# Plex Remote Transcoder - A distributed transcoding backend for Plex **URL:** \ **Category:** Dev/API Corner\ **Tags:** other-dev\ **Created:** [August 21, 2015, 4:06pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681 "2015-08-21T16:06:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 21
**Author:** ![jclifton](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/jclifton/32/334348_2.png) [@jclifton](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jclifton)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2016, 8:44pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/401 "2016-10-04T20:44:21Z")
> @wnielson said: > > > @jclifton said: > > Which logs should I be pulling for ya? > > Check in `/tmp/prt.log` first. Then check in the `Plex Media Server.log`. Finally, if none of that is useful, open up your `prt.conf` and make sure that you log level is set to `DEBUG`–this will allow `PRT` to capture output from `ffmpeg`. Nothing useful in the Plex Media [Server log](https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/) file. Debug was already enabled on prt.log. Here’s a snippet: 2016-10-04 13:38:38,319 - prt - INFO - Host with minimum load is ‘192.168.0.21’ 2016-10-04 13:38:38,320 - prt - INFO - Using transcode host ‘192.168.0.21’ 2016-10-04 13:38:38,637 - prt - INFO - Debug mode - enabling verbose ffmpeg output 2016-10-04 13:38:38,637 - prt - INFO - Launching transcode\_local: [‘/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/plex\_transcoder’, ‘-codec:0’, ‘h264’, ‘-codec:1’, ‘ac3’, ‘-ss’, ‘343.597992’, ‘-noaccurate\_seek’, ‘-i’, ‘/media/freenas/TV Shows/Blindspot/Season 02/Blindspot - S02E03 - Hero Fears Imminent Rot.mkv’, ‘-map’, ‘0:0’, ‘-metadata:s:0’, ‘language=eng’, ‘-codec:0’, ‘copy’, ‘-map’, ‘0:1’, ‘-codec:1’, ‘aac’, ‘-ar:1’, ‘48000’, ‘-channel\_layout:1’, ‘5.1’, ‘-b:1’, ‘774k’, ‘-f’, ‘matroska’, ‘-avoid\_negative\_ts’, ‘disabled’, ‘-map\_metadata’, ‘-1’, ‘-map\_chapters’, ‘-1’, ‘-’, ‘-start\_at\_zero’, ‘-copyts’, ‘-y’, ‘-nostats’, ‘-loglevel’, ‘verbose’, ‘-loglevel\_plex’, ‘verbose’, ‘-progressurl’, ‘[http://192.168.0.6:32400/video/:/transcode/session/qyoqe09l5w62udazyrleah5mi/progress](http://192.168.0.6:32400/video/:/transcode/session/qyoqe09l5w62udazyrleah5mi/progress)’] 2016-10-04 13:38:38,763 - prt - INFO - Transcode stopped on host ‘192.168.0.21’ ---
**Author:** ![jclifton](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/jclifton/32/334348_2.png) [@jclifton](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jclifton)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2016, 9:04pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/402 "2016-10-04T21:04:50Z")
> @jclifton said: > > > @wnielson said: > > > > > @jclifton said: > > > Which logs should I be pulling for ya? > > > > Check in `/tmp/prt.log` first. Then check in the `Plex Media Server.log`. Finally, if none of that is useful, open up your `prt.conf` and make sure that you log level is set to `DEBUG`–this will allow `PRT` to capture output from `ffmpeg`. > > Nothing useful in the Plex Media [Server log](https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/) file. Debug was already enabled on prt.log. Here’s a snippet: > > 2016-10-04 13:38:38,319 - prt - INFO - Host with minimum load is ‘192.168.0.21’ > > 2016-10-04 13:38:38,320 - prt - INFO - Using transcode host ‘192.168.0.21’ > > 2016-10-04 13:38:38,637 - prt - INFO - Debug mode - enabling verbose ffmpeg output > > 2016-10-04 13:38:38,637 - prt - INFO - Launching transcode\_local: [‘/usr/lib/plexmediaserver/plex\_transcoder’, ‘-codec:0’, ‘h264’, ‘-codec:1’, ‘ac3’, ‘-ss’, ‘343.597992’, ‘-noaccurate\_seek’, ‘-i’, ‘/media/freenas/TV Shows/Blindspot/Season 02/Blindspot - S02E03 - Hero Fears Imminent Rot.mkv’, ‘-map’, ‘0:0’, ‘-metadata:s:0’, ‘language=eng’, ‘-codec:0’, ‘copy’, ‘-map’, ‘0:1’, ‘-codec:1’, ‘aac’, ‘-ar:1’, ‘48000’, ‘-channel\_layout:1’, ‘5.1’, ‘-b:1’, ‘774k’, ‘-f’, ‘matroska’, ‘-avoid\_negative\_ts’, ‘disabled’, ‘-map\_metadata’, ‘-1’, ‘-map\_chapters’, ‘-1’, ‘-’, ‘-start\_at\_zero’, ‘-copyts’, ‘-y’, ‘-nostats’, ‘-loglevel’, ‘verbose’, ‘-loglevel\_plex’, ‘verbose’, ‘-progressurl’, ‘[http://192.168.0.6:32400/video/:/transcode/session/qyoqe09l5w62udazyrleah5mi/progress](http://192.168.0.6:32400/video/:/transcode/session/qyoqe09l5w62udazyrleah5mi/progress)’] > > 2016-10-04 13:38:38,763 - prt - INFO - Transcode stopped on host ‘192.168.0.21’ Didn’t change anything… tried playing it again for the 10th time or so and it started working. Am I missing something here? Edit: It appears that it succeeded when trying the other of my two remote transcoder systems. Time to investigate what’s up with .21 vs the working .20 host. Edit: Found the issue. Looks like the mount point for the .21 host wasn’t correct. The load algorithm kept kicking things over to the .21 host until that one random time it found .20 host. Did a quick check of the mount points and noticed the data wasn’t available for the media files. Updated fstab and things are happy. Thanks for all the help! Donation location to show thanks? ---
**Author:** ![dragonmel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71c47a/32.png) [@dragonmel](https://forums.plex.tv/u/dragonmel)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2016, 2:20am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/403 "2016-10-07T02:20:11Z")
I was wondering if I could take the discussion in a different direction Power users that would want distributed transcode might be interested in this concept Running plex as a VM or docker… What if it could spawn a transcode VM/docker for each transcode request. And even better, if it would spawn a session that was right sized processor wise for what needs to be done. IE if a 1080p needs to be transcoded, launch a 2cpu container, if a 4K needs a session launch a 4 core container. The cloning or spawning of a new instance would be almost instant and plex could perhaps direct stream a pre roll while the it’s spinning up… At least with docker when the transcode is finished the docker session ends and the container deletes … Stars new each time a session is needed and since they run as clones would use a lot of shared resources Esxi is very good at scheduling resources but having all transcoder sessions running all the time even at idle would still que up and take some resources and if you have to make them for worst case… Let’s say 4cores… But 90 percent of the time you only need 2 cores, cpu wait times will increase as the more vCPU that a VM has the harder it is to schedule… Anyone think that this project might be able to fork into something that could do this…? Thoughts ---
**Author:** ![wnielson](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/wnielson/32/2673_2.png) [@wnielson](https://forums.plex.tv/u/wnielson)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2016, 5:47pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/404 "2016-10-07T17:47:57Z")
> @jclifton said: > Edit: Found the issue. Looks like the mount point for the .21 host wasn’t correct. The load algorithm kept kicking things over to the .21 host until that one random time it found .20 host. Did a quick check of the mount points and noticed the data wasn’t available for the media files. Updated fstab and things are happy. Awesome, glad to hear you got it working! > Thanks for all the help! Donation location to show thanks? Check the bottom of the README 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![wnielson](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/wnielson/32/2673_2.png) [@wnielson](https://forums.plex.tv/u/wnielson)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/405 "2016-10-07T17:50:20Z")
> @dragonmel said: > Running plex as a VM or docker… What if it could spawn a transcode VM/docker for each transcode request. And even better, if it would spawn a session that was right sized processor wise for what needs to be done. IE if a 1080p needs to be transcoded, launch a 2cpu container, if a 4K needs a session launch a 4 core container. Some people have been working on that. See [here](http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/218643/plex-remote-transcoder-dockerized) and [here](https://hub.docker.com/r/segator/plex/). ---
**Author:** ![dragonmel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71c47a/32.png) [@dragonmel](https://forums.plex.tv/u/dragonmel)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2016, 6:43pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/406 "2016-10-07T18:43:47Z")
@wnielson thanks… the mother of invention is to get there before the other guy… I am always late… hahaha edit… just looked at both of those links and doesnt look like either have anything really working what is the nearest thing to this right now… just running VMs and alwasy have at least one PRT sitting idle? ---
**Author:** ![boboki](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/boboki/32/3874_2.png) [@boboki](https://forums.plex.tv/u/boboki)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2016, 2:41pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/407 "2016-10-09T14:41:45Z")
Anyone try the latest prt with plex 1.2.2.2857-d34b464? ---
**Author:** ![liviy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f6c823/32.png) [@liviy](https://forums.plex.tv/u/liviy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2016, 1:28pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/408 "2016-10-10T13:28:33Z")
> @boboki said: > Anyone try the latest prt with plex 1.2.2.2857-d34b464? Yes and I’m about to make a post about it…news isn’t good… ---
**Author:** ![liviy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f6c823/32.png) [@liviy](https://forums.plex.tv/u/liviy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2016, 1:35pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/409 "2016-10-10T13:35:52Z")
**Important notice about PMS V1.2.x and PRT** The current version of PRT isn’t compatible with PMS V1.2.x. It seems with the 1.2 releases of PMS and their splitbrain function that they’ve introduced they’ve also apparently introduced a new incompatibility issue with PRT. This seems to be only myself that’s found this so far but my testing of the latest versions of PMS tend to be correct. Please do not upgrade unless you’re happy rolling back to a previous version of PMS if you also find problems. If you want to play safe then I’d advise sticking with 1.1.4. We’ll look into this issue but as always when new features or major code rewrites happen with PMS which cause PRT to not function with it we don’t have a timeframe for a fix if at all. Unfortunately Plex don’t consult with us or tell us the specifics of their changes so we have to reverse engineer PMS and try to adapt PRT to continue working with it. Cheers, Liviy ---
**Author:** ![Jusedawg](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/jusedawg/32/5398_2.png) [@Jusedawg](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Jusedawg)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2016, 4:34pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/410 "2016-10-10T16:34:14Z")
> @stargazer7 said: > Has anyone had any luck spinning up CentOS 7? Yeah, I have several Centos 7 Plex installs running. I have installed all of mine using the minimal version and then just adding the few things I need to get the media shares working. Super easy once you have done it a few times. The hardest part is getting the Windows shares to work by hostname. : ) This is the entire command history from the first run of the VM after installation from inception. ```auto 1 yum -y install samba-winbind samba-winbind-clients pam_krb5 2 vim /etc/samba/smb.conf 3 nmcli c modify eth0 ipv4.dns 10.200.1.2 4 nmcli c down eth0; nmcli c up eth0 5 yum install samba samba-client samba-common 6 firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=samba 7 firewall-cmd --reload 8 ping mediaserver1 9 systemctl start winbind 10 ping mediaserver1 11 yum install samba-client samba-common cifs-utils 12 service network restart 13 ping mediaserver1 14 systemctl status winbind.service 15 ping 10.200.1.1 16 ping mediaserver1 17 vim /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 18 service network restart 19 ping mediaserver1 20 vim /etc/resolv.conf 21 vim /etc/nsswitch.conf 22 service network restart 23 ping mediaserver1 24 vim /etc/fstab 25 mkdir /media/adult 26 mount -a 27 ls /media/adult 28 yum -y install wget 29 wget https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-media-server/1.1.4.2757-24ffd60/plexmediaserver-1.1.4.2757-24ffd60.x86_64.rpm 30 yum localinstall plexmediaserver-1.1.4.2757-24ffd60.x86_64.rpm 31 service plexmediaserver start 32 chkconfig plexmediaserver on 33 vim /etc/firewalld/services/plexmediaserver.xml 34 firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=plexmediaserver 35 firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-service=plexmediaserver 36 systemctl restart firewalld.service 37 systemctl start plexmediaserver.service 38 top 39 cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/ 40 cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex Media Server/ 41 locate 42 yum install mlocate 43 updatedb 44 locate plexmediaserver 45 cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/ 46 ls 47 cd Plug-ins 48 ls 49 wget https://github.com/dagalufh/WebTools.bundle/releases/download/2.2/WebTools.bundle.zip 50 unzip 51 yum install unzip 52 unzip WebTools.bundle.zip 53 ls 54 rm WebTools.bundle.zip 55 ls 56 vim /etc/firewalld/services/plexmediaserver.xml 57 systemctl restart firewalld.service 58 top 59 sudo chown plex:plex ./WebTools.bundle -R 60 top 61 ls -la 62 top 63 ls -la 64 pwd 65 top 66 pwd 67 top 68 history ``` ---
**Author:** ![Jusedawg](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/jusedawg/32/5398_2.png) [@Jusedawg](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Jusedawg)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2016, 5:01pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/411 "2016-10-10T17:01:23Z")
> @confusingboat said: > I run a highly virtualized Hyper-V/Windows/Active Directory environment and I don’t want any non-Windows production machines unless it’s an appliance as it adds to the management overhead. Yeah, I used to think the same thing when I was a Linux noob and everything we ran was Windblows. Everything I do in Windows now is so clunky feeling, even PS. The only thing Windows is good for at this point is the Desktop/visual experience/gaming and Hyper-V/remote desktop. If I could find a good alternative for Outlook/Exchange/Hyper-V that was as visually appealing and easy to setup, I would stop using Windows Server altogether. Now that Mono/.Net core is officially a M$ thing, there is almost no reason to run anything on Windows Server anymore except the above. It’s such a bloated mess for anything else that isn’t Windows specific. They are getting better with Nano Server, but they are late to the party, Linux has been doing this for years. If there is a Windows and a Linux version for something, you should always choose Linux. That’s the difference between Windows and Linux, Windows you have to constantly manage, you install something on Linux and it just works. I also want to point out there is very little difference between an appliance (this is just a small server) running Linux versus a server running Linux. If you can do it on one or have people that can, then you can easily do it on the other. ---
**Author:** ![wnielson](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/wnielson/32/2673_2.png) [@wnielson](https://forums.plex.tv/u/wnielson)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2016, 5:57pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/412 "2016-10-10T17:57:48Z")
> @dragonmel said: > @wnielson thanks… > > the mother of invention is to get there before the other guy… I am always late… hahaha > > edit… > > just looked at both of those links and doesnt look like either have anything really working > > what is the nearest thing to this right now… just running VMs and alwasy have at least one PRT sitting idle? I’m not sure about the Docker situation since I don’t use that. However, I do know that a few people (myself included) have gotten this working on VPS services like DigitalOcean. You can see [this wiki post](https://github.com/wnielson/Plex-Remote-Transcoder/wiki/Use-Case:--PRT-with-Digital-Ocean-Cloud) for details on using `PRT` on DigitalOcean. ---
**Author:** ![dragonmel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71c47a/32.png) [@dragonmel](https://forums.plex.tv/u/dragonmel)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2016, 3:00am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/413 "2016-10-11T03:00:31Z")
I took a look at that article and was having trouble trying to figure out how to adapt it for an esxi box Only reason I was thinking docker was that esxi is bringing on board with native support and a docker can spin up much faster, almost instant vs a VM ---
**Author:** ![Nordicpipeline](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8edcca/32.png) [@Nordicpipeline](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Nordicpipeline)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2016, 8:07pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/414 "2016-10-24T20:07:12Z")
Any news about PRT and latest plex version guys? 😉 Keep up the good work, much appreciated… Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![FredG89](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecc23a/32.png) [@FredG89](https://forums.plex.tv/u/FredG89)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2016, 3:24am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/415 "2016-10-25T03:24:10Z")
Just tried to get this setup. My Linux skills are just not high enough right now. lol ---
**Author:** ![boboki](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/boboki/32/3874_2.png) [@boboki](https://forums.plex.tv/u/boboki)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 1:04am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/416 "2016-10-27T01:04:15Z")
Still waiting for news on latest. Love me some prt!!! ---
**Author:** ![levonjthomas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6de8d8/32.png) [@levonjthomas](https://forums.plex.tv/u/levonjthomas)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 3:20pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/417 "2016-10-27T15:20:06Z")
Before I go down the rabbit hole, can you put more than one slave node on this? I am trying to do this with one master and 3 slave mac mini’s. ---
**Author:** ![boboki](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/boboki/32/3874_2.png) [@boboki](https://forums.plex.tv/u/boboki)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 3:37pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/418 "2016-10-27T15:37:55Z")
Yeah, you can have as many slaves as you want. I currently run one master and 2 slaves. You would just a prt add\_host on the master, and then basically duplicate each of the settings you did for the first slave (exports and all that) for each additional slave you make. Fun stuff after you have multiple slaves, you can su plex on the master then do prt get\_cluster\_load to see the load on each box, and prt sessions to see which boxes are transcoding what. very helpful but you need to run those from the plex account (which has no password) so you have to su plex to get there. ---
**Author:** ![levonjthomas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6de8d8/32.png) [@levonjthomas](https://forums.plex.tv/u/levonjthomas)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 4:00pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/419 "2016-10-27T16:00:42Z")
Thanks for the reply!!! Down the rabbit hole I go! I am new to Linux so this is a bit challenging. How do I find what port my slaves are on? ---
**Author:** ![boboki](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/boboki/32/3874_2.png) [@boboki](https://forums.plex.tv/u/boboki)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 4:12pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/420 "2016-10-27T16:12:36Z")
It should be all in the install guide/walk through. [Previous page](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681.md?page=20) [Next page](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681.md?page=22)