All, I am new to this forum so apologies in advance is I am not using it properly. I have roughly 35 TB of media that I am currently using PLEX to manage and stream. I have noticed over the last few years that everything is slowing down. I want to build the ultimate PLEX Media Server. My clients are mostly the latest Amazon Fire TV’s (4k support) and at any given time I could have up to 4 simultaneous movies streaming. I also tend to stream and download new content at the same time. My plan is to build a rack mountable server, rack mountable RAID and use my desktop (current PLEX Media Server Windows 10, i7-3820 CPU @ 3.6, 32GM RAM as a client to control PLEX (downloads…) from my office. I am open to OS, server spec’s and hot swap-able RAID storage suggestion. I also running Gig E and have the latest Netgear NightHawk X6 for my router. Any and all suggestions are appreciated including rack mount information.
I would be interested to hear what people suggest on this. I need to be able to stream 5-6 streams at 1080p. All of my video will likely require transcoding. I have 20TB of storage and I am looking for a NAS to handle the storage and transcoding.
There are hundreds of variables to compare.
My suggestion is i5 or i7 nuc connected to a big synology NAS.
What I have not seen mentioned here is you can always run 2 servers if your clients get too demanding. Both connected to the same NAS.
I have 4 or 5 servers connected but have not tested several streaming at the same time and how the nas handles it.
Sweetaction.
If there is a NAS that will stream 5-6 1080p movies it will be very expensive!
Thanks for the follow up. I’m taking the proverbial leap of faith and I am building out a Media Server with all of the newest and supposedly the greatest tech. I will update with my findings and configurations.
interesting project, i am trying something like this myself. To be honest you should at least wait till intel releases kaby lake. Seems like intel is going to make those cpus really good for 4k transcoding etc
@sweetaction said:
I would be interested to hear what people suggest on this. I need to be able to stream 5-6 streams at 1080p. All of my video will likely require transcoding. I have 20TB of storage and I am looking for a NAS to handle the storage and transcoding.
I don’t know of a nas that can do that. But I use a drobo connected to my PC for storage and my PC does the transcoding. I went with a Intel 5820 as it’s a 6 core. No problem.
Thanks for the feeback Archer75. Im looking at possibly building a NAS now, but unsure about the spec. I will jump over to the FREEBSD board and see if anyone has any suggestions.
Have a look a the Xeon E5 chips that are going cheap on Ebay. I’m running a Dual E5-2670 set up that will easily handle everything I throw at it Plex wise as well as doing a load of other things.
Plex handles 4K transcoding best the same way it handles any other transcoding; when it doesn’t do it at all - at least not on-the-fly.
If you have 4k/HEVC content and 4K display devices, the odds are good (but not 100% by any means) that no transcoding is necessary and almost any PC running PMS will work just fine.
If you have 4K content and not 4K display devices, then some level of transcoding is unavoidable and attempts by PMS to do on-the-fly transcoding exhaust all but the most powerful PCs. I’ve informally tested transcoding 4K/HEVC videos to 1080p displays which took 16 CPUs of my dual octo-core E5-2665 workstation to accomplish.
I’ve asked this forum more than once if PMS can take advantage of Kaby Lake or some other type of GPU transcoding and gotten zero response. Consequently, I’m not holding my breath on that helping PMS.
@dduke2104 said:
Plex handles 4K transcoding best the same way it handles any other transcoding; when it doesn’t do it at all - at least not on-the-fly.
If you have 4k/HEVC content and 4K display devices, the odds are good (but not 100% by any means) that no transcoding is necessary and almost any PC running PMS will work just fine.
If you have 4K content and not 4K display devices, then some level of transcoding is unavoidable and attempts by PMS to do on-the-fly transcoding exhaust all but the most powerful PCs. I’ve informally tested transcoding 4K/HEVC videos to 1080p displays which took 16 CPUs of my dual octo-core E5-2665 workstation to accomplish.
I’ve asked this forum more than once if PMS can take advantage of Kaby Lake or some other type of GPU transcoding and gotten zero response. Consequently, I’m not holding my breath on that helping PMS.
Right now Plex uses no hardware transcoding except on specific platforms like the ShieldTV.
That’s exactly right about your 4K content.
Most folks only have 1 or maybe 2 4K displays… but many many other device types and even more if you share your library.
So honestly your title will most ALWAYS need transcoding.
How I solved it for me was create 2 copies for each title. 1 as 4K the other 1080p.
In my PMS I have created a library called 4K.
I put the 4K content in that library and the 1080p in the normal place in the main library.
Then by user login in my PMS, I only allow access to the 4K library from 4K devices logged in.
Works fine for me and saves me spending my retirement to build a computer big enough!!!
Correct about needing different copies (different resolutions) if you want the best picture available to a variety of different resolution devices. That’s exactly what the ‘Optimize’ function in PMS is meant to accomplish - background transcode in advance of need. It’s just at the expense of increased disk usage and maybe a little futzing with making the best choice about which versions to create or view.
It’s fine that HW-based transcoding is available on Shield but what about all of us with Windows PCs that already have competent GPUs installed that lie fallow with PMS? That’s circles back to why I think Kaby Lake won’t bring anything to the PMS equation in regard to 4K/HEVC.
Sorry, I was responding to a post out of context I suppose. I can transcode 5-6 streams that already exist as 1080p into whatever is necessary, which is how I read it. If what was meant was transcode 5-6 4K streams to 1080p then I don’t know… I haven’t bought into the 4K gimmick since few people sit the few feet away from their TV to even notice the resolution difference, let alone have 4K content.
Instead I bought a 75" 1080p TV and we’re enjoying the cost savings and the imperceptible visual difference at normal viewing distances.
@sremick said:
Sorry, I was responding to a post out of context I suppose. I can transcode 5-6 streams that already exist as 1080p into whatever is necessary, which is how I read it. If what was meant was transcode 5-6 4K streams to 1080p then I don’t know… I haven’t bought into the 4K gimmick since few people sit the few feet away from their TV to even notice the resolution difference, let alone have 4K content.
Instead I bought a 75" 1080p TV and we’re enjoying the cost savings and the imperceptible visual difference at normal viewing distances.
I don’t care about 4K, but I really want HDR, which isn’t available for 1080p…
I maybe wrong but may I suggest that people asking about a NAS to use as a server are thinking named NAS like Synology, Drobo, Qnap not a purpose made PC box.
@spikemixture said:
I maybe wrong but may I suggest that people asking about a NAS to use as a server are thinking named NAS like Synology, Drobo, Qnap not a purpose made PC box.
Those would be bad choices for anyone needing to do any degree of transcoding (most users wanting the advertised Plex experience). Most peoples’ cell phones have faster CPUs than those dinky things.
@spikemixture said:
I maybe wrong but may I suggest that people asking about a NAS to use as a server are thinking named NAS like Synology, Drobo, Qnap not a purpose made PC box.
Those would be bad choices for anyone needing to do any degree of transcoding (most users wanting the advertised Plex experience). Most peoples’ cell phones have faster CPUs than those dinky things.
What I am saying is you might call your box a NAS but most would not.
