Question about Transcode on my WD PR 4100

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

Hello everbody,

I’m aware of the fact, that this question belongs in the sub-forum about Western Digital NAS, but unfortunately I’m not able to write there and because that is my first time in this forum, I don’t know why.

I got an WD PR 4100 NAS and I have a problem with transcoding VC-1 files into H.264 on the fly. The Plex app on my Z5 / Fire TV tells me that the server isn’t strong enough to transcode the stream (1080p only one stream at the same time). But when I check the NAS it only reaches 20% cpu and ram usage during the transcoding.

So I have some questions:

  1. Did I something wrong in the server setings witch prevents the NAS to use all the cpu and ram capacity for transcodiung?
  2. Can I improve the transcoding speed with an ram upgrade?
  3. Or is the wd pr 4100 just not strong enough, not matter what I do, to transcode one 1080p vc-1 stream and I have to transcode all vc-1 files?

Thank you for reading and I would really appreciate every help! (Maybe somebody can move this to the right forum? Thanks! :D)

2

VC-1 transcoding can only use a single CPU core, which on the quad core processor in your NAS mean 25% usage is maxing that single core.

RAM wont help. Best thing to do is avoid VC-1 source content.

3

That helped a lot, thank you!