Dear entertainment lovers! I searched on the forum about this topic, but couldn’t find the answer to the question I have. Surely this can be helpful to other users as well. I have a few questions.
So, I want to buy a NAS storage and use it for as my PLEX Server.
Everyone is talking about transcoding the video files. But! If my file is already a 4K UHD 2160p video file and device I use to play this video is, for an example 4k Apple TV connected to my 4K TV, why is here transcoding needed?
The end-device I use to play this content from my NAS storage is directly conected, not via WIFI. I use basically 4K Apple TV box as a Media Player, and my content is located on the NAS.
However, if I play let’s say, a 4K UHD 2160p video file on my smartphone which supports 1080p than yeas, transcoding is needed, but otherwise…
How do I connect the NAS?
Is it connected to my Internet router?
Can I connect directly my NAS to my 4k Apple TV box?
Which NAS storage device I should consider buying in this case?
And one more maybe a stupid question, but do I need a computer so that my NAS storage can operate? Once my media files are copied onto my NAS and PLEX server is installed. Can I simply turn off my computer? Basically, can NAS and 4K Apple TV operate as my Home Media Server without a computer?
I hope I get my questions answered. It would mean a world to me !!
You have not actually provided any specs of the video file itself. There are different ways a video file is “encoded” (the video format).
In Plex-land, therefore, there are two issues:
In the case of the Apple TV, only a limited number of video and audio formats are supported.
Plex uses the native video player for that platform (e.g. Apple’s video player for iOS and tvOS devices, Amazon’s video player for Amazon devices, etc).
Therefore, if the video file in question is not natively supported by the platform you’re using (e.g. Apple TV) then the Plex server must transcode on the fly. If this is the case, then it’s very important that whatever hardware PMS is running on is capable of doing the transcoding.
Alternatively, you can make sure that your video files are in a format supported by the player device you choose (this is what I do since most of my player devices come from Apple).
You connect it the router. It is a Network Attached Storage therefore, it needs to be “on” your home network. You accomplish that by connecting it directly to your router.
No. You connect the Apple TV device to your router (or however else you connect devices to your home network). Depending on your physical environment and other factors, wireless may actually work just fine.
[quote=“JDs_HomeCinema, post:1, topic:320402”]
do I need a computer so that my NAS storage can operate?
[/quote]No. But depending on your transcoding needs, you may need a computer to run PMS which would then access your NAS for content.
Thank you so much!! When it comes to watching content which is on my Plex Server, all the files which are 4K are .mkv format and 1080p files are mostly .mkv - I watch the content via 4K Apple TV (connected directly to my router) and the Server itself is based on my iMac, but files are on my external WD hard drive. iMac is connected wirelessly.
With this setup I can’t watch 4K, it works only directly on my iMac with Plex Media Player. However, 1080p works always without lag. But 4K won’t even start on the Apple TV box. Either my iMac is not powerful enough or my Internet speed is to low for 4K.
I have iMac late 2015 3.1 GHz i5 and 8 GB of RAM and my Internet speed is approximately 20 Mbs download and 5-6 Mbs upload
I tried everything I can with the setup I currently have. We never stream on multiple devices with Plex. It is just Apple TV. So how do I upgrade this? I thought of getting WD My Cloud PR4100 NAS - it fits the budget I have to upgrade so that I can actually watch the 4K content I have on the 4K TV.
Would Plex transcode the files If I set it up with that WD NAS or it would play the files directly using the original quality of the file?
That’s your problem right there, MKV is great for file size but terrible for native playback on most devices, you should use a format like MP4 as it’s basically supported by everything and the file size won’t be crazy.
You should go and grab a program called Handbrake and encode all your videos to MP4, it will probably want to save as an M4V file but just pick MP4 in settings, you can load everything in to the queue and let it go.
After it’s done name everything with another program called FileBot, it saves so much time instead of naming files one by one you can name them all in 5 minutes.
mkv is widely supported… this is Apple being Apple.
Transcoding is imo a terrible solution… just waters down the original quality and if you’re going that route Plex has something built in called Optimize which will do this all for you. If you can try to switch out the containers (remux) but Plex should be trying to do that itself… something must be causing transcoding to trigger… does it have subtitles?
Some red flags…
Wireless and 4k tend to not like each other
Software transcoding 4k murders PCs so if for any reason direct play isn’t triggered bad things will happen
MKV isn’t widely supported at all, sure some devices support it but when compared to MP4 it’s just not widely used yet, MP4 though is basically supported by everything.
If you convert all your content to the MP4 format you could use the content on everything easily.
MKV isn’t a bad format at all, the quality and file size is amazing but in my experience allot of devices just don’t support it.
My whole library is in MP4 from 360p to 4K and it’s fantastic, it streams everywhere without any transcoding unless I want quality downgraded because of a bad internet connection etc and if I want to copy some media to a random device or something I just chuck it on and it plays no problem.
Quality/file size is dependent on encoding codec used and the various settings for said encode not the container. You can have the exact same video/audio streams inside the mkv and mp4… mp4 just limits the scope of what it allows while mkv lets you put anything you want in there.
Apple just chooses to not read mkv containers for “reasons”
As long as the video stream and audio codec in the mkv container is supported you can remux to mp4 without transcoding but I’m pretty sure Plex does this automagically via their Direct Stream mode, remuxes on the fly, so something about the video/audio is not supported by Apple TV… for example DTS audio is a nope
I have numerous devices… rokus, fire tv, various sticks, smart tvs, mobile, chromcast, etc… mkv no issues.
Remuxing doesn’t work for everything, there’s plenty of times when I used MKV before converting everything to MP4 where I remuxed to MP4 and Plex still forced transcoding and some of those files would have issues even playing on Android based tablets not just Apple stuff.
Converted everything to MP4 and no issues at all now anywhere, what’s more I use put.io to pull content down and it will convert to MP4 in the cloud so I don’t have to do anything now after than initial major conversion.
I’m not saying MKV is bad but MP4 for me has just been a much better experience.
First, MKV is a container, not a video format.
Second, I’ll echo this:
I have zero issues with Plex remuxing h.264 or h.265 in MKV containers for my Apple TV – audio encoding tends to be the deciding factor in my experience.
I’m just giving my personal experience, MKV through Plex just wasn’t good a few years ago, it literally would transcode everything in MKV so I didn’t bother with it and used MP4, again just my personal experience, MKV and Plex may be better now but that’s not what the guy above is experiencing and yes I agree the audio is a big factor.
Also I know MKV is just a container but if you search Google for MKV Format or Matroska the official stuff always calls it a container format, I just call it a format because I’m lazy and whether you call it a container, a format, a container format, a magical box of pixie dust etc it’s just an MKV file.
As for the network yeah wireless might work fine especially if it’s in close range of a good 5GHz network but if you can easily route a nice gigabit Ethernet connection then honestly it’s worth it.
I have a NAS upstairs and a Plex server in a nice cold garage downstairs and we pass a ton of data over the network all the time with random backups happening on multiple family members devices etc so we stuck in 10GbE for the main network links or what would be the backbone eg NAS, Plex Server, other random servers, an IPTV server for distributing DVB-T and SAT to everyone, and normal gigabit for the other wired devices and it’s fantastic.
I’m not saying the Wi-fi connection is causing the issue etc but if you can keep all the wired stuff wired it really does help keep the Wi-fi nice and free for all the random mobile Wi-fi only devices but we are at like 90 or so devices on the network now, if you only had like 5 devices it’s not a major concern.
I use MKV exclusively for Movie and Television files. I have not encountered a single problem with them using them across many different platforms (Shield, Chrome Browser, Xbox, Playstation, TV native app, iOS and Android). The CPU power needed to re-wrap a container is not very much as opposed to transcoding video for platform compatibility.
To the OP if you are going to use a NAS (which I do as well) make sure it has enough CPU horsepower to handle transcodes of video if needed. Also yes a NAS can run by itself without any computer being attached to it. NAS’s are designed to run 24/7 for access at any time.
My main viewing platform is via a NVIDIA Shield that direct plays full 2160p HDR videos no problem. It is hard connected to the NAS via a 1Gb LAN. The 4K files I have usually sit around 60-80Mb/s however there can be spikes in bitrate up towards 120Mb/s. Wired networks are much better for 4K or even for HD.
Completely respect your view I was just giving my experience as stated multiple times.
Wired is definitely the way to go with all this if possible, Wi-fi is for mobile devices, any devices with Ethernet that your not planning to move just get them hardwired it’s a much better experience.
As for the NAS I have a pretty powerful Synology with a load of bays, it can transcode easily and run Plex etc but I still recommend just a separate tower with a good i7 processor, a good amount of memory, a gigabit Ethernet connection to the NAS and your sorted, you can setup automated sourcing, naming, scanning, through a workflow with the NAS and torrents etc not sure about others but Synology was easy to get setup with this sort of stuff but apparently QNAP are good as well.
Good thing about a NAS as well, if a drives failing just stick a new one in, let it rebuild and your sorted, no loss of data, great if you collect an absolute ton of media!
Thank you guys so much!
I waited a bit, to let you guys. I learned a lot… Well I keep my settings at Maximum. What’s the point of hawing 4K or BluRay file if I have to watch it again in lower quality.
To recap, if I change the format of the files from .mkv whatever it’s called to .mov or .mp4 or wathever Apple TV 4K supports, I would be able to watch the content in original quality, right?
Here is what Apple TV 4K supports
I need that HEVC format
Which also means If I decide to get NAS as my external storage, I would be able to watch the content in it’s original quality, no transcoding needed, right? Onces when I get the right format.
And also just onto this question, is NAS stand-alone device? Basically when everything is installed, I can turn of my iMac and watch the content on the NAS trough my Apple TV, right?
No experience with WD NAS devices only Synology first hand and QNAP second hand but the WD certainly looks good and the reviews are pretty good for that model.
Yeah if your use a program like Handbrake and just set it to one of the high quality presets with MP4 you will be fine, maybe try a few of the presets on one file and see what it puts out, then compare them and decide on one preset that you want to use for everything if you want everything in high quality.
Me personally I do one HD preset for all my movies and one SD preset for all my tv shows but the odd tv show that deserves the HD preset gets HD like GoT or TWD etc.
Once you get past the initial major encode it’s easy just adding new stuff.
Yes if you stick it all on the NAS and the Plex server is on the NAS and not the iMac then you can turn the iMac off as it is completely stand alone.
Personally I prefer the NAS for storage and a separate server to do the serving but it’s completely up to you, it will work both ways.
Hope this helped
Look its pretty obvious this is all for the original poster, maybe try and help him out instead of just replying to me, if the guy can get Plex working how he wants it then he will be sorted! When Plex is working properly it’s fantastic so we should try and help him get that.
