My current set up in RPI 3B+: Plex, sonar, transmission, radarr, jackett (OMV/Docker)
I can stream via direct play but sometimes it buffers or doesnt work as well as I would like. My max upload is around 18Mbs.
The majority of my videos are 1080p H264 with the odd 4K HEVC files.
I do 90% of my streaming locally on the network which is why the RPI 3B+ worked well. I do now want to be able to access the files remotely so was thinking of upgrading to the RPI 4+. I have a number of questions
Would the RPI 4 be able to transcode from 1080 to 720/540p on the fly. Strictly one stream at a time.
Would it be able to transcode 4k to 720p/540p if needed
What version of the RPI would you recommend? 2gb, 4gb or 8gb
Is there an alternative Arm based device which would work better
The reason I would not consider an X86 is because I only do occasional remote playback so the efficiency of ARM is a big selling point.
I can’t give you clean answers, but I can share my experience, running a Plex server on Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB). Before that I used to run a Pi 3B+, and before that, a PINE A64.
Most of my use cases is local direct play on TV, but I have shared my server with a friend who uses it remotely (on the same TV model). I don’t typically monitor if a session is running on direct play or transcode, but I would imagine transcoding has to happen some of the time at least for my friend.
When I first switched from the PINE A64 to RPi3B, there was an obvious performance hit, namely HVEC videos just aren’t watchable anymore, but it was more or less okay for my local use if I stick to H264 files. My friend would also confirm that some videos are not watchable due to buffering, though I never collected the full list to see what’s the common factor, but I suspect they would just be the higher resolutions ones. After I upgrade to a RPI4, I was told that everything has been smooth as pie .
Mind you, I go out of my way to avoid HVEC / H265 files ever since the 3B, and my friend certainly doesn’t use the server as much as I do. Personally, I haven’t seen any issues myself whenever I tested direct play on my phone or Windows App. I do not remember what resolution I was transcoding down to though. My files are mostly 720p for TV shows, and 1080p for movies. The server is only used by a couple people so I doubt there had ever been more than a single transcode stream at a time.
I run Plex directly on Raspberry OS, and not via OMV / Docker. I also run Deluge (headless) instead of Transmission, and with an RSS plugin it does what Sonarr does. Besides these two applications, not much else is going on on the Pi, except I occasionally use the hard disk connected to the Pi as a NAS (via SMB). 4GB is more than enough for me.
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