The topic is mostly self-explanatory.
Today if we choose to optimize media, Plex will only transcode one item at a time. There are situations where we want it to transcode multiple items at the same time.
The optimize media queue should respect whatever the max simultaneous transcodes settings is set to.
That doesn’t make sense. The max. concurrent transcodes setting is there to keep the server operating under high load by regular streaming.
Optimization on the other hand is considered a background job, that should stay out of the way and not interfere (not much, that is) with regular operation.
Therefore it is not prioritized, to keep resources available for regular streaming.
When downloading on a mobile device, for example using the Android or the iOS client, and your download quality settings are set to less than Original, Plex will transcode before downloading the files. Plex will also transcode multiple ones at the same time – great!
However, if you attempt to “download” via the browser, as is done on non-Android and non-iOS devices such as a desktop or laptop, it’ll let you only download available versions. If you wish to transcode to a smaller file so that there exists a smaller version, you need to first “optimize” it.
A very obvious problem here is for traveling users who wish to download content as they are about to travel, or are traveling. Being unable to “optimize” more than one at a time is a limitation that should be adjustable for the user.
A single transcode in many cases doesn’t consume all available capacity on the encoder, but two or more will push it closer. In my own testing, a 3090 in a server gets on average 26-27% of NVENC used up while encoding a 1080p video (hq), but that goes up to 45-55% with two encodes in flight, and a linear decrease in overall time needed to finish both.
That’s technically not “optimization” but “transcoding for download”.
On non-Android and non-iOS devices, “optimize” seems to be the only option that’ll let us do so from within the UI.
Perhaps a modified request would be then to extend the ability to transcode-before-downloading on non-Android and non-iOS clients, too. Primarily browser-based.
On a laptop, you can install “Plex for Windows/Mac/Linux” which supports downloads in the same way as the mobile clients.
It’s unfortunate having to install a desktop client for it, but I’ll go with this route as it is.
Thanks!
