkyLake or HW transcoding to change encoding format or bit rates
HEVC HDR (10 bit) needs a Kaby Lake and HW transcoding if not DirectPlay .
The answer is in the XML and in the list of supported encoding formats the TV can decode combined with the app settings
@BuffyS This question is better asked in the Smart-TV forum where they can assist you directly with the Player. This isnāt a server issue
Really, is it so hard just to add a flag to disable trans-coding of video data? Iāve been a software engineer for over 25 years now, including building several video streaming apps, and I can tell you itās not that hard.
Iāve got a windows server with 8GB of ram, 4 cores, and 6TB of storage, and yet Plex refuses to use the very nice NVidia card I put in this machine for HW supported transcoding which PlayOn uses just fine. Iām running hard-wired ethernet throughout the house, yet I canāt even stream one show from the HDHomeRun to a web-browser without it pausing constantly due to the transcoding eating 60-80% of all the CPU on this machine.
Your UI is great, your very close to having a great cord cutter solution ā¦ love your software other than this one single issue.
5 Likes
Look, Itās been proposed and rejected. I guess the reason is too few actually know what their media actually is and how to take care of making it DirectPlay ready? <shrug>
2 Likes
Itās obviously the software architecture design problem.
And problem seems to be deeper because developers definitely love what they developed and then refuse to accept the possibility they were wrong.
The configuration parameter āDisable transcodingā can be surely set to āoffā by default, so if user is smart enough to find it and disable this transcoding crap, it would mean that user understands the consequences.
At the other hand, the transcoding on the server is not very smart architecture decision, because transcoding gains a lot of cpu resources. So. a few clients would put the server on its knees easily. Even more - the transcoding results aināt kept, so transcoding shall be done more and more, as I understand, even if two clients are watching the same film simultaneously. But if Plex will store the transcoding results, it would require 2-5 times more disk space.
These two reasons are enough - they make plex unusable in the way it works now.
The conclusion is simple - surely, any ātranscodingā shall be done on the clientās side - there are no reasons to convert 1080p mkw to play in my browser, it plays this mkw pretty good even from the local file by itself. But thereās no such settings in the client as ādisable transcodingā, that makes this client unusable in case server cannot transcode. These days upnp/dlna clients can play almost any video without transcoding, everyone can see that and understand thereās no reason to keep this ātranscodingā forced on in Plex.
But I understand that developers love this feature and appreciate the effort they put into it, so thereās no chance to have such a feature. And itās sad.
4 Likes
i never understood why there wasnāt a checkbox to deactivate transcoding, especially for non-beefy hardware. Just give the enduser a msg like āthis server doesnāt support transcoding so the file cannot be played on this deviceā - In the end its the users needs and wishes (to a certain extend) not the developers when they start taking money for it (opposed to a freeware)
Since the maximum amount of transcodes can allready be set in the server settings, its kind of silly ā0ā isnāt available as an option.
7 Likes
@Opticum said:
i never understood why there wasnāt a checkbox to deactivate transcoding, especially for non-beefy hardware. Just give the enduser a msg like āthis server doesnāt support transcoding so the file cannot be played on this deviceā - In the end its the users needs and wishes (to a certain extend) not the developers when they start taking money for it (opposed to a freeware)Since the maximum amount of transcodes can allready be set in the server settings, its kind of silly ā0ā isnāt available as an option.
They put a lot of effort in this transcoder functionality and wonāt give up easily, you know. Surely, itās a design flaw but they wonāt admit that it shall be done on a client
1 Like
@ChuckPA
Look, I understand you probably have nothing to do with the decision, but if itās true what you say that this has been proposed, and the development team rejected it, then itās simply preposterous. That decision by the dev team and/or the PO/PM should be flagged to their management, or upper management, not because of this issue specifically, but because that decision is extremely arrogant, and such arrogance in the decision making process will only lead your product in the wrong direction.
I think we all know how ridiculously easy this is to implement, just add 0 to the drop down for max transcodes.
Why? Because users requested it, and are even working around this by hacking the Transcoder away. If you donāt listen to your user base better than this, for something as simple as this, then the product simply doesnāt have a bright future. I was for one severely disappointed to hear that the development team rejected - Iāve been waiting for this fix (yes, fix) for a long time
3 Likes
But also to explain why this is needed. Maybe it wouldnāt be if your plex clients wouldnāt ask for transcoding (or muxing) for no good reason. My 3 year old Samsung TV with the not-made-by-Plex Plex app direct plays anything and my NAS box delivers without affecting CPU much. But as soon as anyone of my Friends plays via their made-by-Plex (Android TVs, iPhone, browser), the transcoder unknowingly kicks in, and brings the NAS to itās knees such that even my Samsung TV app no longer works.
So, the solution to this issue is to disable the transcoder entirely, but I have to hack it away instead of simply configuring an advanced setting, which persists over plex server upgrades.
2 Likes
I love the continued liveliness of this two year old thread!
I have multiple systems running PMS.
The primary is a dedicated CentOS VM on a sixteen core xeon with 256GB RAM. Transcoding, not an issue. But since I am still very much on the low upward side of the Linux learning curve, I have a backup PMS on my DS1812+ for instances in which i am tweaking the primary or if/when it fails to boot.
The DS1812+ is in the supported NAS list linked to above, and is noted as supporting transcoding of SD content and, ā*May transcode some low bitrate 720p mediaā. This is def not a system that I want to expose to transcoding due to malformed client configurations.
And since my primary has been in a crashed state for literally 9 months, I have had to rely on the backup since then.
aside: Itās been 9 months because I was away for several months when it crashed, and since it has all my āwatchedā data, I want to copy that data to a new VM instead of going through and updating each show manually, but i have had difficulty mounting the VHD and not had 20 consecutive hours to dedicate to figure it out.
So i have been handcuffed with the 1812+ implementation, (truly, better than nothing).
When I began down this road i spent considerable time to figure out the best format to encode video files in. Then, and now, x.264 with 2 channel AAC seems to be universally supported, so I have endeavoured to ensure video of every file is encoded as such, and that there is always a 2ch AAC stream. This has minimized the cpu usage considerably, even for those who donāt know how to configure their client.
But in those other situations, where transcoding is triggered, what results is a very poor user experience. When I tout the awesomeness that Plex provides me, I am frequently rebutted with how poorly it performs, and this has literally cost Plex paying customers. Iām sure I am not alone with this experience.
It is evidenced by the ignorance shown by @bbiktop in his/her comments. They are clearly an advanced enough user to make it to the point of posting to this thread but not so much as to understand how the software actually functions. And this is clearly also costing Plex paying customers.
Tangent
@bbiktop I will skip commenting on your opinions, and just stick to the technical misguidance you put forth as I think others have found it far to ignorant to respond to, but I donāt want you, or anyone else, to think that your comments are in any way accurate.
@bbiktop said:
the transcoding on the server is not very smart architecture decision, because transcoding gains a lot of cpu resources. So a few clients would put the server on its knees easily.
Transcoding is highly CPU intensive. It first has to decode the video stream and then encode it into a new stream in a new format or bitrate. In most modern systems since 2008, x.264 decoding has been done in either the graphics card or the cpu very inexpensivly, making it very fast. Every personal computer, smartphone, roku, appleTV, FireTV and chromecast has had this hardware decoding since inception. This is what makes watching streaming video happen.
Encoding, on the other hand does not nearly have the user base since your encode once and decode millions or more times, so specialized hardware for this task is very expensive. That leaves the general CPU to do the heavy lifting. Unless your client is a fully fledged workstation class PC, transcoding on the client is a ridiculous suggestion. It would take 1000x the time to transcode a video file on an iphone or appleTV than it would on a mid-level desktop PC running PMS. Consolidating the heavy lifting onto a single system that spends most of itās day spinning idle cycles is orders of magnitude more efficient and scaleable than leaving it to the client.
Additionally, leaving it to the client to transcode from 4k to 720p would use 9x the bandwidth to ultimately just show the lower resolution video anyway. Another waste of resources. If client side transcoding was the proper architecture, then the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and Apple, NHL, MLB, NBA, PLS and every other streaming media company would surely not be transcoding on the fly.
The reason that 4K HEVC is so CPU intensive and requires more modern CPUs to accommodate it is because it uses the updated x.265 Mpeg 4 High Efficiency Video CoDec which, until recently, decoding was not supported in hardware and so the system is left to use software to decode the video stream using the general purpose CPU AND THEN encode it as well. Essentially double duty vs the older x.264 CoDec.
@bbiktop said:
Even more - the transcoding results aināt kept, so transcoding shall be done more and more, as I understand, even if two clients are watching the same film simultaneously. But if Plex will store the transcoding results, it would require 2-5 times more disk space.
I canāt evenā¦
I donāt know anything about you or what your experience in technology is, but please do a lot more research on what your are spewing out than whatever the hell this is. Especially if you are criticizing others. This shows a complete lack of understanding of the Plex software and in the basics of video encoding.
Firstly, you can configure Plex to save multiple version of the same file in various resolutions to specifically accommodate this particular situation. Again, encode once, decode many is the most efficient solution. Now Plex is definitely NOT a simple machine, and the customizations are more than Iāve been able to master, so I donāt know if it can be configured to save a file on first transcode or not, but if your application requires many transcodes of the same file, you need to do a cost/benefit analysis of CPU cycles vs storage, and then make your decision. we all have unique requirements and fiscal constraints, so only you can determine this.
@bbiktop said:
But if Plex will store the transcoding results, it would require 2-5 times more disk space.
First of all understand that you can never make a video quality better, only worse.
You canāt take a 720p video file and transcode it to 4K and have it be a better quality.
What transcoding DOES do is take a 4K video file that may be 40GB and degrade the quality to a 2GB 720p video file. Iām not going to go into the technical details of how video encoding works, because, damn, use Google.
So if you have 1 file and make 2 more that are of lower quality, which is ALL you can do, you will end up with 2 files that are much smaller.
720p x 2.25 = 1080p
1080p x 4 = ā4kā
720p x 9 = ā4kā
In making these two copies, the resulting storage requirement is 1.361x the original or just over 1/3 more disk space.
All of this is very doable within the Plex Server UI. RTFM!
@bbiktop said:
there are no reasons to convert 1080p mkv to play in my browser, it plays this mkv pretty good even from the local file by itself.
There is no better scenario that playing from your local computer. of course that is going to be āpretty goodā itās the BEST it will ever be!
@bbiktop said:
But thereās no such settings in the client as ādisable transcodingā, that makes this client unusable in case server cannot transcode.
There absolutely is! RTFM! āDirect Stream Onlyā. Itās one of the primary client features!
My guess is that youāre a male who has also given his opinion on how simple it was to give birth to a child.
I apologize for being snide, but WTF?
@bbiktop said:
These days upnp/dlna clients can play almost any video without transcoding, everyone can see that and understand thereās no reason to keep this ātranscodingā forced on in Plex.
- UPNP and DLNA are ā ā ā ā . they were mangled when they were first created, and just have continued to be crap ever since.
- Youāre opinion of āeveryoneā aside, with some editing, this is the only remotely quality text in your post, albeit it adds no value. Nonetheless, Iāll clean it up for you.
@bbiktop should have said:
thereās no reason to keep transcoding forced on in Plex
Itās not ātranscodingā, in quotes, it just transcoding, because itās a real thing, not something that someone just decided to call it. Plex didnāt invent it, itās just a feature they support.
It does seem that native Plex clients seem to force more transcoding than 3rd party Plex clients, and as this entire thread is attempting to illustrate, yes there need to be other options.
@bbiktop et al, I hope Iāve educated you a little on the functionalities of Plex and how it is quite the versatile piece of software. But most importantly RTFM! and have a clue about what you are talking about before criticizing others work.
OFF Tangent
Itās great and dare I say amazing that the development team has dedicated the resources to support such a wide range of clients, but with great power comes great responsibility, and that is User Experience. If for the sake of gaining paying customers, which is the only reason to do such a thing, PMS is going to be supported on platforms that are known to be incompatible with features such as transcoding 1080p content, than incompatible functions should not be supported on that platform. You clearly have the data already of what can be supported, use it for good, not excuses.
It is a far better user experience to have a pop up stating that a specific function is not supported on a specific platform than to have a user sit and unknowingly waiting in vain for a stream that is never going to happen. The users only take away is that āPlex sucksā. And that is another lost PlexPass subscriber.
Now that you have a focus on revenue, you need to understand that the development team is no longer making the decisions on feature development in a silo, the customer base has to be heard and listened to or else you will be limiting your potential to a fraction of what is possible.
Sorry, itās really hard to read a few pages cry and even harder to answer because english isnāt my native. Well, iāll rely on google translate then, no problem ))
Let me explain a little bit.
First of all, I am software architect, former developer for a years designing and developing telco realtime bss systems serving tens and hundreds of millions subscribers worldwide, so I understand a little bit about the softwre architecture ))))
Regarding your text - it was not so easy but I trtied to find something meaningful there. What I found:
I said that transcoding is draining resources as a hell. You confirmed that. Ok, at least this is obvious for a ttech engineer of your level. Then, you said about graphical cards and so on - let me explain you, that for home usage people not so often use multicore xeons - usually it is the soho server or even nas, like these reported in this thread. I have an old hp microserver without any videocard and I use mediatomb upnp for years, then found that plex looks nice and shows films descriptions and so on, so I decided to switch. Why I mentioned that - because I beleive this is quite common use case, I observed the same in my friendsā houses as well. Btw, they taught me plex ))))
I have 6 tvs in my home and 2 ipads that chilren sometimes use to watch movies, also a lot of computers rarely used to watch, usually laptops. Smart tvs are powerful enough to play 1080p x264 although some of them are about 5 years old. I had no problem playing any content via upnp, but found plex more comfortabl and handy to use - till I discovered this ātranscodingā feature in plex. Surely, mediatomb and other upnp servers have such a transcoding feature as well, but I never had an idea to even uncomment it )))
Maybe I shall tell you a news that could be shocking for you - usual home setup for plex is based on at least 100mb modern ac/n wifi network, but most users, I suppose, have gbe. Let me show you some math - youād like it, I promise. Average bitrate of the x.264 1080p movie is 20-30 mbps. and if the network hardware allows you 1000, thereās about 30-40 clients that could use the service ))))) It means that your arguments are a bit meaningless ))))) Thereās no need to transcode except, possibly, internet streaming. Modern networks are fast enough to allow users not to spend money for additional cpus and hdds they donāt need to.
So, in brief - what is this transcoding exists for? I see only one reason - internet streaming. Dunno how many users use it for that, but there shall be, surely, the option not to use it at all for the rest.
At the other hand, I have 10tb hdd for my movies archive and it is almost full. If Iād store movies versions with different resolutions, Iād have to buy another drive - it is about the resources. And even worse - my server do not have empty satas to connect another hdd. But it does not matter, just try to understand - lan bandwidth is the already existing resource and costs nothing, and hdd costs a lot of money. And thereās not only 1080/720 choice, just look at the plex config and wonder - there are 11 possible resolutions variants, so I really was wrong - not as twice more space but about 4-5 times more to keep all possible choices. Now, i hope, youāre a bit more familiar with math, so you could calculate the space required by yourself. Thereās even bitrate stated there for each, so it would be not so hard for you )))
Another flaw of the idea to generate and keep several versions of the same movie is the manageability. Users could store and delete content using shells other than plex and plex manage these situations well because itās common. In case plex would create ātranscoded copiesā, how can user be sure that all versions were deleted, for example?
And now weāre getting close to the main point of your large novel - āDirect Stream Onlyā. I see it is available only at the clients side. It means that I have to setup it on every of my clients, including tvs children laptops/iphones/ipads, settops and apple tvs etc. But thereās no such an option in the serverās settings. Very smart solution, very smart )))))))))) And user friendly, as well ))))))
And regarding unsupported content - let me tell you another secret, it has nothing common with resolution plex focused in. There might be potential problems with the codecs - ok, x264 is the standard now and is supported by 99.(9)% of home appliance including blenders and freezers, so there might be an option to warn user and to offer to transcode it once with the same quality settings if itās encoding format is not listed in the configurable by admin list of the supported formats. But to transcode cntent or/and to keep transcoded versions - itās a damn stupid, sorry. And not to have the ability to disable this stupid meaningless behaviourā¦ I donāt kno no english words to say how stupid it is.
I do not know plex price model,I wrote it supposed my and my frisndsā setup is commin. But even if they make the most of their revenue on internet streamers, I see no reason why not to include a little checkbox ādisable transcodingā or even ādisable transcoding that changes the resolutionā in the ātranscodingā server settings
And fro the architectural point of view - it is completely unacceptable to leave such a flaw that allows users to ddos server easily. Using this useless ātranscodeā feature itās as easy as 123
If only it were that easy.
What happens when you have an older Roku device that wonāt play anything past h.264 profile main or 4.0 and your file is 4.1 profile?
What happens if you have a file with ATMOS audio but only have a 5.1 or Stereo speaker system?
What happens when your BluRay rip is encoded in VC1 but none of your players support it?
What happens when you record OTA broadcasts in the Plex DVR which are MPEG2 and need to play them back on your Roku which doesnāt support it?
You get the idea?
If you prepare your media for the devices you own itās a moot point as they will direct play and the fact the transcoding is there wonāt bother you as it will never be required. Transcoding should only kick in when itās needed.
Carlo
1 Like
@cayars said:
If you prepare your media for the devices you own itās a moot point as they will direct play and the fact the transcoding is there wonāt bother you as it will never be required. Transcoding should only kick in when itās needed.Carlo
I believe you are missing the point. On a Plex Media Server with limited hardware capabilities, transcoding should never kick in as transcoding in such a case is a futile endeavour.
Instead, the preferred way (as put forward by many users in this thread) would be to deny any transcoding requests by clients and to issue a proper notification to the user, stating that the Plex Server is simply incapable of transcoding the file in question. IMHO, this is a much better user experience than trying to perform transcoding to no avail.
2 Likes
