Rasplex + Torrent client + Static transcoding

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1

Hi all,

 

I spent quite some times reading on how to build HTPC on Raspberry.

I wanted to share with you the setup I want to have, in order to determine if it's possible.

 

On Raspberry PI 2 n°1:

- Rasplex

- Torrent client

- A script to transcode new downloaded videos into codecs compatible with all my connected devices, with embedded subtitles.

 

On Raspberry PI 2 n°2:

- Plex Media Server, with transcoding disabled (as it's not powerful enough to do it).

 

My devices are:

- Samsung TV connected via HDMI to n°1

- Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact (WIFI)

- Sony Xperia Compact (WIFI)

- MacBook Pro (WIFI)

 

I'd also like to access my Plex Media Server in remote.

 

My biggest fear is that the n°1 can't handle all the work... What do you think?

2

Not to undermine your idea, but why are you building your HTPC with a Raspberry as its core? Seems like that might not be the brightest idea, if a requirement is transcoding.

3

Well... Because it's cheap? :)

The idea here is to avoid transcoding on the fly, by transcoding the videos before adding them to my PMS.

4

If you want to go in this direction, I'd have RasPlex on its own, put Raspbian on the 2nd Pi 2, load it up with a torrent client and a batch transcode job to add to PMS's library.  

5

That sounds better indeed.

So I'll have:

Raspberry 1 with Raspbian:

- Plex media server

- Torrent client

- Scripts for transcoding

Raspberry 2 with Rasplex.

I'll try that and post the result if anyone would like to know. Thanks.

6

My first goal here was to have all that running on only one raspberry PI.

But from what I've read, I can't have plex both client and server on the same raspberry PI. My only chance was to use PlexBMC... But Rasplex seems so much better...

That's why I'm thinking about having 2 Raspberry PI... Am I wrong?

7

Rasplex is certainly a better client, so run that on a Pi.  I'd buy anything, ANYTHING else to run PMS though.  For one, buy something that has native SATA ports for your media!  If you already have a Windows or Linux box at your house, use that.

I'm not sure how much time you have, but any transcoding on a Pi (even offline) is going to take hours.

8

People forget that you can use hardware encoding on the Raspberry Pi... just have to make sure your software uses it.  Good point about media though, USB2 is slow and shared with the ethernet port.

9

You can buy a cheap mini PC or even a used PC from Ebay for $100.  

I run a server with Ubuntu 14.04.  It has Plex and a number of other server systems on it for my media and files.  I have scripts that handle transmission-bt and downloads are then renamed and sorted by scripts using FileBot cli.

If I need to convert something, I manually do it with either handbrake gui (when I'm lazy) or handbrake cli.

10

Thanks guys.

Raspberry PI can actually handle a PMS as long as it doesn't have to transcode anything.

Transcoding offline is indeed taking a lot of time, and create a real bottleneck when multiple downloads finish at the same time.

Later I will buy a mini server running ubuntu, and turn my Raspberry PI into a plex client, or a retro game console, or whatever... :)

For the meantime, I'll use my Raspberry to download, organise and store on usb drive.

As my PMS is on my main computer, I'd like to be able to add folder from the usb drive connected to the raspberry to my PMS library.

I read that this is possible, so I'll give it a try!