I hope this is not the wrong area. I tried to post in the Plex Media Server forum but it would not let me, so trying here. More of a “what am I missing here?” thing.
I used to run my PMS off my old Alienware. Worked fine, no huge deal, but I kept everything at like 1.5mbps / 720p max to keep the transcoding down.
When I moved to my new QNAP 453Be, I noticed a lot of skipping in videos. I started deleting them and looking for better quality, but I am seeing it way too often to be the videos themselves.
I bumped the transcoding to like 8mbps 1080p and it is less, but the picture will sorta “glitch” and freeze for a second… then sorta jump forward a few seconds every now and then and 1080p does seem a bit “grainy”…
Not sure if it is just the quality, or lack thereof, but supposedly these are 1080p videos.
I am running Version 1.13.4.5251 because I am told it is better and more stable.
Curious if, when I copied the drive contents from the old NAS to the new one, it is still trying to play old transcoded copies just with more bandwidth. Sorry, I am not as experienced in how it works as all of you guys… heh, so, grasping for straws.
Thank you for any assistance, and sorry if this is in the wrong place.
Sorry, I may have misspoke.
I direct play, or believe I have it set to do so, when I am local…i.e. at home.
I had it set to play lower quality when I had it on the old system. I have no idea if it transcodes everything as needed or does it all and then saves a copy for when someone wants it… I doubt the latter.
When someone a friend told me the quality was bad, I went, “oh… sorry… that was an old setting” and I changed it to play 1080p or max 8mbps.
Now, at that time, I started noticing that some stuff that should be 1080, even when I am at home, are a little “garbled”, for lack of terminology. It may be a bad copy, but I never saw this before. The other day, I was watching a movie and it looked “blurry”… not garbled, just blurry… which is strange because I have watched it before and it was more clear.
So, curious about a couple things:
1 - the current version for qnap…how do you like it and does it make a difference for you?
2 - Are there certain settings you recommend to have better quality, i.e. the direct play etc?
I only have like 2 people that watch videos on my server, but one of them would sync like 8 at a time and kill my connection or so it seemed. May have only been because it was running on the same pc I was using at the time. Now, the qnap handles all of it, and I have a 20mbps upload so… guess it should be fine to just let it go full bore.
Check the activity screen, to see if you are transcoding, and if so, then PMS logs in debug mode, to find out why
Huh…I’m up here due to the fact, that I’m a Plex Fan, so yes, I like it
That’s impossible to say, due to the fact, that it all depends on the players involved, the amount of bandwith avail, and the medias that you try to stream
Hey Dane - sorry… I meant… do you like the newest QNAP version of pms vs the older version?
I am running qnap version 1.13.4.5251 because I was told it was more stable and not to upgrade through the qnap application screen. How often do you actually do an upgrade and do you download it manually, or upgrade via the application screen inside QNAP?
I will look at the logs and see what I can find. Thank you very much:)
@JB19 So there are a couple different ways you can get Plex installed on QNAP. There is the QTS App Center versions, which is a “release” build, but may not be the most recent version due to the amount of time/effort it takes for QNAP to test/certify the build on the various models.
There also is the Plex.TV versions (release and PlexPass betas) which you can download from Plex.TV and manually install via QTS App Center. Those are going to be generally be the newer versions/releases.
In terms of “upgrades”, you can either deal with a couple clicks (1 for the download, 1 for manual install/upgrade via App Center) for the Plex.TV version, or 1-Click the App Center upgrade.
In either case, you are upgrading over the top of the old version. The one benefit of the Plex.TV version is assuming you save your old install files, you can more easily roll back a version if you find a bug/etc.
I personally have been running the Plex.TV version for quite a long time and like the flexibility and quicker access to new features that it allows for.
