Hi All,
Having been a Plex user since October last year I have learnt lot about Plex and it’s transcoding.
I wanted a low power pc, to transcodes 1080p Video’s that I record from UK TV (HDHOMERUN Quatro) with subtitles as I am hard of hearing. I also wanted to go forward with this new technology after being with Mediaportal for over 10years.
Whist I have tried many small powered pc and SOC (such as Raspberry Pi and Tinker Board S) and my NAS (Synology 1517+) I concluded that these devices were not powerful enough (as video playback are always buffering - due to subtitles) and also PLEX dev team don’t seem to allow ‘hardware transcoding’ particularly on Tinker Board which is 64bit but ARM processor. Transcoding is only an option in Plex when you have Plex Pass (which I am) and that processor are of intel architecture.
So after investigating this for the last few months I then purchased NUC J3455 intel Celeron processor which has the ability to transcode hardware wise and is used in NAS such as Synology 918+. As Plex has approved such device I thought I purchase this NUC without needing to change my existing NAS.
After two weeks of running Plex on this NUC I have found that whilst it does playback 1080p with subtitles recorded from UK TV via HDHOMERUN, I have found that Plex don’t always transcode via hardware acceleration i.e. I either see high CPU usage whilst playing back from a client (which is is Samsung Smart TV, and setting is set to enforce ‘transcode’), or it does use transcoding where cpu usage drops to just 30/40% usage as apposed to 80% for the same recorded tv programme - So I ask - what gives, why am I experiencing such inconsistencies?
There is no error displayed in playing back the same recorded TV, but at the same time I want to be sure that Plex is always transcoding and not make the NUC work hard by increasing it’s CPU to 80%.
If anyone can help me what settings I should be using and doing then please do assist me. Yes I have enabled ‘hardware transcoding’ in Plex transcoding settings.
Many Thanks.
