Looking to maybe switch from Mac mini (2011) to NAS. Some questions and looking for advice

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
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Hello,

I have a 2011 Mac mini that solely runs Plex and a usenet set up (Sonarr, Radarr, Sabnzbds) and a 300 mbps up/down internet service. . I use it very frequently and I have 4 users who use it sparringly. I’ve done I think as many as 3 streams of 1080p at once.

In checking my history it appears there is quite a bit of transcoding going on and I’m not exactly sure why. I have a script that runs on all my media that’s supposed to make it very easy for Plex to play. I assume other people’s systems and internet speeds would effect whether or not the file gets transcoded.

It appears the most concurrent transcodes I’ve had on the Mac mini was 2 and it appears as though they was no problems.

The Mac mini is a mid 2011 with 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 and 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3; the media is stored on two external HDD’s (WD Easystore 8TB, probably Reds inside) connected via USB. It has a Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB graphics card.

Most clients are Apple TV 4 or 4Ks.

How much more would I gain from a NAS like a QNAP TS453Be or a Synology DS218+? Could I do 6 concurrent 1080p streams if they were direct play? How many transcodes could it handle at once? Would this be a massive upgrade over my current Mac mini?

Consider that I would upgrade the RAM on either NAS to 4 or 8GB and that I have a Plex Pass for HW acceleration.

I would probably never do more than 6 concurrent transcodes and want to make sure it would handle that.

Thanks for your input.

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The mac-mini 2011 predates any HEVC and 4K content.
It specifically has: Sandy Bridge" 2.3 GHz Intel "Core i5" (2415M)

This is the bare minimum for hardware transcoding and is an “extremely poor” experience at best. While it does have the CPU power for Subtitles & Audio, it will not handle the video quality you’ll get from the QNAP or Synology.

Both those QNAP and Synology models use the J3455 CPU. Performance will be the same. 2160p HEVC UHD. Burning subtitles will choke it. SRT subtitles (if the player can use them directly) is best. There is minimal overhead of sending that 3rd data stream.

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The 2018 mini with 3.2 GHz Core-i7 is a good option, along with the Intel UHD Graphics 630 2GB embedded. You can get one with a 10Gbe port.

For a NAS people often want one with 10slots for using spare SSDs they have around and for future room for RAID5, along with an NVIDIA graphics card in there for GPU transcoding, plus an i7 that can do 10k passmark or so.

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So you’re saying there will be a definite upgrade in terms of processor and that upgrade will result in better performance, correct? Or is it just as it relates to HEVC 4K content? I can play 4K content locally pretty well and even remotely okay. I do not make my 4K library (it’s a separate library from the rest of my content specifically for this reason) available to anyone I share with.

Is this a situation where I would definitely, without a doubt, be upgrading my server by going with one of these two?

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Exactly how do I do that? How do I find out precisely why a file is being transcoded?

My script adds a stereo and a 6 channel audio track to every file on my server. It also embeds subtitles so it shouldn’t be either of those things, correct? It’s also set to make the file’s audio encoding and video encoding Apple friendly, which is what 90% of my files are played on. Bitrates are typically between “5000” and “7500” which I assume is 5 mbps and 7 mbps (rates are according to PlexPy).

90% of what I play locally is either direct play, direct stream or copy. I have no idea what the difference of those is but there’s no transcoding in any of those.

Is there any easy way to tell exactly what is causing the transcoding for each individual play?

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Yeah, thanks but I’m not looking to spend $1000+ on this. Either of those NAS devices I mentioned can be had for less that $500 and I already have the drives. So the NAS is basically my only expense.

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You can get a certain amount of information from the Dashboard if you have a Plex Pass. The most information is in your logs. When your server is in debug mode, it logs entries with the keywords

  • TranscodeUniversalRequest
  • MDE:
  • Reached Decision

If you search your Plex Media Server.log after a title is playing, you’ll find an entry like this that tells you the basic profile it’s delivering, in this case HTML which implies HLS in an MPEGTS container:

Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.672 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - TranscodeUniversalRequest: using augmented profile HTML TV App

Then it will start listing the Machine Decisions and why (this video had 5 DTS tracks and 2 AC3 tracks). The last line says why a transcode is required.

Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.723 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Selected protocol hls; container: mpegts
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.723 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: analyzing media item 2344
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): Direct Play is disabled
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): media must be transcoded in order to use the hls protocol
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/dca
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/dca
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/dca
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/dca
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/dca
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/ac3
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.724 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Username (2013): no direct play video profile exists for http/mkv/h264/ac3
Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.725 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - MDE: Cannot direct stream audio stream due to codec dca when profile only allows aac

And then you’ll see the final decision summary before it starts the transcode.

Jan 16, 2020 19:55:57.725 [0x7f7111f1d0] DEBUG - Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=893 codes=(General=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK. Direct Play=3000,App cannot direct play this item. Direct play is disabled. Transcode=1001,Direct play not available; Conversion OK.) media=(id=2344 part=(id=2344 decision=transcode container=mpegts protocol=hls streams=(Video=(id=5439 decision=copy width=1920 height=800) Audio=(id=5440 decision=transcode bitrate=768 encoder=aac channels=6 rate=48000))))

If you want to look at the transcode command itself, you can search for EAE_ROOT but it’s redundant at this point. So I won’t bother.

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The TS-453Be is a good baseline NAS with some h.265 support (HD500). The step-up model would be the TVS-951x which has the newer processor and GPU(HD610).

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