I recently purchased a new My Passport Pro from WD based on Plex promoting the device. I researched that the device would not transcode on the fly and that I would have to optimize my media. It took a couple of weeks to optimize all the media but then the drive started becoming unstable and complaining of drive errors so I had to get a replacement drive. I foolishly thought I could copy all of the optimized files from the old drive to the new and that Plex would figure it out. After transferring all of the optimized files, I plugged the drive into my Plex Server PC and added the library locations. Plex found most of the duplicate files and matched them. I’m confused as to why there are so many that did not auto-match which is my first question. Why would the match rate not be 100%? I deleted my old optimization syncs under Optimized Version Settings because they weren’t working properly. For example, some of the files were showing successfully optimized but they were not appearing on the My Passport Pro drive. I figured with a brand new sync that Plex would locate any existing optimized file, skip it, and regenerate any missing files. Instead, Plex is marking many of the missing files as successfully created!?! I’m very disappointed in how unstable the optimized file feature of Plex appears to be. Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to wipe out two weeks worth of work and start from scratch because Plex’s optimized file feature isn’t programmed to handle a situation like this. Why do we need to wipe all of our media just to get this feature to work properly? Why can’t it handle situations like this?
Unfortunately, Plex was not designed for this. Using the Optimized feature for the WD Passport Pro is more of a work-around than an intended feature. The intent of Optimized files was that they would be with the original server in a specific location. If you got a new drive and moved all the files in the exact same structure and mounted the drive back under the same Drive letter or same network path, PMS should have treated them the same. Something else would have had to change for PMS to not detect them. PMS will not automatically recognize an optimize file. Why you may ask? Because there is nothing telling PMS that it’s an optimized file. PMS knows originally, because it creates an entry in it’s database saying this exact file is an optimized version of this other file. If the file is not in the location PMS is expecting, it would not know it is the same file.
Thank you for the response. I seem to be having an issue with multiple video files (ie: Episode 1, 2, 3, etc.) wherein the Optimize feature seems to be ignoring many of the files. For files being ignored, if I try to optimize them individually, the software suggests it has successfully completed the optimized conversion but the Plex versions folder is blank! I think a lot of my frustration is coming from this issue which doesn’t make any sense. I’ve deleted all of the optimization sets and starting clean the optimization routine seems to be randomly skipping files. Whatever could cause this?
One more thing, if I decide to give up on the optimization feature, what is the recommended MP4 specification that your optimization routine creates? Is it anything special or can any video conversation software just convert the target video to MP4 in different resolutions?
I believe the optimize feature will skip files if it already meets the settings you’ve chosen so there isn’t a need to optimize.
If you want to do it manually, any decent video conversion program should be able to generate something equivalent. For the best compatibility, choose an MP4 container with H264 video (4 ref frames and profile 4.0) and AAC stereo (with ac3 5.1 channel as a second audio track if you want that).
Dear MovieFan.Plex, when setting up optimization your software allows one to setup a library directory on the My Passport Wireless Pro. In this use case, having the software copy NOTHING when the file does not need to be optimized is not very intuitive and will leave users scratching their head as well has having another manual chore! It’s one thing for this device not to be able to trans-code files but quite another when the optimization feature of Plex is counter-intuitive and difficult to use.
Again, the idea behind the Media Optimizer is that the drive stays with PMS. If you were to access your regular PMS from another machine and it looked for the optimized version, it wouldn’t need it so it’ll just play the regular file. I understand people are using Media Optimizer with the Pro in this fashion and it work’s for the most part, but it’s not how the feature was meant to be used.
well then perhaps Plex shouldn’t be promoting this device or this use case?
But as @MovieFan.Plex states, this is not an intended feature of Optimization but a workaround.
Optimization is really just a background thing that happens and the new files sit there until needed.
Whether the file needs to be optimized or not is something the end user really never needs to know about.
The fact that you see it does not optimize certain files is just because you are using the optimize feature in a way that it was never really intended to be used.
So when the feature is used as intended there is no reason for the end user to scratch their head.
(Sorry, two posts came in while I was answering your earlier post.)
@taz1349@gmail.com said:
well then perhaps Plex shouldn’t be promoting this device or this use case?
Is Plex promoting this use of the Optimize feature for the PWP? Or are users (like myself) saying we have had success with it?
Yes, the Media Optimizer is mentioned as a method for creating compatible media for the Passport Pro. For the media that is being skipped, they are already compatible. So the description in the support article, https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/221104248-Western-Digital-My-Passport-Wireless-Pro, is technically correct as it is under the section “What if my media is not natively compatible”, but I see the confusion. I will bring this up with the appropriate people and see if we need to change the wording.
I hope the following can help us get on the same page. As I stated, I only purchased this piece of garbage (My Passport Wireless Pro) because of Plex promoting it here: plex.tv/blog/endless-summer-plex-western-digital/
From this post, the following support article is promoted at support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/221104248-Western-Digital-My-Passport-Wireless-Pro
On this page please note the following copy: “However, if you have Plex Media Server running on your computer, you can also make use of our Media Optimizer feature to prepare content. You could create optimized versions and then copy those over to the My Passport Wireless Pro yourself. Alternatively, you could point the optimization output location to a folder located on your Wireless Pro, which you could then use as a source location for a local library.”
I followed these directions using an output location to a folder located on my Wireless Pro. It would appear we’ve stumbled upon a small problem in that the optimization feature doesn’t copy all the files to the My Passport Wireless Pro and skips certain files that we assume do not need optimization.
In summary, all of this leads to a really poor user experience. As for my own experience, I don’t recall it ever being stated that if you point the output location to a folder on the Wireless pro that some of the files may not propagate over. I have been going around in circles not realizing why this was happening. Not fun guys.
Oh wow. Yeah, I can see where people might get confused. I never read that, I just started using the optimized feature to create new files and copied them over to my drive.
Now that I understand what Plex is doing, I can deal with it but it’s a hassle to have to copy over missed files by hand when you have a large collection that you’re trying to get on a device like the Passport Wireless Pro. That said, this device is slower than molasses and somewhat unstable as others have complained. My experience has been sub-par all around.
Sorry you are having a bad time with the PWP. There are quite a few of us that are having great success with it.
How are you transferring files?
Most use the USB connection but I use FTP and find it to be ok.
I am having the most trouble with Plex not downloading the meta data for TV
Shows. This one really has me scratching my head (again). I have tried
deleting that library and starting from scratch but even after an entire
night the PWP seems to give up. I’ve tried manually matching but the main
image is not updating. Some update while others won’t. Nothing seems to
be working! Is this a known issue with TV Shows?
Don;t know if this is related to your issue or not, but this is in another sub-forum:
What TV shows are you having issues with?
Are they not giving you issues in your main PMS?
No issues with my PC Plex and these same TV Shows.
So now I’ve read that thread and this is yet another landmine on a very
expensive product. Seems like neither Plex nor Western Digital vetted out
functionality and user experience before promoting this solution.
Moreover, users like myself are having to deal with all of these headaches
because we’re not even aware of all of these issues until we really start
to dig into these matters which is a huge waste of time and energy.
Not a happy user.
