Hello everyone,
I am the happy owner of a Synology DS918+ NAS with 16GB of RAM and a Plex library
The issue is that when my family wants to access 4K content from their homes (via a browser or an Amazon Firestick, or a phone), it just lags. The movie stops every few seconds to load (or transcode, I’m not sure). I’ve tried reducing the playback quality to a minimum of 1080, but nothing works. However, when they watch movies in 1080, everything goes smoothly. It’s only for 4K movies.
The issue is that at my home, I don’t have this problem at all; I can play 4K content from my Shield Pro or my browser without any issues. The problem doesn’t seem to come from my bandwidth since I have fiber-optic internet.
Could it be a setting in Plex? Or my Router? (Asus ROG GT-AXE 11000)
The 4K movies probably have to be transcoded down to 1080p or lower which requires a good GPU or CPU to do and most NAS Servers don’t have the power to do this. You might want to make 1080p or 720p optimized versions of the 4K movies for your remote users.
Yes, that’s also what I’m thinking, but then why am I able to play the 4K versions without any problems or lag at my home, and the issue only arises when I’m outside? It’s quite curious.
If there were a hardware issue (such as insufficient power, for example), I should have the same experience at home, shouldn’t I?
Only if your video is also transcoding. Inside your home almost everything should be a direct play.
A direct play takes very little CPU power so there’s no problem. Transcoding 4k takes a lot of CPU power
Reducing playback quality just causes a transcode to happen, but sounds like it is already though
A lot of phones and computer monitors are not 4k or HDR capable. In most cases that content will transcode, and browsers are also not great for supporting a lot of formats
Your upload speed might be good but their download speed is also a factor. 4k content can easily spike over 100mbps
There was an issue with J-series Celeron chips that weren’t using hardware transcoding properly. I’m not sure where that stands so you may be having issues from that. In a perfect world you are barley going to transcode any 4k content on that NAS and you have a 0% chance of doing it without hardware working
You can look in the dashboard when something is transcoding and see if there’s a (HW) symbol next to the video
There are too many reasons something might transcode to say “this is the problem”
It may be different for every person and every video
There are quality settings for every device. They’ve recently changed the minimum of 720p 2mbps to something higher but I’m not sure on what devices. All 4k content will transcode at that setting. You can tell your users to increase that to “Maximum or Original” to see if they can squeak out a direct play
I have slightly better hardware in my NAS but it’s no hero either. I only share my 4k library with people who have the devices and bandwidth to direct play my content
Typically, I have seen this as an issue on the remote side network and not your network. But, here are some tips I would give you as I run a DS918+
1.) I do not compress content. My MKV files are not compressed. Compression takes CPU and memory to unpack the file on the remote end.
2.) Used wired connections wherever you can. For me, wireless is just for things that are mobile in my house. My NVDIA Shield devices (pretty much all I use) are wired. I include this recommendations in remote locations viewing my content.
3.) If you do have to run wireless, do not skimp. Think of wireless as people talking in a crowded room. The less devices communicating would be better. My home has 3 Access Points inside my house and one in my detached garage. My access points support WiFi 6E, though my NVDIA Shield I do use on WiFi because it is temporary when I use my projector outside supports up to WiFI 5 on 5GHz. 5GHz is faster but 2.4GHz reaches farther. Plus, I used wired backbone connections, not wireless mesh. I get the added benefit of powering my APs through Power over Ethernet. The closer the device is to your access point and as long as it is not over-subscribed on clients, the better you will have.
3.) Take a look at your uplink speed. Uplink bandwidth is required for sending traffic out to these remote sites. The highest I have ever seen was a 1080p stream at 15MB/s, which my circuit can handle.
4.) Make sure your network equipment is up to date on code (both you and the remote side).
Not looking at your network or knowing anything about it, those are just the recommendations I could think of off the top of my head. The big thing to remember is that you cannot control the other person’s house and you cannot control the path from your house to their house. That is the Internet. All you can do is the best you can in your house and leave it to the other person to do the best they can in their house.
