Plex always transcodes photos but it is not nessesary in webviews!

[andreasrehbein]

Webviews are present in all plex players as quoted in Open Source PMP.
In web it is completely normal that images are served in bigger version and scaled by the client. This could be used in all plex players as well.

This topic is not new:

Poor performance when accessing images

Hi,   I've installed the PMS on my DS213 in order to access all my media (music, photos, movies) from my iPad 4 and my LG Smart TV. The installation of the server and creation of the libraries ran without any problems, thanks a lot to the Plex team!   The streaming of music (MP3) and also of movies (MP4, converted from DVD) to my devices has been perfect during my first tests. The CPU of the NAS remains mostly at low levels. Obviously, no transcoding is performed with these media.   But wh…

Slow displaying of photos via plex - could I be doing something wrong or is this a fault?

I have several thousand photos on my DS213j NAS, all put there via the Synology uploader programme which uses the power of my laptop to create thumbnails of every picture which are then stored on the NAS as well for speedy display when called. I have been using the DS Photo App which allows me to view the photos on my IPad Air and this allows for rapid selection of photos and swiping between them but as a new convert to Plex I would like to display my photos through that instead along with my m…

Unable to view photos without transcoding

Server Version#: 3.69.1 Player Version#: 7.8.0.8092 (Android), Roku, web, Windows Store app This has been addressed previously in older threads like this one (Poor performance when accessing images) but I want to re-open the issue because it’s still VERY much a problem and I think the previous answers were just plain wrong (and insulting). When playing video or audio, we are able to stream directly without transcoding (i.e. Direct Play). This is true even if (with video) the player does not …

In the last topic it was open if there is a way to get the image without transcoding.
This is possible!
https://<PLEX-URL>/<KEY>?X-Plex-Token=<TOKEN>
The key is part of the Metadata object for each photo in plex returned by many requests like /children or /all …
key = Metadata["Media"][0]["Part"][0]["key"]
e.g. for an image in my library:
key = library/parts/126349/1563227143/file.jpg

This file link is used in all photo transcodes.

If there is no plan to implement such a feature within plex. I will start implementing my own web client that displays my plex photos without transcoding. But this will take of course some time.

Server Version#: 1.16.5.1554
Player Version#: 3.108.2

[gtk]

Hi Andreas,

I was one of the commenters of ticket you linked to.

I have tested the URL endpoint you referenced https://<PLEX-URL>/<KEY>?X-Plex-Token=<TOKEN> and can confirm it does serve up the raw file which requires much less processing power, and is more suitable for my NAS to serve up.

I’d be interested in contributing to any web client you are considering making. One thing I would like to understand is if Plex is able to configure and pre-compute transcoding sizes? I understand that Plex caches transcoded images, however this doesn’t suit my usage patterns.

The use case I’m trying to optimise for is to store a personal photo library (mix of large raw DSLR images to small iPhone images). Have them served up via my NAS (nas synology ds918+, with a low power 2 core CPU), and played via chromecast on a TV.

The problem is that Plex prefers server side processing, which is the weak point in my architecture. I have the capability to transcode images on a desktop or client side (the chromecast/TV) both of which can process images much faster than the Plex server running on my NAS.

Given the client resolution is fairly static, I could resize all photos/videos for the TV and then upload them into Plex, however I was hoping to use Plex to store the raw images, and transparently manage cached/transcoded copies.

[andreasrehbein]

Hi,

I think plex is not able to do pre-computed transcodes except for thumbnails. This is related to the software architecture that is heavily based on live transcoding.

I plan to have the photo library in a way that I prerender/edit all images within Lightroom and export them with a nice plugin (http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies) that handles auto export for various triggers. The exported photos are then located on may NAS (the raw photos too). I plan to export (tested already with a limited set of photos) as JPEG and with a size limited to 4000px (4k) for the smallest edge. This way panorama photos are big enough.

My web client can handle photos in a LAN already. I need to implement some important parts (plex.tv usage, library selection) before I put it on github as you actual need to insert some credentials in the source code which is not good.

I hope I can finish these tasks in the near future.

The full screen mode allows you to zoom into the photos which I find really interesting especially if you have high resolution photos.

Things already implemented are:

keyboard and mouse navigation
dynamic loading and caching
timeline, library and photo album modes with a grid view
full screen slideshow
basic video playback using html5

here is a screenshot of the web client: