Plex Optimization Running extremely slow

Plex Media Server
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1

Hello All. I have been running my plex server for about 2 years now and am pretty happy with the setup. The only thing I have had an issue with is the optimization of files. I pretty much optimize every media file that comes onto my server. It may be unnecessary, but somewhere when I was setting up my original server, I read that for the setup I was going for, it would be necessary if I was going to have multiple people accessing my server at the same time and since I share my server with a group of about 10 of my closest friends, I figured it was needed. Cut to the chase, the optimization (conversion) process has ALWAYS ran extremely slow (most of the time at 0.4x). I am just wondering if there is a way to increase this speed, or if I’m missing a setting. My current setup is:

Synology DS916+
8GB RAM

Plex settings:
Background Transcoding X264 preset: Ultra Fast
Transcoder quality: Automatic
Hardware Acceleration: Enabled

I am using all Seagate Ironwolf 8TB drives in the setup as well.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks!

2

For reference -

  • The N3710 CPU in your DS916+ can only handle H.264 1080p (or lower) videos

Per your question about increasing the speed of the optimization time - No

That CPU only has 1370 Passmarks of performance if using all 4 cores.
( Not a lot of speed here per core )

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+N3710+%40+1.60GHz&id=2730

3

So basically, the only way to improve the speed here would be to upgrade the Synology? Would running the plex and the optimization process on an SSD speed it up at all?. Then I could just move the file to the main storage manually. Alternatively, could I run optimization processes on a separate instance of plex from my much more powerful desktop?

4

You could optimize / run on a different machine with the bigger CPU
-or-
you could prepare the video before you give it to Plex so transcoding isn’t needed

You’ve run out of CPU. I/O speed is not the limiting factor here