Server Version#: 1.19.5.3112
Player Version#: multiple
Good evening everyone,
Fairly new to Plex, so I’m trying to figure out what the best way to do a few things on what you can’t really consider high end technology.
Have Plex server installed on a Raspberry Pi 3, with an external hard drive for storage. I’m using it to steam to 3 different TV’s through 3 different devices (my family couldn’t make it easy on me). One is a Fire TV Stick, one is a Roku Ultra, and one is a Roku Express+.
I’m curious about a couple of different things, and I’ve seen this answered as many different ways as it’s been asked.
First, should I just throw whatever movies I may have from various sources on the server and let it transcode them there, or run them through something like handbrake first and then upload? I’m worried how well the server would do at Transcoding as the RP 3 has only 1 gig of RAM.
If I run them through handbrake or another program like that first, I have no clue what options I should be using for that. All the devices are on Visio flat screen TVs, and just a basic 720p/2 channel stereo output would work fine. We aren’t going to be doing anything fancy with them. Any help with that would be greatly appreciated.
If you need any logs or screenshots from me let me know, and I’ll gladly share them. I know just enough to realize I know very little about this part of everything, so I’d love to get started of right. Thanks.
Like the saying goes, you are only as strong as your weakest link.
Plex would use CPU for transcoding not memory and the pi lacks both so I would suggest you find what the weakest link is out of your 3 clients and handbrake your content to that.
I don’t use any of those clients anymore so I can’t tell you what settings to use.
I would try and start with transcoding to like 720p 2 channel audio mp4 or mkv and see how your clients handle it and find a format they can all play with no transcoding.
And long term get off the pi to avoid having to deal with this.
I thought it used the RAM to help with the transcoding, so that’s good to know that it doesn’t. I was going to go up to the Pi 4, as it would of jumped from 1 GB to 8 GB or RAM, but the CPU only goes up from a 1.2 Ghz to a 1.5 Ghz, so that wouldn’t help much and all.
Do you happen to know if running it through the conversion process on the web client uses the CPU or RAM?
Well damn. Here I was hoping to have a cheap media server. Since it’s for my parents, I may still be able to use it, and just run them through handbrake on a regular computer first. Thank you for the info though.
