I'm wondering if I need better hardware

Plex Media Server
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Server Version#: 1.40.3.8555
Player Version#: 4.132.3

I’m really sorry if this is in the wrong location or if this is addressed some place. I used to be more technically literate but my brain has kind of gone to mush in the past few years.

I setup a Plex media server a year or two ago and used it pretty much exclusively for myself while I’m at home. I don’t take vacations or go out places where I would have a need to watch Plex while I’m out of my home all that often so I didn’t know how my server performed outside of my local home network. I have recently extended an invite to my sister and brother, there was an initial hiccup when I sent my sister an invite but I got it sorted out and she is able to use my Plex server, as far as I know she has no issues using it. My sister lives one town over from me, maybe 15 miles away.

More recently I invited my brother to use my server but he constantly complains that when he tries to watch something it only plays for a few seconds, stops, and he sees a spinning circle. I assume it’s buffering. So the first time he reported the issue to me I tried to help him out but I couldn’t find a solution, he finally said he found something that said about paying for the app. He paid for the app (I think $5) and after that it worked. So I thought the issue was resolved. The other day he reported an issue to me that he was again having issues. I watched the program he said was having problems and I don’t experience those issues locally so it’s not the video files.

I don’t know what his internet situation is, I know he’s been having financial problems for a while now. He hasn’t said what speed he is getting, I should probably ask him. I know he has tried two devices, an Android phone and a tablet, I don’t know if the tablet is an Apple device or Android.

As for my hardware. It’s old.
Motherboard: AS Rock LGA1155
CPU: i7 2700k
Memory: 24GB
Internet: Xfinity 1200Mbps download and 40Mbps upload

So I’ve been trying to think what the issue might be. He lives in Texas and I live in Michigan. He might be dealing with slow internet and my upload speeds are not fantastic, everything he is trying to watch is 1080p resolution and I don’t have multiple versions of the video files. So I’ve been wondering, maybe Plex is trying to transcode in a lower resolution for him but because my hardware is old it’s unable to do this?

I really hope I’m not making anyone upset posting this. I don’t usually seek out help thanks to Reddit being so heavily moderated. My technical knowledge sucks, I don’t know technical terms, so I wasn’t sure where I should ask this.

Anyway, thanks for reading and for any help I might get!

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It’s not great, but might be sufficient for transcoding 1080p content in H.264, with moderate source bitrates.
(things will definitely be worse if your source files use H.265 or VC-1)
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2700K+%40+3.50GHz&id=881

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/

CPU load will also be much higher if subtitles are used.
PGS and VOBSUB subtitles pose a greater challenge than SRT subtitles.

Maybe inspect some of your typical source files. Take note of their video codec, their video bitrate, and whether they have subtitles.
You can use the Plex media info within Plex for this, or maybe MediaInfo while in your Windows file explorer.

I’d say your server’s CPU may be on the brink when you require it to transcode “remux”-quality files (i.e. those ripped from Bluray discs, without applying further compression). Such files typically have video bitrates between 19 and 35 mbps.

Only the “mobile” (i.e. for mobile phones and tablets) Plex apps require this kind of payment to unlock them. Otherwise they simply don’t play more than 1 minute.
But unlocking these apps will definitely not affect the playback quality or the network speed.

Geographical distance certainly can play a role. The further away, the worse is the packet roundtrip time.
(It’s related [but not identical] to the “ping time” which you may have heard about before.)

Maybe take a look your server’s Dashboard while he is trying to play one of your videos. Enable the Detail mode to see whether transcoding is activated and how much your server estimates the necessary bitrate.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200871837-status-and-dashboard/

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I run my server on a FX-8320 with 16GB of DDR3 RAM, so pretty old and not much power compared to anything modern.

I share with family hundreds of miles away will little to no issues. I have fiber internet and they all have at least good internet. So that does help out.

But I think the main reason for my lack of problems comes from all of the prep work I put into movies. All files come from a disk via MakeMKV, then to Handbrake. Everything is in a .mkv container, either x.264 or x.265 encoding, AC3 audio as the default track, and has .srt subtitles. That combination direct plays 99% of the time with anyone I share with. I do have my 4K content in a separate library, and I only share that with people that I know have the hardware to deal with it.

The very few times my server transcodes something is when someone has selected an audio codec that their system can’t decode. Even then audio transcoding taxes the CPU very little. So my old hardware is not that much of an issue.

As I’ve learned things over the last eight years I’ve ripped all of my movies multiple times to make things run smoother.

Do you run a Tautilli server as well? It’s a great tool to monitor your Plex server.

1 Like
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Hey OttoKener, thanks for helping me out!

My collection is kind of random. I ripped a bunch of my movies years ago but didn’t have the hardware to setup a server. During that time of my Plexing life I chose not to keep subtitles at all. It wasn’t until a year ago when I finally built my actual Plex server and started using Plex that I decided to keep subtitles. So my collection is a pretty mixed bag. So when you mention using subtitles, do you mean they’re being used and displaying on screen while I watch a show, or do you simply mean they’re included in file even if they’re not being used?

I’m really at a loss though. I started watching Rio Lobo Sunday night, I made it through half of the movie and it worked without issue. I paused it to go to bed and continued it last night (Tuesday) and it kept stopping like every 5 minutes to buffer. I tried restarting the server, initially it seemed like that did the trick, the movie started up quicker and I was able to watch longer but it eventually crapped out like it was doing before. It’s just odd to me it was working the other night when I was watching it but last night it had so many issues. I was even having problems watching South Park episodes I have on there. Yesterday was bad.

I’m looking at my Rio Lobo file right now, its format is VC-1 and the bitrate is 28.6 Mb/s. I’m no where near as meticulous as MarkV1320, I know enough to rip something with MakeMKV and kind of how to use MKVToolNix but Handbrake is overwhelming. So really don’t know weather my files are mostly H.264 or something else.

So I keep going back to I think my hardware is old. I imagine if I put in the work MarkV1320 does I wouldn’t have these issues, but I don’t think I have the energy to redo each of my files. I’m sure my collection is small compared to many people on here (just under 2000 movies) but it’s still a significant amount of time (days? weeks?) I would need to spend tweaking them.

Not sure what Tautilli is Mark, I’ll need to look that up. So a quick question about Handbrake, I’ve tried using it a few times and whenever I do the file size is much smaller than the original, is that normal? It’s been a while so I don’t really remember what I was trying to do but it seemed like when Handbrake finished a 30gb file would end up being like 12gb. I didn’t notice a difference with the sound or video, but there is no way I’m able to shrink the file size without giving something up, right? Sorry I can’t be more specific, it’s been a long time since I messed with it and really don’t know what it was I was trying to do now.

Anyway, gotta get to work. Thanks for the suggestions and help Otto and Mark!

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I mean when they’re shown on screen.

Yikes! Avoid VC-1 like the plague, is my recommendation.
Because 1) it is not compatible to many Plex clients, and 2) if it needs to be transcoded, it usually can only use one of your multiple CPU cores. This is due to the fact that the VC-1 decoder in ffmpeg is not very well optimized for multi-threading. And this state of the program code in ffmpeg certainly has to do with the fact that except on older Blurays, you won’t find many VC-1 videos out in the wild. So not many developers feel the need to invest their time to improve the situation.

I recommend you to run the file through Handbrake and change the video codec to H.264. Even if you set the target bandwidth to a similar value as the file has now, it will still work more smoothly in Plex.

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Any tips for Handbrake. I mentioned that I tried using it above. I don’t want to lose any quality but whenever I have used it in the past my file size ends up being substantially smaller than the original. I try comparing the original to the one I get using Handbrake, and I haven’t noticed a difference, but I’m sure it’s losing quality somewhere I’m just not noticing. Maybe it’s a bit unreasonable to ask that, I’m guessing I can’t use one setup in Handbrake for all of my video files.

This is getting pretty bad for me, I can’t watch anything without it buffer now unless the file is 720p. I don’t suppose a Plex update could have caused an issue? I wasn’t personally having problem until I installed the last update.

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You can go back a version.
Older installers are in the Plex data folder, in the subfolder Updates.
Just make sure NOT to use any kind of 3rd-party “uninstaller” or “registry cleaner” apps.

Correct,

  • any conversion is causing quality loss. It is only a question of how much loss.
  • there is no universal setting for conversions

It depends a lot on the source material, your quality expectations, the available storage space, and the processing time you are willing to invest.
For the particular movie in question above, see Choppy playback with VC-1 encoded BD rips - #4 by OttoKerner as a starting point.

(File size is not an absolute indicator of quality. Different video codecs require different amounts of storage space to encode the same video sequence, in the same visual quality. It’s totally possible to end up with a smaller file size even if the visual quality is the same, just by using a better suited encoding strategy and investing more time in the processing.)

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I don’t know it takes me so long to think of things, I guess low IQ. So a few days ago I decided to try playing a video without using Plex, playing the file directly from my PC and I ran into issues playing it with VLC. So I think I have two issues, the file has been corrupted and my hard drives are too full. I have three 20TB (16ish usable space) drives but one mirrors another. All three of those drives are down to about 2TB of available space. My understanding is you should have at least 15% of the drive free. So I ordered another 20TB hard drive and it should arrive tomorrow. Hopefully the files are not ruined, but I’m not real optimistic. Thanks for the help!

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Almost-full hard drives will never cause your media files to get corrupt.
You can “stuff” hard drives which store only media almost full without major side effects.

What you should be wary about, is to do the same with SSD’s.

And you should never let it happen to your system drive (i.e. drive C:)
and the drive which holds your plex data folder (which, by default is also C:, but can be relocated).

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No real worries about my SSD. I think that PC only has platter drives. My other PCs are only using like 50-60% of the available storage. But I was trying to watch Breaking Bad without using Plex and was running into issues with some of the files. So I guess the almost-full drive didn’t cause it, it might have been something I had on a hard drive that went bad. I had some older drives that were only 2 and 4 TB that were really old. So could have been corrupted from when those drives went bad.

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Things which can turn bad in older computers:

  • cooling fins can get clogged by dust mites and thus CPU does overheat and might throttle down to save its life
  • thermal paste between CPU and cooler can dry out and become more isolating than conductive to heat
  • cooling fans can get stuck, particlarly if they’re set to low speeds
  • capacitors on the motherboard or the power supply can burst/leak out and thus lose capacity
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