Hello,
I intend to buy a NAS to use it with Plex to serve all my HD movies on my TV.
Here is my current configuration:
. Router Asus RT-AC66u
. Sony TV Bravia KD-65X9000E (wireless to router)
. Receiver Yamaha RX-V581 (hdmi to TV)
. PC (win 10, i7 4790, 8Go Ram), wired to router
. macbook pro (plex for kodi to play movies, wired to my receiver, wireless to my PC)
. iPad
Most of my movies are in 1080p, mp4 or mkv.
My wife being Chinese, we use a lot of Chinese subtitles.
My current setup is butter smooth on my TV and iPad, My wish is to have the same experience, but with a NAS so I can let the server up and running 24/7.
I’m lurking on the WD My Cloud Pro 4100, Synology DS716+II, Synology DS916+, that I will wire to my router.
My current preference is to go for WD MCP 4100 as it got the best CPU among the 3, is 4 Bays (so i can do RAID 5), 4Go ram.
From what i read on the NAS forum, the HW transcoding seems broken for a long while and we don’t know when or if it will be fixed one day (am i correct ?), hence I will have to go for a good CPU.
Will this NAS be good for what I want to do or should I stick to my PC ? I don’t want to have to reencode all my library with handbrake so the NAS can server them. To me that is the purpose of Plex and I also intend to purchase the lifetime pass if it works fine.
Thank you
Not knowing the details exactly, I would not plan on using a NAS if subtitles are involved if you are not going to burn them in ahead of time.
When you look at your subtitle tracks with mkvtoolnix , are they mostly PGS or SRT/ASS/SSA ? This is the first determination to make.
Next, would you wish to fully burn-in the subtitles for your wife or do want to retain the flexibility of turning subtitles on / off as desired?
@ChuckPA said:
When you look at your subtitle tracks with mkvtoolnix , are they mostly PGS or SRT/ASS/SSA ? This is the first determination to make.
Next, would you wish to fully burn-in the subtitles for your wife or do want to retain the flexibility of turning subtitles on / off as desired?
Hello,
most of my subtitles are in SRT, but I do have some in ASS/SSA (all in separate files).
Ideally I would like to keep the flexibility. The reason being is the subtitles is not good, I can change it, or my wife can select the best for her.
While roaming on the forum, someone suggested to use a NUC Skull micro PC (for PMS) along with a NAS (for storage only). But I don’t think it will be very good to always leave it on 24/7, and this solution is also more expensive.
Thank you
Having text-based subtitles gives you the maximum flexibility with NAS selection. This is because PMS sends the subtitles, when needed, to the player for it to display. Almost all players handle text based. “PGS” and 'VOBSUB" are bit mapped (image) subtitles and would require merging (burn-in) into the video stream. This requires use of the transcoder and increases the amount of needed CPU resources significantly to play in real-time.
As for product selection:
The DS716+ II, it provides 1705 passmarks (497 per thread). The DS916+ provides 1869 passmarks (569 per thread). Both will convert audio for you.
By comparison, I have a DS1815+ (C2538 CPU) which produces 2329 passmarks (596 per thread).
Audio conversion, when needed is done in a single thread. From my experience, the DS916+ will perform better for you with the more advanced codec conversions.
@cyriltra said:
@ChuckPA said:
When you look at your subtitle tracks with mkvtoolnix , are they mostly PGS or SRT/ASS/SSA ? This is the first determination to make.
Next, would you wish to fully burn-in the subtitles for your wife or do want to retain the flexibility of turning subtitles on / off as desired?
Hello,
most of my subtitles are in SRT, but I do have some in ASS/SSA (all in separate files).
Ideally I would like to keep the flexibility. The reason being is the subtitles is not good, I can change it, or my wife can select the best for her.
While roaming on the forum, someone suggested to use a NUC Skull micro PC (for PMS) along with a NAS (for storage only). But I don’t think it will be very good to always leave it on 24/7, and this solution is also more expensive.
Thank you
That is what I have (maybe it was me) and performs very well and is on 24/7.
But maybe overkill if you are only streaming locally.
My suggestion is go for at least a 4bay NAS with an Intel CPU.
Worst scenario is it fails to perform down the track u buy a NUC to use as the server and the NAS stays as your storage!
@ChuckPA said:
Audio conversion, when needed is done in a single thread. From my experience, the DS916+ will perform better for you with the more advanced codec conversions.
So audio should be fine, but what about video ?
Also the WD MCP PR4100 has rhe same CPU as the DS916+, so these 2 NAS should be on par, right ?
@spikemixture said:
That is what I have (maybe it was me) and performs very well and is on 24/7.
But maybe overkill if you are only streaming locally.
My suggestion is go for at least a 4bay NAS with an Intel CPU.
Worst scenario is it fails to perform down the track u buy a NUC to use as the server and the NAS stays as your storage!
Are your NUC on windows 10 or linux ? Im surprised you can leave it on, i didnt think the NUC were built for this.
Thank you
I specifically stated ‘audio’ because neither of those synology boxes can transcode video above SD.
IF you take the time and prepare your files knowing you have effectively no video transcode capability, you will be fine. I did this for a long time before buying the QNAP. With a DS1813+, I’m able to play UHD at 58 Mbps over wifi without issue. It’s CPU is less capable than either of the two you are considering.
If the CPU’s are the same, this tells you a great deal. The WD is supposed to have hardware acceleration built in but I am unable to confirm as I do not own one.
From what I see in the forums, the Synology appears better supported than the WD but do not have any quantitative data to support this.
Regarding the NUC, it is a player. It’s designed to be left on. When PMP is loaded, you can use a very small NAS and the NUC, if you have the better ones, is capable of doing almost everything it needs (including video transcoding) internally.
@ChuckPA said:
Regarding the NUC, it is a player. It’s designed to be left on. When PMP is loaded, you can use a very small NAS and the NUC, if you have the better ones, is capable of doing almost everything it needs (including video transcoding) internally.
So if i want to ensure transcode capabilities and some scalability ( 2 or 3 1080p concurrent streams) the solution i’m looking for is basically:
- a correct NAS like synology (DS216 or DS416) for storage / data safety only
- a good NUC for both PMS and PMP that i can directly connect to my AVR via hdmi
Then i dont need to use my macbook as client anymore and can use it for other purpose while watching my movies.
Will this be a correct and good setup ?
Thank you
Neither Synology will do 1080p single stream. PMS can still run there.
It can stream out to NUC players, letting them perform the transcodes.
Such a configuration can transmit more than 3 sessions concurrently. Your limitation then becomes one of LAN bandwidth
Ok then I will check for NUC + NAS solution
Thank you !
Per @chuckpa, I am chiming in to give some advice. Please let me know which OS platform you intend to run on your NUC. From there I can give you sound advice on what model to get.
Hi @“Ach!lles” , thanks for jumping in, i was thinking of purchasing a NUCi5BNK or NUCi3BNH (or the X1 version)
I dont know anything about linux, so i initially plan to use win10, but i saw some ppl talking about openELEC, but i didnt investigate yet if it is compatible with PMS.
For The NUC config, what disk space and size of RAM do you recommend ? I only plan to use it a HTPC, no gaming or else.
Thanks
I want the NUC to do both PMS and PMP (or other player).
It will be linked to my AVR via HDMI and I also consume media via my ipad (locally or while traveling)
If you want to use it as both a server and a player you will be better off running it on Windows. A Skull Canyon will give you 4 cores to do that with.
Ohh u think the NUC7 i5 or i3 wont be powerful enough to serve that purpose ?
Skull canyon is quite pricey 
The Skull Canyon is quad core. The NUC7i7BNH is dual core but has the power to handle HEVC HW decoding. It should be able to handle 2-3 1080p transcodes. As a player you need to use Windows and not embedded Linux PMP. There is an issue on Linux with HD audio bitstreaming with the Skull Canyon and later NUCs. I have a thread that follows this issue. Intel needs to update the drm-tip Linux kernel driver to resolve that issue.
My thoughts are you need to decide what, why and how many u will stream to. - And who is this for? You or others?
If you want to be everyone’s friend and be able to stream several 1080p files it will cost YOU money.
FYI my NUC has streamed 7 at one time with 2 being transcoded. It worked well - it is just the most I have had!
I have 100mbps up and ALL my media is mp4 and most bitrate is well under 3000kb/s
If you spend time formatting your media you might get the job done with an i5 or i3
IMO 1080p is overated.
720p really is still very very good.
Some 720p is better than 1080 - Bit rates, codecs, compression all effect the end product.
Your “friends” and/or relations who are getting to see your media for free should be ecstatic getting anything !
@spikemixture said:
FYI my NUC has streamed 7 at one time with 2 being transcoded. It worked well - it is just the most I have had!
Which of your NUC ? you have 3 (as per your signature)
I don’t have the money to put on a skull canyon right now.
So I think I gonna go for the NAS 4 bays + the HDD (it’s already an investment) then I will continue to use my current PC for PMS.
My usage is purely family: My wife and kids, I don’t intend to disclose my server to others.
Thank you
