Pointing Two Servers at One Media Library

Plex Media Server
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Server Version#: 1.28.0.5999
Player Version#:

I have a weird question: is it possible to have one Library actively managed by two different servers?

In general, I keep my Plex Library and Server running on my Synology DiskStation, and it does great with everything and is fine with transcoding. But sometimes—like when we’re all transcoding a bunch of movies before traveling with the family—I’ve thought: “wouldn’t it be nice if I could let my M1 Mac mini do the heavy lifting, just for right now?”

And so I’m wondering if there’s a way for my Mac mini to do that heavy lifting “on demand” while still just letting my DiskStation be the thing that manages my library 99% of the time.

I realize I could point my Mac mini at the folder which contains all my movies and let it build its own library from that, but then I’d need to keep Plex Media Server running on my Mac most of the time just so that it’s up-to-date.

My preference would be to discover there’s some way to just run it “on demand” on my Mac, have it do the hard work, then quit and let it continue churning along my DiskStation. :slight_smile:

Again, I realize this is an odd request and I can’t imagine the developers have put this functionality in there, but I also didn’t want to assume that only to find out six months from now that it’s been there all along. :slight_smile:

Thanks!

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Unfortunately, No. PMS is not distributed.

You can stand up two servers which READ the same media (I have 4 for testing).

PMS cannot distribute tasks. It was designed for home , single-host use.

On Synology, the biggest nemesis is subtitle burning.

If you carefully curate your media, using SRT subtitles (text based), and have your player apps set to “Automatic” subtitles, you’ll be able to get quite a bit of the the Syno.

The J3455 CPU is good for 4 HEVC → 1080p transcodes concurrently (at high bit rate). The appoximate video bitrate max is about 450-500 Mbps (input).

You will run out of CPU converting audio, or burning subtitles, long before the hardware transcoding runs out.

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Thanks for the confirmation, @ChuckPa — I figured this was the case, but just didn’t want to assume. :slight_smile:

As for transcoding, I didn’t think Plex used the “hardware” transcoder when transcoding for downloads (aka offline viewing). I thought the hardware/GPU transcoder was only used for real-time, live playback, but maybe I’m misunderstanding things.

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I think they are changing that.

Please do not quote me but I’ve seen some download jobs (for my iphone sync) run with hardware (HEVC → 1080p for the phone @ 4x speed)