Distributed Transcoding/Scaling

Feature Suggestions
61

+1 also, could have done with this over the Christmas period.

62

Made sure to ā€œlikeā€ the first post so it counts. Another NAS user here that would like a sometimes on PC to work as muscle when it can!

63

I really hope we can get this feature it would be life saver.

64

+1 lets make use of all the cores

I liked the first post to make it count

65

This would be so cool if it could handle ā€˜auto-scalingā€™ in cloud environments.
Have one master server thatā€™s always online, and when it needs to transcode (yes, direct play is better, but some users want transcodes) it spins up extra instances that do the heavy lifting, and it terminates them when done.

66

@michielvanbaak said:
This would be so cool if it could handle ā€˜auto-scalingā€™ in cloud environments.
Have one master server thatā€™s always online, and when it needs to transcode (yes, direct play is better, but some users want transcodes) it spins up extra instances that do the heavy lifting, and it terminates them when done.

I think it would be easier to apply this to ā€œoptimised versionsā€. Itā€™s a much more controlled workload.

67

@Monsters_Grin said:
I think it would be easier to apply this to ā€œoptimised versionsā€. Itā€™s a much more controlled workload.

I agree that it would be easier to implement. But while at it, I can wish for it to work for realtime transcoding as well right :wink:
The thing with ā€œoptimised versionsā€ is it takes up a lot of diskspace :wink:

But yeah, first MVP would be to have this functionality for ā€˜optimised versionsā€™

68

+2 for thisā€¦ (myself and my family would appreciate this)

69

Please make this happen.

Itā€™s really just creating a client which contains the transcoding code and a change to the transcoder on the main server to route requests to the slave with the least current load.

70

@MattWeiler if it was that simple, we already had it :wink:

71

@michielvanbaak said:
@MattWeiler if it was that simple, we already had it :wink:

Sorry, didnā€™t mean to be rude.
Conceptually, itā€™s that simple, but I donā€™t know how you guys implemented your transcoder logic.

I just wish that the 3rd party hack that I found wasnā€™t just for Linux installs :frowning:
https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/178320/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex

72

I think its safe to assume that load balancing exists after plex cloud

But its a great way for them to monetize exactly that feature, i doubt itll ever be introduced as a self hosted solution

73

@Suspense said:
I think its safe to assume that load balancing exists after plex cloud

But its a great way for them to monetize exactly that feature, i doubt itll ever be introduced as a self hosted solution

Isnā€™t the Plex cloud just a way to allow your Plex server to use your existing cloud storage options as media folders?
If so, then that wouldnā€™t solve the transcoding load issue.

But maybe Iā€™m wrong about the Plex cloud thing.
It just seems like an obvious option to allow horizonal scaling of the transcoding tasks.

74

@MattWeiler said:

@Suspense said:
I think its safe to assume that load balancing exists after plex cloud

But its a great way for them to monetize exactly that feature, i doubt itll ever be introduced as a self hosted solution

Isnā€™t the Plex cloud just a way to allow your Plex server to use your existing cloud storage options as media folders?
If so, then that wouldnā€™t solve the transcoding load issue.

But maybe Iā€™m wrong about the Plex cloud thing.
It just seems like an obvious option to allow horizonal scaling of the transcoding tasks.

Plex cloud spawns a plex server in the cloud for you, to stream content from your cloud drives.

It allows up to 3 simultanious transcodes, per plex cloud instance. It wouldnt make sense to spawn a VPS for just 3 transcodes per plex cloud user, so they most likely use a load balancing system to spawn transcode tasks, exactly what this thread is asking for.

75

@Suspense said:

@MattWeiler said:

@Suspense said:
I think its safe to assume that load balancing exists after plex cloud

But its a great way for them to monetize exactly that feature, i doubt itll ever be introduced as a self hosted solution

Isnā€™t the Plex cloud just a way to allow your Plex server to use your existing cloud storage options as media folders?
If so, then that wouldnā€™t solve the transcoding load issue.

But maybe Iā€™m wrong about the Plex cloud thing.
It just seems like an obvious option to allow horizonal scaling of the transcoding tasks.

Plex cloud spawns a plex server in the cloud for you, to stream content from your cloud drives.

It allows up to 3 simultanious transcodes, per plex cloud instance. It wouldnt make sense to spawn a VPS for just 3 transcodes per plex cloud user, so they most likely use a load balancing system to spawn transcode tasks, exactly what this thread is asking for.

That sucks, I already pay for my account.
I shouldnā€™t have to pay to increase my media servers transcoding power.

I have no problem with them making money, Plex is awesome, but Iā€™m already paying for my account.

I guess Iā€™m gonna have to look into writing my own transcoding client-server tool whichā€™ll just use the existing Plex transcoding tool.

76

@MattWeiler said:

@Suspense said:

@MattWeiler said:

@Suspense said:
I think its safe to assume that load balancing exists after plex cloud

But its a great way for them to monetize exactly that feature, i doubt itll ever be introduced as a self hosted solution

Isnā€™t the Plex cloud just a way to allow your Plex server to use your existing cloud storage options as media folders?
If so, then that wouldnā€™t solve the transcoding load issue.

But maybe Iā€™m wrong about the Plex cloud thing.
It just seems like an obvious option to allow horizonal scaling of the transcoding tasks.

Plex cloud spawns a plex server in the cloud for you, to stream content from your cloud drives.

It allows up to 3 simultanious transcodes, per plex cloud instance. It wouldnt make sense to spawn a VPS for just 3 transcodes per plex cloud user, so they most likely use a load balancing system to spawn transcode tasks, exactly what this thread is asking for.

That sucks, I already pay for my account.
I shouldnā€™t have to pay to increase my media servers transcoding power.

I have no problem with them making money, Plex is awesome, but Iā€™m already paying for my account.

I guess Iā€™m gonna have to look into writing my own transcoding client-server tool whichā€™ll just use the existing Plex transcoding tool.

You cant really pay to get out of that situation. Plex cloud allowes just 3 transcodes per plex cloud instance, and each plex account is only allowed 1 plex cloud instance.

So the backend system most likely exists, its just not available to us, and i doubt it will be.

77

Itā€™s probably docker.

78

+1
I hv Synology NAS. Sending transcoding to another device such as pc wud be great help to lighten the load of NAS.

79

@Suspense said:

@MattWeiler said:

@Suspense said:

@MattWeiler said:

@Suspense said:
I think its safe to assume that load balancing exists after plex cloud

But its a great way for them to monetize exactly that feature, i doubt itll ever be introduced as a self hosted solution

Isnā€™t the Plex cloud just a way to allow your Plex server to use your existing cloud storage options as media folders?
If so, then that wouldnā€™t solve the transcoding load issue.

But maybe Iā€™m wrong about the Plex cloud thing.
It just seems like an obvious option to allow horizonal scaling of the transcoding tasks.

Plex cloud spawns a plex server in the cloud for you, to stream content from your cloud drives.

It allows up to 3 simultanious transcodes, per plex cloud instance. It wouldnt make sense to spawn a VPS for just 3 transcodes per plex cloud user, so they most likely use a load balancing system to spawn transcode tasks, exactly what this thread is asking for.

That sucks, I already pay for my account.
I shouldnā€™t have to pay to increase my media servers transcoding power.

I have no problem with them making money, Plex is awesome, but Iā€™m already paying for my account.

I guess Iā€™m gonna have to look into writing my own transcoding client-server tool whichā€™ll just use the existing Plex transcoding tool.

You cant really pay to get out of that situation. Plex cloud allowes just 3 transcodes per plex cloud instance, and each plex account is only allowed 1 plex cloud instance.

So the backend system most likely exists, its just not available to us, and i doubt it will be.

Thatā€™s a good point.
So this just shows that thereā€™s an even greater need for this feature.

Vertical scaling has hardware limits but horizontal scaling really doesnā€™t :slight_smile:

80

+1
for now iā€™ve got two servers running, which uses the same media files. But both systems have got their own Mediadata base. Like this idea that the second server only support server one for transcoding.