I am fairly new to Plex and just use an old PC (Acer Aspire XC-215, with external HDD) for my server.
I have been noticing videos that have a lower mb/s max quality seem to buffer a lot more than ones with a higher max quality.
my videos that use about 10-11mb/s max quality don’t buffer at all and play fine but other videos that are at about 4-5mb/s max quality need to be put down to a lower quality (like 1mb) to be able to play without buffering.
what could be causing this? I hope what I have said makes sense.
Inspect the Plex dashboard during playback, the Now Playing section at the top (open it in a second browser tab/window).
Enable the “details” view.
Most interesting are the playback mode (direct, transcoded)
the absence or presence of subtitles
the source video codec.
I just looked up your laptop and its CPU. You won’t have much fun playing HEVC-encoded video on that. PassMark - AMD A4-6210 APU - Price performance comparison
Even if it just has to transcode the audio, this is just a room heater, not a Plex server/player.
I assume that the videos which play OK are using AVC/H.264 as video codec, right?
PC using chrome (not what I usually use, just tested it)
Samsung TV app
Sony TV app
TCL TV app
You are correct, i tried another one that works fine at the original quality and it is H.264
So for now I should avoid x265 and just use H.264?
I originally set it up on an older laptop which had the same issue, then a family member was getting rid of this PC so I switched to that. I guess I will have to look into getting something better.
Would you suggest anything that is on the cheaper side? I am not great with computers so just something that would be easy to use.
Yes, at least until you can upgrade the hardware of your server.
Sorry, I have no overview over available choices in your market.
Post some candidates and the community might be able to advise whther that machine is a feasible server or not.
Hint: the smaller the machine, the poorer is the price/performance ratio.
The short version is this: the best deal is a semi-recent system with an Intel CPU including a built-in GPU that has the Quick Sync feature. It could even be a cheap Celeron processor… As long as it has the GPU and it is 7th gen or newer.
Then, with the addition of Plex Pass, you will have access to hardware-accelerated transcoding, and that means that you can play any file on any client without worry.
This thread discusses the topic.
And this is a modest Intel box that seems to meet the mark for $120. It’s an 8th gen i3 with 8 GB RAM and it even has a 256 GB SSD, which will be enough for Plex if you don’t have a big library. (Or, you could have a big library if you turn off video seeking thumbnail generation.)
I’m not necessarily suggesting this specific machine but… It does look pretty good for $120. Other forum people, am I overlooking anything?
The other option, if you don’t want to spend a dime, is to spend time re-encoding all of your files so that they can be played with no server effort. Some people are insistent on avoiding transcoding, but I find the ability to play any file anywhere to be one of the best things about Plex.
Lastly if you get a new Plex server I do recommend running it under Linux not Windows. Yeah it is more to learn. It also works better.
I have been looking at these 2, would these be any good? if so which one? I have a hard time trying to decide because my knowledge of the inside of computers is very bad.
