Hi,
Considering buying a Mac Studio so I can also use it as a plex server. There are many options available in GPU core count, but does this have any use for transcoding ? Or is it CPU only when using PMS?
it might.
- There is no M1 native version of PMS yet.
- GPU core count matters not, what matters is the number of decode/encode blocks in the GPU. The number of these blocks does differ in the different M1 chips.
So the real questions are.
- When the M1 PMS exists will it used those blocks for decode/encode - I would guess yes to this.
- Will those blocks be noticeably faster for anything PMS cares about that just buying an Intel Nuc for 1/4 of the price of a Mac Studio? I doubt it.
I’m a Mac guy, typing this on a M1 Max right now, but I think a Mac Studio would be a very poor value proposition for a PMS server. (but it would look cool)
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I’m hovering over an add to bag button myself, and I think I’ve just completed my last round of checks and justifications…
The topics of how Plex will leverage the GPU hardware, and how that compares to Intel from a price-v-performance, I’ll leave aside, beyond saying the price point of a well spec’d NUC and Mac Studio isn’t that big (my last NUC purchase in 2018 (NUC8i7HVK, 32GB RAM & 1TB 980 EVO), only a few hundred dollars less than the entry level Mac Studio today, and at a glance the NUC pricing hasn’t changed that much.
- Plex are finalising a full native M1 release, and are “close” to release
- Currently Transcode is native (Plex leverages Apple’s VideoToolbox), so nothing to do with Rosetta2.
- All other functions are likely today to need to go via Rosetta2 emulation until the native version is released (things like optimise jobs, media analysis, previews intro dection etc), but this shouldn’t be a major issue and only (hopefully) for a short time.
Source for the above points - Plex Media Server running on Apple Silicon M1 chipset i.e. new Mac mini, MacBook, etc - #354 by elan
There is a good chance I will buy one also cause that is just what I do :s. But some of my general thoughts.
- an i3 has the same hardware decode as an i7 so you can get away with a much cheaper nuc, and you can expand bits of it further down the track.
- at least on paper right now, intel have more codec support for things that are about to be relevant (12bit HEVC, AV1). It’s possible M1 has these in the chip and 1 day apple will just flick a switch to expose them but also maybe not.
- There are a bucket load of dependencies that go into PMS. Apple is not great at exposing the details of how their things work. No matter what Plex’s efforts are, I can’t see M1 PMS being as good as x86 for a while. There are gaps in PMS now between different OS’s due to these dependencies , adding a whole arch change in there is going to cause some ripples. Im happy to let others go first and be the disappointed testers.
- I ran PMS on Mac for many years, I’ve now had it on linux for many years. It’s just easier on linux.
Having said that, if PMS M1 works out, VMware can get Fusion working well (it kinda does now) and a decent linux distro can get up and running I would happily move my whole server stack to Mac studios. 
I had a i7 NUC before, but it really struggled to transcode. My current Nvidia shield is quite amazing actually, but it has its limits. Since I’m planning to buy the MAC studio anyway, I think this will transcode anything (several 4K files as well ! ) I can throw at it. I don’t want to go through with a PC setup + Quadro cards to do some decent transcoding. Als considering the power draw from a PC setup vs a MAC mini/studio …
I hope you’re also aware of this statement (from the below page)
- macOS is only capable of hardware-accelerated encoding of 1 video at a time. This is a platform limitation from Apple.
Has this been confirmed on Apple Silicon and the to be released Universal app?
Yes, but I saw some video’s where an M1 transcodes a LOT of media files at once. If this is done via software, that quite amazing.
Hopefully the 1 video encoding limit will get resolved over time.
Thanks for sharing that insight, I do wonder if this is current information for the M1 Pro/Max/Ultra, or applicable to all Macs no matter if Intel or M1 based.
This hasn’t been true for a long time. I don’t think the page was ever updated. Plex reports many HW transcodes on macOS.
FWIW. Loads of renews aren’t showing Ultra to blow the Max out of the water. Seems to be a software limitation and will take time for apps to catch up. Just canceled my Ultra and ordered Mac Studio Max (bumped up GPU cores, RAM, SSD) to save $1200.
@McStreamy I also ended up with Mac Studio, as my NUC started playing up quite a bit last week, best of all I was able to pick-up next day in Melbourne (I was surprised). Can’t wait for M1 Arm native support, however so far with a few active users, no issues at all, and certainly zero fan noise even with a few transcode streams.
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