Educate me on Plex please

[nightmarevoid]

I just found out about Plex from one of my friends, and I wanted to learn more to know if it is a viable option for me to save and watch my home DVD collection as well as other media I.. uh... "obtain." I was hoping the community here could answer some questions for me. 

 

1. What do you think is Plex's biggest shortcoming? It's biggest strength?

2. Does plex really work globally, and is it hard to run a plex server on Linux?

3. How does Plex treat storage? 

4. Plex seems to imply that MP4 is the most reliable direct play format, but how is the decision to transcode made (is it an option I sepecify on the app, or is it automatically detected), and how intensive is it (assume MKV to MP4)? 

5. What's the fastest way to rip a DVD as MP4? Should I make an MKV and then batch convert them to MP4 instead of waiting to copy each indvidudual DVD as MP4?

6. Any tips on bluray support? I think VLC can rip blurays with varied success, but does plex throw a fit?

 

Thanks for the help!

[Donut417]

1. Shortcomings wise plex doesnt run well on all streaming devices. Up til recently the Live TV functionality ran like dog shit on Fire Sticks. Strength wise it can transcode on the fly and Plex is very versitle when it comes to setups. I for example store all my media on a NAS and use an old desktop for transcoding. 
2. My Plex setup runs on Ubutnu current LTS release. Runs fine, I havent had issues unlike when I ran it on Windows 10. Just the setup on Linux might be a bit more invovled. 
3. Plex could pretty much give two fucks where you storage is. It can be internal or extenral. 
4. Transcoding is based on what streaming devcies you using. Prime example, I have the Plex Pass which allows me to do the Live TV recording. OTA TV is done in MPEG2. My firestick has no issues, the two Roku sticks in our home wont do MPEG2, so it will transcode if eaiter or both of those devcies are being used with Live TV. Further more, Plex pass also gives you Hardware Transcoding. Depends on your hardware you can utilize that or just do sofware transcoding. To be clear, hardware transcoding happens on the GPU side, but it only does VIDEO, Audio will still transcode via your CPU. All my media besides live TV are in MKV format. But thats because all my devcies support MKV. 
5. Keywords here. Make MKV and Handbreak. Those two pieces of software will help you out. 
6. I only deal with DVD's at the moment. I think make MKV can do Bluray, but it might be hit or miss. Just be aware that blurays are probably going to be about 25-50 gigs if you want full quality. 

The first step should be looking at the devices you want to stream to. Determine what video/audo formats they support. Next would be to rip your media in to that said formats. Keep in mind that if your device doesnt support the resolution that the video file is in, it will have to transcode that file as well. So its good practice that if you do 4K videos, that you also maybe do a 1080P version to keep for devcies that dont support 4K. 

[nightmarevoid]

14 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

1. Shortcomings wise plex doesnt run well on all streaming devices. Up til recently the Live TV functionality ran like dog shit on Fire Sticks. Strength wise it can transcode on the fly and Plex is very versitle when it comes to setups. I for example store all my media on a NAS and use an old desktop for transcoding. 
2. My Plex setup runs on Ubutnu current LTS release. Runs fine, I havent had issues unlike when I ran it on Windows 10. Just the setup on Linux might be a bit more invovled. 
3. Plex could pretty much give two fucks where you storage is. It can be internal or extenral. 
4. Transcoding is based on what streaming devcies you using. Prime example, I have the Plex Pass which allows me to do the Live TV recording. OTA TV is done in MPEG2. My firestick has no issues, the two Roku sticks in our home wont do MPEG2, so it will transcode if eaiter or both of those devcies are being used with Live TV. Further more, Plex pass also gives you Hardware Transcoding. Depends on your hardware you can utilize that or just do sofware transcoding. To be clear, hardware transcoding happens on the GPU side, but it only does VIDEO, Audio will still transcode via your CPU. All my media besides live TV are in MKV format. But thats because all my devcies support MKV. 
5. Keywords here. Make MKV and Handbreak. Those two pieces of software will help you out. 
6. I only deal with DVD's at the moment. I think make MKV can do Bluray, but it might be hit or miss. Just be aware that blurays are probably going to be about 25-50 gigs if you want full quality. 

The first step should be looking at the devices you want to stream to. Determine what video/audo formats they support. Next would be to rip your media in to that said formats. Keep in mind that if your device doesnt support the resolution that the video file is in, it will have to transcode that file as well. So its good practice that if you do 4K videos, that you also maybe do a 1080P version to keep for devcies that dont support 4K. 

Thank you for all the info! I wanted to run my plex server on either Debian or Fedora, and store all of my files on a few high capacity drives in either RAID 0 or JBOD. Since I'd probably be using a separate raid controller for this, I won't have any PCIe slots left over for a video card, But I hope I won't run into any problems there. Since I'll be playing mostly on some android smart TVs, some PCs, some Apple TVs, and an Xbox, I think Converting to MP4 first with H.264/5 underneath will be best.

[IgorM]

I discovered about PMS by watching ltt videos and now that I have configured my "server" running Debian 10 I can tell you it's awesome and I learned a lot during the process about servers and stuff by setting up different services and programs on it. As far as Plex goes it's very easy to install and setup on Linux, but if you can also configure it on Windows under 5 minutes just to see it working. I strongly recommend you give it a try for watching your content on your local network or even remotely, even more if you want to set up more stuff on your server. If you want to know some cool ways to obtain some err.. legally downloaded movies and series just sens a message.

Also, @nightmarevoid great explanation!

[AbsoluteFool]

Just a tip.. Plex uses FFmpeg, for streaming and transcoding. I would check the FFmpeg requirements if you are in doubt, plex uses most of the features of FFmpeg which can help you understand how Plex actually works.

[tikker]

18 hours ago, nightmarevoid said:

I just found out about Plex from one of my friends, and I wanted to learn more to know if it is a viable option for me to save and watch my home DVD collection as well as other media I.. uh... "obtain." I was hoping the community here could answer some questions for me. 

 

1. What do you think is Plex's biggest shortcoming? It's biggest strength?

2. Does plex really work globally, and is it hard to run a plex server on Linux?

3. How does Plex treat storage? 

4. Plex seems to imply that MP4 is the most reliable direct play format, but how is the decision to transcode made (is it an option I sepecify on the app, or is it automatically detected), and how intensive is it (assume MKV to MP4)? 

5. What's the fastest way to rip a DVD as MP4? Should I make an MKV and then batch convert them to MP4 instead of waiting to copy each indvidudual DVD as MP4?

6. Any tips on bluray support? I think VLC can rip blurays with varied success, but does plex throw a fit?

 

Thanks for the help!

I ran my Plex server on Ubuntu for a good while, before switching the machine to Unraid and now running it in a Docker there.

1. I have some pet peeves with it, but for the most part it does what I want.

2. If with globally you mean access content from outside your home network, then yes.

3. It couldn't care less. You tell it where to find stuff, and it will build its library. For UHD material you'll want a Gigabit connection to the server, as the bitrates there can exceed the usual 100 Mbit/s.

4. It all depends on the device(s) you intend to play on. MP4 is probably indeed the most widely supported format, but I keep everything in MKV which works for my TV and PC. Plex can also "optimize" your library itself, which means it converts it to a suitable format. Depending on what the client can handle, transcoding can be light to devastating on your server (see below). Also, MP4 and MKV are just containers.

5. As said, tools like MakeMKV and HandBrake do what you want.

6. Once you have an MP4 or MKV file, it's all the same. You give it a video file, Plex will play it according to what the client is capable of.

 

Plex basically has three modes of playback:

- Direct Play: the client is capable of dealing with everything (i.e. the container and the audio and video streams) natively. This takes pretty much no toll on the CPU or GPU, as everything is passed directly to the device.

 

- Direct Stream: the client cannot handle the container, video stream or audio stream, so Plex converts it on the fly to something it can understand. Audio conversion is probably not a big deal nor is switching containers (e.g. MKV to MP4 if the video stream is supported, but not the container it's in). Transcoding video can be very taxing however, and in the case of UHD material will probaby murder just about every machine out there (buffering every 30 seconds, waiting etc.)

 

- Transcode: if it cannot Direct Play or Stream, Plex will transcode everything into a suitable format.

[alpha754293]

On 1/8/2020 at 6:35 PM, nightmarevoid said:

I just found out about Plex from one of my friends, and I wanted to learn more to know if it is a viable option for me to save and watch my home DVD collection as well as other media I.. uh... "obtain." I was hoping the community here could answer some questions for me. 

 

1. What do you think is Plex's biggest shortcoming? It's biggest strength?

2. Does plex really work globally, and is it hard to run a plex server on Linux?

3. How does Plex treat storage? 

4. Plex seems to imply that MP4 is the most reliable direct play format, but how is the decision to transcode made (is it an option I sepecify on the app, or is it automatically detected), and how intensive is it (assume MKV to MP4)? 

5. What's the fastest way to rip a DVD as MP4? Should I make an MKV and then batch convert them to MP4 instead of waiting to copy each indvidudual DVD as MP4?

6. Any tips on bluray support? I think VLC can rip blurays with varied success, but does plex throw a fit?

 

Thanks for the help!

1. I think that Plex's biggest shortcoming is how it reads the names of files in order to do their automatic catalogging for you.

 

If you are meticulous with that, then it works ESPECIALLY well for TV shows.

 

But if you just have random media (like videos that you've pulled from YouTube for example, like tutorial videos on how to do something and you want to be able to watch it offline), because Youtube videos don't follow the Plex nomenclature, so it doesn't always recognise or is as good with organising those files (compared to if you just opened Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac).

 

2. It's biggest strength, I think, is their automatic organization. We have a Mac Mini that drives our TV in your living room and I used to have the wife open Finder, then navigate to the folder, and then she would have to either double click on each episode of a TV show that I've converted from DVD one-at-a-time or she would have to select all, drag and drop them into VLC Player. If VLC Player crashes, she'd have to do that all over again.

 

With Plex, you don't have to do any of that nonsense.

 

The user-friendliness of their interface is like Apple TV, but even better, and is actually probably a little more akin to like Netflix in terms of its general layout. (Plus you can customize it, so if you have kid(s), you can create a "kids" library and put all of their content there, which is useful.

 

If you need subtitles, you can usually find the SRT file, drop it into the folder where the video file is stored and it will automatically pick up on it.

 

After you give it enough time, it can generate thumbnails so that you can scrub through your media. That can also be helpful as well.

 

Wife actually uses Plex moreso now than she used to use my other, more "manual" method, and she's not a super tech-savvy person, so for her to use it -- means it's actually useful/good.

 

(This is why I ended up buying a permanent license/membership.) It's well worth it.

 

2. I haven't tried using it outside my home, but inside my home network - it runs great.

One really important note: you do NOT necessarily have to transcode files in order to play them. There might be a thought that if you're playing the files on a computer that you have to transcode them (ALL the time) to be able to play them on said computer. That's not true. The transcode is most useful if you're converting them from a computer file to something that can be played on mobile devices (tablets, phones, etc.). Computer to computer does not require a transcode. If you have a lot of network congestion, the transcode may help by lowering the quality, and therefore; the bandwidth requirements compared to the original. But again, not required.

 

I run Plex off of my Qnap NAS, which has like a Celeron J---something something something processor. (Very low end Intel Celeron processor in the Qnap NAS). And it runs without any problems.

 

I've also played with running Plex through a centralized server, but then also had my 64-core compute cluster transcode my files like mad, and I was able to transcode my entire library in a few hours at the highest quality. So...it's really easy to do/setup/run. And how you run depends on your needs.

 

If you want to be able to take your files to go without watching them over the web (e.g. over public wifi at an airport), then you might want to transcode and sync them to your mobile device.

 

If you want to only play it within your local network, then you don't necessarily need to transcode at all.

 

It really depends. I've ran it both ways where I transcoded everything (there's a thread on the Plex forum that talks about joining/combining multiple Plex Media Server installation into one and the reason was because I installed PMS on all four of my nodes in my cluster, transcoded the crap out of my entire library, and then I wanted to move the resulting files back into the "main" PMS server. If you need me to link you, just let me know.)

 

Now, I don't even bother with transcoding at all. I just play everything, natively, within my internal network.

 

3. Not sure what you mean by that, but it does generate metadata and also if you do transcode, it will need a place to store the transcoded versions. Byte My Bits actually has a Youtube video that talks a little bit about that.

 

Otherwise, the storage of the media is no different than any other media storage. You install PMS on top of a server and then you just point PMS to where you are keeping your data and PMS will act upon it, as a level on TOP of it, but it doesn't touch your source media data. (Transcoded files are stored separately, like a copy of the source.)

 

4. You can manually start a transcode or if you try to play a file through a mobile device, it will automatically start the transcoding process. But computer to computer -- again - the transcoding is not a requirement for Plex to work. I don't transcode anything when my Qnap NAS which runs PMS broadcasts media to any of our laptops or my desktop computers.

 

5. MKV works fine. My untrained eye thinks that MKV is actually better than MP4. Higher quality and smaller file sizes.

 

6. I haven't tried loading a BluRay ISO to it, but I would assume that if it has the directories AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS that it would read it like it would a DVD. But then again, I've never actually tried. I still fall back to VLC Player for that because how it works makes it appear like it's more straightforward.

 

I used to use VLC Streamer Helper to send stuff to mobile devices (which requires transcoding) and I would open the files in Windows Explorer/Finder natively in VLC Player. With Plex, because it will find and catalog shows and episodes for you, I definitely find myself using Plex moreso than VLC Player now.

The ONE REALLY, REALLY, REALLY big catch that I would comment on though -- BE EXTERMELY CAREFUL when it tells you that the server has an update.

 

At least once, one of their updates actually broke my Plex Media Server installation so that I can COMPLETELY uninstall it (and delete all metadata) from my NAS before I can re-install it and then it had to go through and re-index all of my media files, and re-generate the thumbnails, etc. It doesn't happen often, but I now subscribe to the theory of if it works, LEAVE IT ALONE.

[Lorant]

13 minutes ago, alpha754293 said:

1. I think that Plex's biggest shortcoming is how it reads the names of files in order to do their automatic catalogging for you.

 

If you are meticulous with that, then it works ESPECIALLY well for TV shows.

 

But if you just have random media (like videos that you've pulled from YouTube for example, like tutorial videos on how to do something and you want to be able to watch it offline), because Youtube videos don't follow the Plex nomenclature, so it doesn't always recognise or is as good with organising those files (compared to if you just opened Windows Explorer or Finder on Mac).

 

2. It's biggest strength, I think, is their automatic organization. We have a Mac Mini that drives our TV in your living room and I used to have the wife open Finder, then navigate to the folder, and then she would have to either double click on each episode of a TV show that I've converted from DVD one-at-a-time or she would have to select all, drag and drop them into VLC Player. If VLC Player crashes, she'd have to do that all over again.

 

With Plex, you don't have to do any of that nonsense.

 

The user-friendliness of their interface is like Apple TV, but even better, and is actually probably a little more akin to like Netflix in terms of its general layout. (Plus you can customize it, so if you have kid(s), you can create a "kids" library and put all of their content there, which is useful.

 

If you need subtitles, you can usually find the SRT file, drop it into the folder where the video file is stored and it will automatically pick up on it.

 

After you give it enough time, it can generate thumbnails so that you can scrub through your media. That can also be helpful as well.

 

Wife actually uses Plex moreso now than she used to use my other, more "manual" method, and she's not a super tech-savvy person, so for her to use it -- means it's actually useful/good.

 

(This is why I ended up buying a permanent license/membership.) It's well worth it.

 

2. I haven't tried using it outside my home, but inside my home network - it runs great.

One really important note: you do NOT necessarily have to transcode files in order to play them. There might be a thought that if you're playing the files on a computer that you have to transcode them (ALL the time) to be able to play them on said computer. That's not true. The transcode is most useful if you're converting them from a computer file to something that can be played on mobile devices (tablets, phones, etc.). Computer to computer does not require a transcode. If you have a lot of network congestion, the transcode may help by lowering the quality, and therefore; the bandwidth requirements compared to the original. But again, not required.

 

I run Plex off of my Qnap NAS, which has like a Celeron J---something something something processor. (Very low end Intel Celeron processor in the Qnap NAS). And it runs without any problems.

 

I've also played with running Plex through a centralized server, but then also had my 64-core compute cluster transcode my files like mad, and I was able to transcode my entire library in a few hours at the highest quality. So...it's really easy to do/setup/run. And how you run depends on your needs.

 

If you want to be able to take your files to go without watching them over the web (e.g. over public wifi at an airport), then you might want to transcode and sync them to your mobile device.

 

If you want to only play it within your local network, then you don't necessarily need to transcode at all.

 

It really depends. I've ran it both ways where I transcoded everything (there's a thread on the Plex forum that talks about joining/combining multiple Plex Media Server installation into one and the reason was because I installed PMS on all four of my nodes in my cluster, transcoded the crap out of my entire library, and then I wanted to move the resulting files back into the "main" PMS server. If you need me to link you, just let me know.)

 

Now, I don't even bother with transcoding at all. I just play everything, natively, within my internal network.

 

3. Not sure what you mean by that, but it does generate metadata and also if you do transcode, it will need a place to store the transcoded versions. Byte My Bits actually has a Youtube video that talks a little bit about that.

 

Otherwise, the storage of the media is no different than any other media storage. You install PMS on top of a server and then you just point PMS to where you are keeping your data and PMS will act upon it, as a level on TOP of it, but it doesn't touch your source media data. (Transcoded files are stored separately, like a copy of the source.)

 

4. You can manually start a transcode or if you try to play a file through a mobile device, it will automatically start the transcoding process. But computer to computer -- again - the transcoding is not a requirement for Plex to work. I don't transcode anything when my Qnap NAS which runs PMS broadcasts media to any of our laptops or my desktop computers.

 

5. MKV works fine. My untrained eye thinks that MKV is actually better than MP4. Higher quality and smaller file sizes.

 

6. I haven't tried loading a BluRay ISO to it, but I would assume that if it has the directories AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS that it would read it like it would a DVD. But then again, I've never actually tried. I still fall back to VLC Player for that because how it works makes it appear like it's more straightforward.

 

I used to use VLC Streamer Helper to send stuff to mobile devices (which requires transcoding) and I would open the files in Windows Explorer/Finder natively in VLC Player. With Plex, because it will find and catalog shows and episodes for you, I definitely find myself using Plex moreso than VLC Player now.

The ONE REALLY, REALLY, REALLY big catch that I would comment on though -- BE EXTERMELY CAREFUL when it tells you that the server has an update.

 

At least once, one of their updates actually broke my Plex Media Server installation so that I can COMPLETELY uninstall it (and delete all metadata) from my NAS before I can re-install it and then it had to go through and re-index all of my media files, and re-generate the thumbnails, etc. It doesn't happen often, but I now subscribe to the theory of if it works, LEAVE IT ALONE.

Lol, or you can just install Plex Server on ANY PC, download movies onto it ,and then log in and watch on any device.

 

Plex is literally idiot proof. 

 

I know, my friend is an idiot and he watches my content.

[mtz_federico]

On 1/8/2020 at 5:35 PM, nightmarevoid said:

6. Any tips on bluray support? I think VLC can rip blurays with varied success, but does plex throw a fit?

EposVox has a good video on ripping BluRays