these days the availibility of the new nas TS-230 from QNAP was announced. This is a two bay nas with a Realtek RTD1296. In the official press releases it is mentioned that Plex can transcode 4k videos to H.264 format. Does this mean Plex does natively support hardware transconding on RTD1296 or ARMv8 now, even limited? Is this valid for the other numerous RTD1296 models from Synology and QNAP as well? Does this work for Plex PASS users only or for all Plex installations?
Do you have a NAS that you recommend?
Currently I have Plex running on that exact NAS. It works, more or less. Some audio sync issues, easily fixed. It gives me options to transcode the video to 720p, but it looks horrible on my phone using my 4G service. If you’ve got a better option for under $200, please tell me. I’m a total noob at this.
The RTD129x CPUs are good for up to about 20 Mbps of software transcoding for H.264. They cannot handle HEVC. HEVC needs either Hardware assist (best) or some serious Xeon / Ryzen-grade CPU power. The protocol was designed to be this way.
If you can avoid attempting to transcode any HEVC or burn subtitles into HEVC (e.g. Direct Stream or Direct Play only) then you’ll be good . I have one here for development.
It will stream. It just won’t do HEVC heavy-lifting.
I have a NAS which will do the heavy lifting but the best answers really are:
Don’t convert it (Direct Play or Direct Stream only) - If you don’t have HEVC capable devices, respectfully, why do you have any? The “compression” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
If you need to transcode anything H.264 (AVC) or H.265 (HEVC), and want the NAS to do it ( a strong player can also do that work ) additional questions come to play.
Do you need to burn subtitles? Yes? You need an Intel Core (i5/i7) or AMD + Nvidia.
Because of my work here at Plex, I opted for the QNAP TVS-1282 i7 32GB.
I’ve since added QNAP 10GbE (the Aquantia AQC107 chip) and QM2-384-P2 PCIe SSD with 1TB Samsung Pro SSD -for the write endurance)
The theme here really is to DirectPlay. Any NAS on the NAS list will DirectPlay HEVC 2160p.
By preparing media, preprocess to suit your playback environment, before giving it to Plex, will always yield the lowest cost and best experience because Plex will plow t through whatever is asked of it like a bull. The trick is to have it be graceful and not transcode.
Look at the NAS Compatibility Guide. I have all the information there (except pricing)
Currently, I am using the TS-230 Qnap NAS to store the assorted seasons of anime that I’ve either ripped from blu-rays myself or been given. Most of the stuff I’ve been given is .mkv, and all the stuff I ripped myself is m4v, because I use an iPad to play the files. Most of the MKV files are either h.264 or HEVC. All my m4v files are h.264.
If I’m reading what you’re saying correctly, I can simply convert everything to h.264 and directplay it that way without the need to transcode. Will I lose any video quality if I do that?
Yes, you can do that (e.g. using Handbrake or an alternative app of your choice).
Yes, this will impact your video quality – the question is if you’ll notice it. Keep in mind you’re already transcoding your self-ripped files to m4v/h264. So they’re no longer the same quality you got on your Blu-Rays.
That is true. I don’t really notice a difference between the blu-ray and the ripped file. It’s not like there’s much 4K anime. Then again, the whole reason I got a NAS was that I thought I could store my files and view them WITHOUT the need to convert them for my iPad first. I’ve still got a lot to learn lol.
