I am hoping to use Plex to play 4K videos via Apple TV without buffering or stalling. What are the min requirements in terms of, TV, CPU, RAM, GPU and external hard drive (or NAS)?
My current system, regardless of its specs, 4K videos either stall for long periods or just stop playing.
Thanks,
First and foremost, be sure youâre using the Enhanced Player in the Plex app (app settings).
If youâre still having issues, during playback on a computer go to https://app.plex.tv/desktop, click on Settings (upper right), then on the left, make sure the correct server is selected, and underneath that, click on Dashboard.
Post a screenshot of the Now Playing section (expanded).
Thanks for sharing that link. I came across it before I posted my topic. However, I am down to earth person and not that technical. I donât even know whether my Plex is trying to transcode my videos or not.
My system is pretty old, from 2007. I am planning to upgrade soon, and I was hoping that some one would tell me the min. requirements for what I am looking for.
If youâre using an Apple TV 4K then it gets very simple.
Currently my Apple TV is not 4K, but I could switch. What else do I need for the PC and storage setup?
It is not so much your pc that is important, as long as you have a client that can direct play.
If you have to transcode 4k, then there is no point to even using it.
As far as storage, if you intend to collect 4k, then you need all the storage you can afford.
4k is expensive.
it is expensive to play, it is expensive to store, it is expensive to transcode.
If you cannot understand that post and the whole thread, then you probably need to stop and think about whether you should even bother.
The reason everyone is saying to forget 4k, is because there is just so much data to transmit, that unless you can afford a LOT of storage (multi-digit TBs), or a ridiculously powerful CPU, AND your client device can handle 4k, something isnât going to work.
Iâm not an expert (by any means), but Iâm fairly certain that h.264 (the standard for 1080 content) cannot handle a lot of the beneficial parts of 4k, like HDR. However, h.264 is ubiquitous and supported by just about everything - enabling direct play from the server. That means the server CPU doesnât have to do anything to stream to a device, unless the device needs an alternate audio format or subtitles. H.264 uses mpeg codecs for the video, which had been around forever and thatâs why itâs so supported.
H.265 on the other hand is newer. It allows compressing a 4k to similar storage size as a h.264 1080 video, but there are still competing codecs (HEVC, VP9, & AV1). Most devices donât natively support this compression format, so even if you store your 4k in h.265, if you stream to something that only supports h.264/mpeg, the server CPU will have to convert the video on the fly, which is really burdensome. Thatâs why youâd either need a really powerful CPU - to transcode to h.264 (where youâd lose some of the 4k benefit, such as HDR anyway). Or, if you store the video in h.264, youâve already lost the 4k benefit (mostly), but itâll stream quickly. In the later scenario, you also will have a 20-30GB file, instead of a 4-5GB file; effectively wasting storage space.
Ultimately, storing and streaming 4k on Plex wonât be cost effective for a few more years, until the industry settles on codecs, and more devices natively support it. Iâve got all of our 1080 stuff on Plex, and just use a 4k Blu-ray player to get the 4k benefit. Most of our collection was on DVD or Blu-ray (non-4k) anyway; so thatâs what I put on Plex.
Sorry for the long answerâŠ
@emranjamal Hi again. Hereâs my set up and which works great for 4K video.
My AVR system is set up for 5.1 only. If TrueHD / Full Atmos Dolby / etc is a requirement then you will want to use the Nvidia Shield instead of the Apple TV 4K
Videos are in H.265/HEVC/10bit format with various audio tracks and HDR.
In the Plex app settings on the Apple TV 4K, enable the Enhanced Player.
Thatâs it. No transcoding required. (I also rarely use subtitles but I believe the Enhanced Player will deal with external SRT files without transcoding as well).
Note: I am in the process of transferring my Plex content to a NAS with a huge amount of storage. Storage needs will depend entirely on how you choose to encode your files. 4K movies with TrueHD can vary anywhere from 20 to 75 GB per movie.
I hope this helps.
Thank you all for the informative feedback.
@darcilicious Do you mind sharing your NAS experience with us? There are a lot of options out there and I would trust a personal experience over a random review online.
Iâm curious about your NAS suggestions as well. I reencode everything using handbrake, to h.264/mpeg. I donât plan on more than 2-3 simultaneous 1080 videos at once. I have a nighthawk R7800, but use cat5e to almost everything. I was thinking of the QNAP TVS-672N-i3-4G.
what your server needs, regardless if nas or anything else, is entirely dependent on what transcoding you need.
from @ https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/
CPU Requirements
The most basic thing to remember is that the more Plex apps you have playing content at the same time, the more CPU power youâll need. Generally speaking, if you have two Plex apps requiring transcoded content at the same time, that will require about twice the CPU processing power compared to if there was only one app playing content.
If you want very basic minimum suggestions:
- No transcoding: Intel âAtomâ 1.2GHz (NAS devices based on ARM processors should also be capable of at least one stream with no transcoding)
- Single 720p transcode: Intel Core i3 3.0 GHz
- Single 1080p transcode: Intel Core i5 3.0GHz
- Single 4K transcode: Intel Core i7 3.2GHz
If youâll need to support more than one simultaneous transcode, youâll need a more powerful processor.
The Guideline
Very roughly speaking, for a single full-transcode of a video, the following PassMark score requirements are a good guideline for the following average source file:
- 4K HDR (50Mbps, 10-bit HEVC) file: 17000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
- 4K SDR (40Mbps, 8-bit HEVC) file: 12000 PassMark score (being transcoded to 10Mbps 1080p)
- 1080p (10Mbps, H.264) file: 2000 PassMark score
- 720p (4Mbps, H.264) file: 1500 PassMark score
The CPU Benchmark website is a good resource to see what sort of PassMark score a particular processor received.
Iâm not going to have PMS run on the NAS â just content storage. We have the DS 1819+ for what itâs worth.
No one has mentioned GPUâs?
I have been doing some testing myself recently, 4k will direct play on my TV, but if Iâm not at home the file will need to transcode. By turning on hardware accel my GPU (2070) transcodes the file brilliantly using 15% GPU. With hardware accel turned off the CPU maxes out and playback dies as expected.
Agreed the 2070 is a bit overkill but I think something like a 1660 could be a good investment.
Itâs mentioned extensively in the FAQ posted near the start of this thread.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
