Okay, so I just added a new library folder to my Plex Media Server and it merrily added the content and fetched the metadata. (By the way, the new Plex Movie Database is so much better than it was, or IMDB is/was when I set my media up whenever that was. While Plex updates only update the Plex software, it does not touch the existing libraries even when you enable new features, unless you expressly tell it to zap the existing metadata and start over.)
Anyway, the question:
Once I added said media library, my machine is transcoding on 3 of its 4 cores. I looked in the “conversion” status window and it’s empty. Logs had debug off (which I turned back on, but not verbose because it’s insane) so it didn’t capture the activity, whatever it was, and not even the alerts log shows any sort of transcoding being initiated. Is there any way to tell what Plex is transcoding? Is it possible it’s just transcoding a whole lot of nothing and heating my apartment very expensively?
Thanks!
If there are no streams, than Plex is transcoding in order to analyze your newly added files. I read in another thread, that depending on the used codecs this might be necessary.
Cool, I figured that is what was happening, but was befuddle why the “Conversion Activity” was empty. I don’t recall previous versions of Plex doing this unless specifically told to if you preferred your content in an optimized format, but it seems like it is doing something arbitrary, oblique, and most importantly, opaquely.
it only reads/analyzes your files so there is no optimized version whatsoever. This is just a temporary measure to grasp the media info of your files.
Right, but that already happened. Metadata is all there, alas it is ready to cook bacon on the nice anodized finish of my Mac Mini. The Activity Monitor now shows 535% CPU for “Plex Transcoder” (quite a feat for a 4 core 2.3 GHzx i7 mac mini from 2012, I must say) and has been this way for nearly an hour. It was 9 movies. What the heck? Any ideas?
Besides analyze, it also creates chapters and thumbnails (if you’ve enabled them). This can take time.
To augment what Peter said; creating chapter and thumnail images is a Transcoder operation.
Think of it this way: You will be able to make toast, warm a kettle for tea/coffee >:) lol
@ChuckPA and @Peter_W Thanks for the replies. I appreciate all the input I can get. While what you are describing sounds perfectly reasonable, the part that still has me confused is that there is no reporting of what is going on in the Admin UI anywhere. Normally when files are being optimized you see the files listed under the Status section under conversion or alerts. As far as the Status is concerned, all is quiet on the western front. Also, these movie files were in the library for several days before the moment when the behemoth transcoder process started. Why would they suddenly start now? It just seems… peculiar. I am not saying that you’re wrong, but the chain of events doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Do either of you (or anyone else who might be reading this) know which of the many Plex logs chronicle the process of converting files? Perhaps that might indicate what actually is afoot. I would like to set up some log monitoring on the Plex Logs to try to capture certain events so I can visualized them with a tool like LogDNA, Loggly, or something along those lines because it would seem the gold is in there somewhere.
