After reading all this it has me curious… to meet all the criteria laid out… what software and what settings do you need to use to rip a Blu-ray to meet them?
Add to your TLDR…
If you disagree with above you can spend boku $$$ to be able to have 4K transcoding, 4k direct, 4k glory … IE don’t question why your $32 FB marketplace PC find won’t do what you think it should…
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Short questions: I am wondering why my TV (Panasonic GZ2000) does not transcode DTS audio using my Shield TV Pro 2019?
You may know that Panasonic does not support DTS audio.
I am fine with that, but shouldn’t the audio stream be transcoded?
Video content is never transcoded (perfect direct play 
)
I assume the shield plugged into the TV? or is the shield plugged into an AV receiver?
my guess is the shield is direct playing/decoding the DTS and outputting PCM to the tv.
@TeknoJunky
Thank you for your fast response. The Shield is plugged into the TV.
(Excuse my question but what does PCM stand for? 
)
pcm is basically uncompressed wave audio. Like what you would get from ripping a CD before it was compressed into mp3 or flac or whatever.
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Ok final question:
Let’s say that my current movie is DTS-HD-MA 5.1, would you expect that the PCM does still have 6 channels (5.1) or is the Shield direct playing/decoding the stream into a mono/stereo PCM?
it depends on your tv and what your tv tells the shield the audio channels it will accept.
at most it will be 5.1 using hdmi-arc to a soundbar or receiver.
most likely for the TV by itself, it is simply getting 2 channels stereo.
Really, if you are listening through tv speakers, it doesn’t really matter how many channels, its gonna be pretty crappy compared to a dedicated home theater receiver+speakers.
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added link to great thread about 100mb ethernet connections on tv’s and other devices.
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I was thinking on getting a Synology DS1819+ that has 1080P Support, but not 4K.
I was planing to have a Nvidia Shield for my direct play on 4K. I am not planing to trasncode or share my 4K library outside my network.
Can this DS1819+ dupport 4k Dirrect play?
I thought on the DS1019+, but my dilemma is data transfer speed within my network:
The DS1019+ only has 2 1GLAN that can be use in link aggregation.
The DS1819+ has has 4 1GLAN that can be use in link aggregation, plus can add a 10GLAN Card.
I have a 10Glan network for my office and my entire house is on a 1Glan, including the TV’s.
Any Subjection?
single gbit ethernet is plenty for 4k, link aggregation is generally unnecessary, and can needlessly complicate your network.
even @ 150-200 meg peaks, thats still enough bandwidth for 5+ full bitrate 4k streams, along with any other traffic.
as far as those particular nas, for best info I would suggest you search the forum with those model names and review what others have said about them good or bad.
Also keep in mind that the advertised transcoding on Synology devices doesn’t work with Plex. If your Synology supports transcoding it only does so with the Synology media apps. Plex will probably just use the CPU. (Unless things have changed recently)
This might be misleading. Plex does indeed support CPU+HW assisted transcoding on Synology. Not as universally as the synology media apps, but for intel based NAS w QSV like the 918+, it works well, and has for years. Other synology models (like the 1819+, 1815+) without intel QSV support CPU based transcoding. They are not desktop processors and thus can’t support as many simultaneous, but it is possible.
Perhaps your experience was on one of the lower end models with ARM CPU? Plex does not support hw or CPU video transcoding on those models.
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I was referring to the Synology devices that are advertised with 4K transcoding (because topic). Synology specifically states that 4K transcoding is not supported on third-party software applications (like Plex). The 918+ uses a Celeron J3455 with integrated HD Graphics 500 which does have Intel’s Quick Sync Video but struggles with 4K streams. People on the forum actually mention this about the 918+. Anything Kaby Lake with QSV should be fine though (has support for 4K UHD, 8- and 10-bit HEVC, VP9) but most of Synology’s home media models use the older Apollo Lake CPUs like the J3355 and the J3455.
Edit: To clarify the point I was trying to make; Almost every Synology device should direct play 4K just fine so I would not recommend getting a model with Synology’s 4K support only to transcode 4K with Plex because it doesn’t seem to perform well.
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I see. It is indeed important for many folks that they operate within what their manufacturer supports, so that is good to point out.
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That is misleading information from Synology. They are referring to proprietary hardware to which they restrict access to their own applications. Also, it is for all video transcoding, not just 4K.
Basically, whatever you see quoted on Synology data sheets for transcoding is meaningless with respect to Plex. Use the NAS Compatibility List to determine transcoding capability.
Plex’s transcoder performance has improved since I wrote that post two years ago (and probably the clients’ performance as well). I recently tried transcoding 4K to 1080p, with h/w acceleration enabled, and it was running at 1.5X to 1.8X on 60 - 80 Mbps video. Two years ago the performance was definitely less.
It is possible to transcode a 4K HEVC 10-bit video to H.264 on a DS918+ with minimal buffering (with usual caveats WRT tone mapping, etc). I won’t say it never buffers, but even direct play sometimes takes a buffer hit, depending on what else is running on the NAS.
The problem occurs when you enable subtitles while transcoding. Burning subtitles is performed on the CPU and overall transcoding speed drops to ~0.5X.
Note: 1.0X = real time, and is shown on Tautulli status page when transcoding.
If you need to regularly transcode 4K video, then a Synology NAS, or any system with a Celeron processor is not the right choice. You’ll want something much, much beefier, especially if subtitles are added to the mix.
If you need to occasionally transcode a 4K video, then a Synology NAS with a 64-bit Intel CPU with QSV graphics might work for you. Just be aware of the limitations, especially when it comes to subtitles.
The entire article isn’t trash, but it assumes a lot. It assumes most people are running plex on outdated hardware, underpowered devices, and without GPU acceleration.
Although, right away starting with rule#1 & #2 is a turn off. It’s not phrased well and makes it seem like you cannot transcode 4K at all. You can and it works well with proper hardware. I have a Haswell i3 with a GTX 750 ti (not exactly expensive or new) and it transcodes 4K just fine. It pins the CPU to 100% at times, but can easily fill the buffer and throttle - meaning I can actually do a few H.265 streams at one time. If I had 4K H.264 content, then I could easily do half a dozen streams or more.
I can still upgrade my GPU to one that supports H.265 decoding and be able to do a whole lot more streams.
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I don’t know, I think rules 1 and 2 are fine. They serve the purpose of impressing upon the reader that the transcoding of 4K is to be avoided and set the tone for the rest of the guide. The point is to discourage the transcoding of 4K material, and provide the reasoning why and how to avoid it.
My only suggestion for the rules section would be to move these two points, currently under rule 8, to rule 4.
* To avoid transcoding for remote and non-4k clients, keep your 4k content in separate plex libraries.
* This may of course mean that you keep a 4k copy and a 1080/720 copy, but if you are collecting 4k content then you should not be worried about storage space, should you?
They seem out of place in the rule describing cabling requirements when rule 4 already discusses storage space. But that’s just me.
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a year ago, most people were running plex, as you say, on outdated hardware, underpowered devices, and without gpu accell.
you may be right, in that a lot of things have changed in the last year, but I still feel that it is as accurate/correct as possible.
I am open to any other specific improvements.
The ‘rules’ are a play on ‘fight club’, and the point is not that you ‘cant’, but that you ‘shouldnt’, and be trying to avoid it.
in any case, the rules are a guideline and to try to educate folks so they can understand that 4k/hevc transcoding is not trivial or cheap or pain free. (particularly on older hardware)
according to nvidia’s chart, the gtx 750 ti doesn’t support any hevc decoding/encoding, so not sure how you are transcoding any 4k unless you actually have a 2nd gen 750 (gm206) which does have limited hevc/x265 support, which is lucky for you if that is the case, because gm206 models are the only older nvidia cards with hevc. I have a gm206 myself, but currently use a 1650 in my plex server (more video ram).
this statement really confuses me, because either your gpu can already decode h265/hevc, or if it really does not then it seems unlikely that your stated hardware can actually transcode 4k h265 (perhaps you are talking about direct playing/direct streaming?).
either way, I would like to see screenshots to understand it.
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I think you are right they are out of place, I am thinking I should separate the 4 last bullets on rule 8, and just make them stand alone (guidelines outside of and summarizing the ‘rules’).
edit: restructured those points as stand alone/quick summary.
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