# 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:** 23
**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:** [November 8, 2016, 8:06pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/441 "2016-11-08T20:06:17Z")
wneilson, another thought, if possible, that would make prt even BETTER is if you could implement a version of ffmpeg on the transcode slaves that supports GPU encoding, then possibly setup options to label which slaves have GPU and maybe even put a slave priority order, so it tries to hit those first. I invision: Plex - no GPU and I7 with 15ghz - Priority 5 Transcode 1 - GPU and xeon with 24ghz - Priority 1 Transcode 2 - GPU and i7 with 15ghz - Priority 2 Transcode 3 - No GPU and i7 with 15ghz - Priority 3 Transcode 4 - no GPU and i5 with who cares. - Priority 4 I know you busy with IRL, but figured I would throw out some pretty cool ideas I thought of, especially that GPU encoding, man so many people asking for that (for years) and plex devs just ignoring it or closing threads. ---
**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:** [November 10, 2016, 4:41pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/442 "2016-11-10T16:41:11Z")
> @postmanpaul said: > Will this work on Freebsd? and if you need a test box, just send me messege! i will hook you UP! 😃 if this will work on Freebsd i will donate! Becouse i´m a BSD FAN BOY!! 😃 I have a few things in progress that should make it possible to run on Freebsd. Stay tuned. ---
**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:** [November 10, 2016, 4:42pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/443 "2016-11-10T16:42:51Z")
> @boboki said: > It _should_ work on any nix build, though it is developed for ubuntu. I tried it on SUSE and failed, but that might have been because SUSE security is so crazy different. Try it out, not like there’s any risk. > > Any update on prt working with latest build yet? The guys over on [Gitter](https://gitter.im/wnielson/Plex-Remote-Transcoder) have upgraded to 1.2.7 and everything appears to be working. I’ve been swamped and haven’t had time to test the upgrade yet myself. ---
**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:** [November 20, 2016, 2:56pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/444 "2016-11-20T14:56:30Z")
I upgraded to the latest 1.2.7.x and prt pull on all hosts and it was a fail. The conversion would crash every time without fail. Rolled back to 1.1.4 and all is well again ☹ Going to try the codec delete and reinstall. ---
**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:** [November 20, 2016, 3:07pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/445 "2016-11-20T15:07:18Z")
Ok, so update. I followed the following instructions as per Gitter comments: _so I blew away the codec directory ( /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Codecs/5a2d9a2-1127-linux-ubuntu-x86\_64 ) & /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/plex\_transcoder . Then re-installed PMS package ( dpkg -i plexmediaserver\_1.2.3.2914-1ff0f18\_amd64.deb ) n re-installed PRT ( prt install ) and a miracle was performed!_ And it _IS_ working. Good to note no other changes were needed except deleting that codec, the plex\_transcode file, install; 1.2.7.x, and prt install. ---
**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:** [November 20, 2016, 9:06pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/446 "2016-11-20T21:06:04Z")
Hey wnielson, do you think it would be possible to use ASIC bitcoin miners to do transcodes? I was thinking about how AMD (and most SoC) use ASIC now to do hardware transcodes on NAS and other devices, and how awesome it would be if we could use older bitcoin hardware and prt to literally make transcode farms. What do you think? ---
**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:** [November 21, 2016, 10:41am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/447 "2016-11-21T10:41:04Z")
> @boboki said: > Ok, so update. I followed the following instructions as per Gitter comments: > _so I blew away the codec directory ( /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Codecs/5a2d9a2-1127-linux-ubuntu-x86\_64 ) & /usr/lib/plexmediaserver/plex\_transcoder . Then re-installed PMS package ( dpkg -i plexmediaserver\_1.2.3.2914-1ff0f18\_amd64.deb ) n re-installed PRT ( prt install ) and a miracle was performed!_ > > And it _IS_ working. Good to note no other changes were needed except deleting that codec, the plex\_transcode file, install; 1.2.7.x, and prt install. Great! I’ll update the docs so that others are aware of the process. Thanks! ---
**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:** [November 21, 2016, 10:48am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/448 "2016-11-21T10:48:56Z")
> @boboki said: > Hey wnielson, do you think it would be possible to use ASIC bitcoin miners to do transcodes? I was thinking about how AMD (and most SoC) use ASIC now to do hardware transcodes on NAS and other devices, and how awesome it would be if we could use older bitcoin hardware and prt to literally make transcode farms. What do you think? This would require a specialized version of FFmpeg, which as far as I know doesn’t exist and [likely won’t](https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/5262). ---
**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:** [November 21, 2016, 12:08pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/449 "2016-11-21T12:08:48Z")
@wnielson What about just standard GPU encoding then? I know the standard version of ffmpeg supports that, though the version in plex does not. ---
**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:** [November 21, 2016, 5:02pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/450 "2016-11-21T17:02:42Z")
> @boboki said: > @wnielson > What about just standard GPU encoding then? I know the standard version of ffmpeg supports that, though the version in plex does not. GPU encoding support for Plex has been a desired feature for years, but so far hasn’t been added to Plex. The main issue is that Plex doesn’t release the (updated) source for the transcoder, which is a modified version of FFmpeg. If we were able to get a copy of the most recent source code for the `Plex Transcoder`, then we could probably add GPU support without too much effort. ---
**Author:** ![Bluejuice](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/57b2e6/32.png) [@Bluejuice](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Bluejuice)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/451 "2016-11-24T20:29:00Z")
Transcoder not distributing load on ubuntu 14.04… Latest version plex installed 1.3 Hi wnielson, The transcoding is not distributed across my different machines, attached a screen shot, two streams playing only one machine taking the load. Yes i added the prt host. Its present in the prt.conf file… The left image is the master and the right image the slave… ![](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/uploads/default/original/3X/2/3/23780130315cd2e962620d32bbda24993e5c2826.png) ---
**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:** [November 25, 2016, 10:11am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/452 "2016-11-25T10:11:32Z")
> @Bluejuice said: > Transcoder not distributing load on ubuntu 14.04… Latest version plex installed 1.3 > Hi wnielson, The transcoding is not distributed across my different machines, attached a screen shot, two streams playing only one machine taking the load. Yes i added the prt host. Its present in the prt.conf file… There are lots of reasons this could be happening. Double check that key-based SSH is working correctly as that is usually the culprit. If that still doesn’t fix it, we’ll do some more troubleshooting. ---
**Author:** ![Nordicpipeline](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8edcca/32.png) [@Nordicpipeline](https://forums.plex.tv/u/Nordicpipeline)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2016, 6:12pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/453 "2016-11-29T18:12:13Z")
Been away for a while… Is PRT working with latest plex version to date? Just want to be sure before I upgrade… Last time I had to downgrade back to 1.1.4 but that created some other nasty problems (database etc etc) for me that eventually got solved 😕 Thanks! ---
**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:** [November 29, 2016, 7:17pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/454 "2016-11-29T19:17:04Z")
Yeah, I had to once again delete the codecs/4b2xxx codec file/directory and both the Plex Transcoder and plex\_transcoder files, THEN install 1.3 then do a prt install again and all was working. ---
**Author:** ![AdamBurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@AdamBurch](https://forums.plex.tv/u/AdamBurch)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2016, 2:56am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/455 "2016-12-04T02:56:51Z")
#Never mind the whole idea. I read enough horror stories about them I don’t want to attempt it. I hope this is the right place to ask this question. Would this be doable on a banana pi m3 setup? ---
**Author:** ![ufo56](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/59ef9b/32.png) [@ufo56](https://forums.plex.tv/u/ufo56)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 9:44pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/456 "2016-12-06T21:44:19Z")
Nice thing, someday i try it 🙂 keep up good work!! ---
**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:** [December 25, 2016, 12:11am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/457 "2016-12-25T00:11:51Z")
> **[Plex Media Server - Hardware Transcoding Preview (closed)](https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/250946/plex-media-server-hardware-transcoding-preview-1-4-0#latest)** > > Happy holidays, forum users! We’ve got something special in store for you with this release: it enables hardware transcoding for Windows, macOS, and Linux for Plex Pass users. Using hardware transcoding reduces CPU usage and power consumption, and... You going to push this to the distributed xcoders? ---
**Author:** ![deevus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c67d28/32.png) [@deevus](https://forums.plex.tv/u/deevus)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2016, 8:11am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/458 "2016-12-30T08:11:49Z")
Working docker support: [https://github.com/deevus/docker-plex-remote-transcoder](https://github.com/deevus/docker-plex-remote-transcoder) If you’re already using docker this could be for you. PRs welcome. ---
**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:** [December 31, 2016, 2:48pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/459 "2016-12-31T14:48:26Z")
Thanks deevus, I had a friend that was about to do this very thing 😜 This is awesome, what is the wait time on dynamic transcoder spin up? Also, just waiting for @wneilson to update the prt to support latest hardware transcodes 😉 This is going to be a GREAT year for big plex setups. ---
**Author:** ![HellYeah\_1994](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@HellYeah\_1994](https://forums.plex.tv/u/HellYeah_1994)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2017, 4:48pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681/460 "2017-01-07T16:48:57Z")
Hi guys, is there a way to have an RaspberryPi as Server and a normal x86 machine as transcoder? The ARM ffmpeg-binary certainly wont run on x86 :-? [Previous page](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681.md?page=22) [Next page](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-remote-transcoder-a-distributed-transcoding-backend-for-plex/112681.md?page=24)