Raspberry Pi 3 b+ transcoding

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

I have PMS installed in a raspberry pi 3 b+ and it seems it can’t handle 1080p transcoding correctly.

  1. Is there anything I can do (aside from manually converting files) to improve this?
  2. Do you think the raspberry pi 4 will be able to handle this?

Thank you.

2

Yes, assuming you speak about h.264 material, the raspPi 3 will not be able to transcode 1080p material that has a non-trivial bitrate. (If is has, there is likely be no need to transcode.) The raspPi 4 will put that limit at a higher bitrate, but in view of the many other factors involved, it will not be possible to specify a definitive value.

3

Thank you for your prompt reply, what do you consider a non-trivial bitrate? For both the pi 3b+ and the pi 4.

4

It could be 1.5 mb/s for a 3 and may twice that for a 4. But it also depends on other encoding details how resource intense it is to decode the original. And the new encode will have a very limited quality.

5

I use a Pi 3 as a Plex server with a small (480x320) display attached. I am able to watch 1080p60 3Mb/s videos in a browser on the display. Obviously the encode is at a much reduced resolution so will be “easy” but the original still needs to be decoded.

6

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