Optimize the content on Plex media server

General Discussions
1

Server Version#: 1.16.5.1554
Player Version#: N/A
I want to optimize the content on my Plex media server due to the impact the VC1 has on my NAS. When I optimize the files with the “Original” setting, things work great with the exception that it leaves two files about the same size for one movie.

I would like to remove the original in favor of the optimized version to reduce the space needed (currently I have quite a few VC1 movies).

Testing that I have done so far is to:

  • delete the original files manually (this seems to cause the PMS to automatically delete the optimized version)
  • Move the optimized version to the original’s location then delete the original (this seems to lose some information like chapters)

With the number of movies I am dealing with, I would like to have PMS optimize them all at original quality and get rid of the originals.

The bad thing about running PMS on a NAS is the processors are less than stellar even when using the built in hardware encoding.

P.S. I am not looking to optimize in anything but the original quality, the NAS handles transcoding to lower quality formats perfectly once the initial optimization is done.

2

I have not noticed the info lost at home. What I wind up doing is copying the original file name & renaming the optimized file (the new file is named a little different, usually on TV shows). Delete the original and subfolder. It is all manual, like you said. I haven’t seen a more streamlined way of doing it either, other than to save your optimized files to a single folder somewhere else, probably rename the folder, then delete all the existing & reimport from the transcoded folder. My server at home doesn’t support transcoding of mpeg2 files, so I’ll be working more on this myself.

3

I just double checked and if I move the optimized version to the original folder and move the original to a temp folder (delete it from Plex) it loses its chapters. First it loses the chapter thumbnails and if you run an analysis on it, the chapters are removed too.

My guess is, the optimized version still uses data from the original file and removing that file removes that referenced data.