@dduke2104 said:
I’m with @cayars on the matter of distributed transcoding being an unnecessary investment in time/effort by Plex when it can be handled adequately well now by use of HW transcoding (when that settles in) and/or higher core-count processors.
We don’t need to scale to Netflix levels. IMO, a reasoned choice of media formats resulting in DirectPlay under most circumstances coupled with a modern processor or GPU can meet about 99% of the situations that PMS gets used in.
That’s fine if you don’t need to scale much more than your hardware currently allows, but Plex wasn’t just made for you. A lot of us (there are 280+ people who have liked this feature request) would like to share our libraries with a larger group of friends and family.
I currently have to limit with whom I share my server.
For those whom are trying to monetize their collections by illegally selling accounts on their servers, well that’s their mistake to make.
Plex already has the distributed transcoding functionality built; the Plex Cloud does exactly what we’re asking for except it offloads the transcoding to their own cloud servers and limits each account to 3 consecutive transcodes.
It would require minimal effort on behalf of the Plex team to allow us the ability to scale horizontally.
A bunch of people asking for the same thing without understanding what underlying problem is or first availing themselves of solutions already at hand doesn’t make it a good idea.
@dduke2104 said:
A bunch of people asking for the same thing without understanding what underlying problem is or first availing themselves of solutions already at hand doesn’t make it a good idea.
@dduke2104 said:
A bunch of people asking for the same thing without understanding what underlying problem is or first availing themselves of solutions already at hand doesn’t make it a good idea.
It’s perfectly fine if you don’t understand the feature being requested or it’s benefits, but many of us do.
If you don’t need the feature, then just don’t “like” it… it’s that simple.
For what it’s worth, horizontally scaling transcoding tasks is the only way to properly handle large transcoding loads, especially when those loads can grow.
This isn’t very complicated logic, I don’t understand how anyone could not understand this, but I guess it’s obviously possible.
No, you really did not.
You just stated that just because some people want a feature it doesn’t mean it’s a good feature.
That is not necessarily wrong.
However, you did not explain why horizontal scaling is a bad idea.
If you’re still determined to invest in hardware and network equipment to add a couple of transcodes, go ahead. Kind of proves my point regarding thinking it’s all about being able to do on-the-fly transcoding.
@dduke2104 said:
Scroll back in this thread and review…
If you’re still determined to invest in hardware and network equipment to add a couple of transcodes, go ahead. Kind of proves my point regarding thinking it’s all about being able to do on-the-fly transcoding.
You joined the conversation when someone mentioned adding Raspberry Pis as transcoding slaves.
I agree with you that a Raspberry Pi isn’t powerful enough to be worth while as a transcoding slave.
However, you’re simply wrong about horizontally scaling not being the right way to scale for larger number of users using a single Plex server.
Scaling
To beat a dead horse; vertical scaling has hard limits, your motherboard only have so many processor sockets and so many PCI-E ports. Adding to that, each processor have a limit on how many cores/threads it can have.
A cheap PC can be built which can handle 4-6 streams for approx $300 - $400.
Devices
You claim that most devices can play the same 1080p video, and I agree that most modern hardware won’t have issues with that.
However, 4K content is starting to be appealing but a lot of hardware can’t handle playback of that content.
Storing multiple copies of ones content is not a solution either, that can lead to massive storage requirements (I know that you never suggested doing that).
Networking
Granted most people have a gigabit home network, however not everyone has, or can even get in their area, a gigabit internet connection. But these people would still like to be able to watch content from their server remotely.
As an example, my internet connection is 250Mbps (31.25 MBps) download and 20Mbps (2.5 MBps) upload; this is the best package available in my area.
Well, once I get more than a few people streaming 1080p content at the same time, I can very quickly saturate my upload pipe of 20 Mbps (2.5 MBps).
To say that everyone should just be able to handle streaming all of their content at full resolution is not acceptable. If it works for you, great. But it doesn’t work for everyone and that’s why people are asking for this feature.
@dduke2104 said:
Scroll back in this thread and review…
If you’re still determined to invest in hardware and network equipment to add a couple of transcodes, go ahead. Kind of proves my point regarding thinking it’s all about being able to do on-the-fly transcoding.
Believe it or not, I’m very much up to speed on this thread.
I don’t like people who make blanket statements and assumptions without considering other people needs.
BTW, you’ve never considered that maybe some people may apply this to something else than on the fly transcoding.
@MattWeiler said:
Storing multiple copies of ones content is not a solution either, that can lead to massive storage requirements (I know that you never suggested doing that).
Well, maybe an abillity to set up cloud storage as secondary storage in local Plex Server would help a little bit.
@MattWeiler said:
Granted most people have a gigabit home network, however not everyone has, or can even get in their area, a gigabit internet connection. But these people would still like to be able to watch content from their server remotely.
As an example, my internet connection is 250Mbps (31.25 MBps) download and 20Mbps (2.5 MBps) upload; this is the best package available in my area.
Well, once I get more than a few people streaming 1080p content at the same time, I can very quickly saturate my upload pipe of 20 Mbps (2.5 MBps).
To say that everyone should just be able to handle streaming all of their content at full resolution is not acceptable. If it works for you, great. But it doesn’t work for everyone and that’s why people are asking for this feature.
@MattWeiler said:
However, you’re simply wrong about horizontally scaling not being the right way to scale for larger number of users using a single Plex server.
That would come down to exactly what “larger number of users” really means, wouldn’t it?
@MattWeiler said:
However, you’re simply wrong about horizontally scaling not being the right way to scale for larger number of users using a single Plex server.
That would come down to exactly what “larger number of users” really means, wouldn’t it?
Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge that your needs don’t dictate the needs of others?
You’re just trolling for the sake of trolling.
Frankly, you sound like a selfish teen/pre-teen who doesn’t think of anything but their own needs.
You may be the only person using your Plex server, in that case enjoy using Plex.
But many of us would like to share our Plex servers with our friends and family.
I currently limit sharing my server with just my immediate family.
I would love to share with all of my friends, but that would destroy my viewing experience and that’s not fair to me since I built my server primarily for my media consumption wants
eeds.
I have a point of view based on direct experience with PMS plus a substantial background in IT. If I’m to understand your POV then some specifics help steer the discussion.
My admittedly modest PMS server already supports 6-10 concurrent 1080p streams for use in my own extended family - PCs, tablets, phones, Rokus, game consoles, smart TVs - most of which are local but some remote and almost always DirectPlay. Like you, I think my needs and actual usage falls within the boundaries in which PMS is expected to be used. No need for extra servers or HW transcoding yet, at least.
@dduke2104 said:
Not sure why you’ve take this so personally.
I have a point a view based on direct experience with PMS plus a substantial background in IT. If I’m to understand your POV then some specifics help steer the discussion.
My admittedly modest PMS server already supports 6-10 concurrent 1080p streams for use in my own extended family - PCs, tablets, phones, Rokus, game consoles, smart TVs - most of which are local but some remote and almost always DirectPlay. Like you, I think my needs and actual usage falls within the boundaries in which PMS is expected to be used. No need for extra servers or HW transcoding yet, at least.
Your comments are frustrating because you’re assuming that everyones needs are the same as yours.
If PMS servers your needs, and you don’t need distributed transcoding, then just enjoy using PMS.
Peoples usage of and needs from PMS can vary greatly.
The exact number of simultaneous users is not important.
I don’t know exactly how many users I would like to support as of now, but I know that my current hardware cannot allow me to share my collection with everyone that I would like to.
For my immediate needs I could simply build a more powerful machine and I could probably satisfy my transcoding needs for now, however building such a machine would be quite costly as opposed to just building a smaller slave and having it work with my current master PMS.
Again, not to mention that’s a temporary fix, not a long-term solution.
My software development experience leads me to think down-the-road.
A pet peeve of mine is when other developers are lazy and only solve the problem at hand when a little effort now will alleviate a lot of effort later.
Granted, often the effort involved in solving a future problem now can be too great, but in this case I’d argue that the Plex team already has the code written (Plex Cloud) and implementing it into PMS would not be that great of a task.
I’m not thinking of just my current needs. I’m thinking about the needs that others have made clear and the needs that I see me having in the future.
When it comes to 4K content, there is no doubt that transcoding will be required for a large number of devices for a while.
Many people put together HTPCs using old PC parts which would not be able to play 4K content or even HEVC in some cases.
I have a couple of powerful game rigs here at home, but they’re only used to game on a couple of hours a day. For the rest of the day, they sit idle doing nothing. Individually the rigs are almost sufficient to transcode say an UHD bluray, but combined together they could get the job done. It’s extremely inefficient for me to having to spend even more money on hardware, while I already have capable hardware, I just haven’t got the software implementation (distributed transcoding) to leverage it and get the job done.
Yes I agree that hardware transcoding is important, and I want to come see it to fruition as well, but as I explained already, in my situation distributed transcoding makes more sense, even if we have hardware transcoding. Also note that hardware transcoding will never look as good as software transcoding. So hardware transcoding is not the holy grail you think it is. And with hardware transcoding there is even more reason to have distributed transcoding as well: they’re not mutually exclusive concepts you know. Instead of buy a bunch of GPUs for 1 server, you might as well leverage all capable GPUs within the LAN.
I think you’re deliberately being facetious here by playing down that there are use cases where distributed transcoding makes more sense in a lot of households. Furthermore distributed transcoding would be a big deal for Plex Inc themselves as well in regards to Plex Cloud, as it would enable them to move away from Azure and become their own CDN (not literally, but in a manner of speaking).
Since we don’t know what your PMS setup is now then no one, including me, is in a position to offer meaningful suggestions to improve things. My quad-core Pentium is adequate now but the key was getting all my media to be DirectPlay.
Agreed about 4K/HEVC - it’s going to upset a lot of PMS apple cart strategies when both 1K and 4K clients become involved.
Granted, often the effort involved in solving a future problem now can be too great, but in this case I’d argue that the Plex team already has the code written (Plex Cloud) and implementing it into PMS would not be that great of a task.
From what I understood, Plex Cloud doesn’t have some sort of distributed transcoding feature, but Plex Inc outsources that part to Azure, where Azure just creates an instance when a PC user starts a session. Once the session is over, the instance is removed. If I’m wrong, do tell though, and give a source that backs up what you’ve said. I like to learn.
@dduke2104 said:
Since we don’t know what your PMS setup is now then no one, including me, is in a position to offer specific suggestions to improve things. My quad-core Pentium is adequate now but the key was getting all my media to be DirectPlay.
Agreed about 4K/HEVC - it’s going to upset a lot of PMS apple cart strategies when both 1K and 4K clients become involved.
You’ve made your requirements clear, you obviously don’t have a need/want for this feature.
You may be thinking that you don’t want the Plex team to waste their time in this and rather work on a feature that you want.
I would counter with they basically have this code done already (Plex Cloud) so integration into PMS shouldn’t be too much effort.
My Setup
_I am no longer using the wireless nic, my NAS is wired into my gigabit network using CAT6 cables. At first my NAS was not located anywhere near my router but I’ve since moved it much closer and wired it in _
My NAS is capable of transcoding 3 consecutive streams. I could increase this by putting a 4th/5th generating i7 or Xeon, but the cost would be around $500 - $900
Granted, often the effort involved in solving a future problem now can be too great, but in this case I’d argue that the Plex team already has the code written (Plex Cloud) and implementing it into PMS would not be that great of a task.
From what I understood, Plex Cloud doesn’t have some sort of distributed transcoding feature, but Plex Inc outsources that part to Azure, where Azure just creates an instance when a PC user starts a session. Once the session is over, the instance is removed. If I’m wrong, do tell though, and give a source that backs up what you’ve said. I like to learn.
If that’s true, then I’ll be a little disappointed.
In that case, Plex should look at the project on GitHub which someone put together to distribute transcoding… The problem is that it only works for Linux installs
_
