OK I have a NAS as my plex server and before that I had a netbook. They work great as long as you have plenty of storage (currently sitting at 6TB). The problem I run into is playback can be very stuttery for certain files that are not using Plex’s new Optimize feature. As you all know NAS devices are under-powered but are rarely the only or even best devices for trans-coding. So I suggest, either by a separate program or just built into the plex app, a way for the server to talk to a separate PC and have them download a source file and “Optimize” it and send it back to the server’s storage.
Example. I have a 1080p (5.1 surround sound) MKV file that needs to be optimized to 720p (stereo) MP4 for playback on a phone or maybe streaming to some TVs that don’t play well with MKV. I have a laptop that could do this process in moments (the server would take hours) but it’s not on my wifi network all the time since I bring it with me. I come home and plex goes in for a sync. It sees a job that needs to be done now that I’m inside the network with the main server and downloads the files needed for the job. Then processes them (does the optimization work) and uploads the “Optimized” files to where plex puts it’s Optimized files, and let’s the server know it’s progress.
The general idea is that more PCs could even share the work load. If multiple PCs are listed as being able to do this (since they would first have to tell the Plex server that they are able to do this optimization, and only while inside the same network as the server in question) It will be up to the plex server to divide the work based on past speed times (in other words give more work to the PC that can do it faster) and also re-assign work when a PC leaves the network. So if I were to take my gaming laptop out of the house, my wife’s laptop could take over.
*A side benefit to this feature would be that optimization could still happen while the plex server is in use. Under-powered Plex servers have a function to stop optimizing while playing so that the stream is stable. If external optimization was happening it wouldn’t matter if the main server was doing any optimization, the tasks could still be completed without any interference.
I suppose, but the mothod I’m talking about uses an existing feature. Plus the one you mentioned is from 2013 and hardly any views. I know I cant say much since I just started this post but I’d like to say that mine is more detailed. If I need to re-post under his I can but I see this as different enough to post it as a separate feature (2 solutions to the same problem as it were)
There are actually at least 4 similar feature requests in here. All more detailed than the first one. This is not so much about the implementation details but more about not to spread the votes.
@OttoKerner said:
There are actually at least 4 similar feature requests in here. All more detailed than the first one. This is not so much about the implementation details but more about not to spread the votes.
how did you search? when I initially searched for optimized or external PC I didn’t find anything. I was aware that you are supposed to search but being that I didn’t find anything when I did how was I supposed to handle that? Since you found 4 would you be willing to post those links?
