Plex Server

[HUSKER222]

thats why i keep saying my internet would bottleneck before that PC would. I know its overkill but i need it to be overkill to be able to handle content remotely.

[AshleyAshes]

2 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

those are played locally though. local isnt the issue to be honest im more interested how that server works for users remotely. If i'm traveling i'd like to be able to watch my content from across the country. i should be clear within my LAN everything works fine.

You got a measly 12mbit upstream, it's obviously not going to handle many concurrent upstreams.

[HUSKER222]

i cant get any faster? I'm running the fastest internet xfinity has to offer plus a ASUS AC1900 router and a aftermarket modem. What are your upload speeds? 12 isnt measly either. I see speeds usually around 5 on most people running comcast with comcast's equiptment.. my download speed is from 200's - 300s sometimes.

 

[AshleyAshes]

I also just want to point this out.  Just recently you said this:

6 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

 i should be clear within my LAN everything works fine.

Everything works fine locally!

11 hours ago, HUSKER222 said:

I've had issues with it outside of my home network. Hell I've had issues inside my home network.

Yet a some hours ago, you said you've had issues on LAN as well.

 

Communicate clearly.

[HUSKER222]

with other set ups

[AshleyAshes]

2 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

i cant get any faster? I'm running the fastest internet xfinity has to offer plus a ASUS AC1900 router and a aftermarket modem. What are your upload speeds? 12 isnt measly either. I see speeds usually around 5 on most people running comcast with comcast's equiptment.. my download speed is from 200's - 300s sometimes.

 

12mbit is not a lot to support streaming.  If you have other services competing for upstream like torrents being seeded or gaming traffic or uploads, then you have even more problems if that upstream usage isn't being managed.  12mbit will only support a few remote internet devices and you'll be stretching that 12mbits with even just two.

 

It's measly at least for these purposes.  12mbit will be fine for 1-2 remote clients, preferably one, though you'll have to manage that.

[HUSKER222]

I also said far back ive had 3 different plex servers. I ran a rack mount server which i had issues with then a i7 3770k ivy ivy bridge which ran very well but had issues outside of my network. I did however have some issues in 1 room in my house but since changing the modem and router several months ago everything within my LAN (LOCALLY) works great but remotely which i have said several times is what im really interested in.

[HUSKER222]

I dont think my internet even offers more upload speed.

[HUSKER222]

I can see that 12 isnt alot to support it but i do have a buddy who also runs a plex server he is the one whos running dual xeon processors on his server and no matter where i have been in the world his server runs flawlessly. His internet isnt as good as mine either which led me to believe computer. He that transcoding thing would make sense because if he has multiple processors hes able to transcode easier. I bet that transcoding thing is my issue transcoding remotely will cause an issue. But i do believe 8 cores should be enough to spread the stress on multiple transcoding streams and at this point its more going to come down to my internet. I'm sorry if i wasnt clear before about when i said ive had issues in my home network. I have ran a couple of different plex servers when i started my plex originally and its been about 2 years maybe.

[AshleyAshes]

Fine.  Yes.  Sure.  An 1800X will make your internet faster.  Go spend your money on that.

I'm done with this thread.

[HUSKER222]

lol wow you arent reading at all what im writing. im saying that my internet is clearly going to be the issue. I dont think the transcoding will be a problem with 8 cores but transcoding REMOTELY because of my internet is likely the cause of my problem how are you not getting that? Read Woman! :-)

 

 

I did say several times i was more interested in remote streams than local streams. and what other people were doing. You kinda went all hilary clinton walk across america on me though. I just dont think you were understanding what i was trying to get at. sorry about the confusion.

[HUSKER222]

or yes nevermind 1800x will make my internet faster :-) lol 

[ChuckMaurice]

I'm gonna try to summarize all the relevant info here, but I'm also getting a little bit tired to repeat myself or Ashley's messages. Communication (and good formatting) is the key.

1) Local and remote transcoding use the same CPU power. Exactly.

2) Direct Play use little to no CPU power.

2) With a 12,1 Mbps connection you will be able to stream ONE file at 12,1 Mbps. Whatever CPU you task with the transcoding.

3) My test of 14 transcoding was 14 REMOTE transcoding from 20 Mbps to 12 Mbps. It worked because my internet connection is awfully good and probably the best available to a private individual in France. So it was able to send 12*14 = 168MB per second when CPU-limited. In local it would have been the same because I was not limited by my internet connection.

4) If I were to send Direct Play streams it would have been more than 14 as I would be only limited by my internet connection.

5) If you want to send a Direct Play stream of a file with a bitrate higher than 12,1 Mbps, the Plex Server will automatically compress it under 12,1Mbps (so, transcoding) for the stream to be small enough for your internet.

 

[HUSKER222]

yes. I pretty much got all of that. I didnt understand the transcoding/direct play before this thread. I had seen that but i did not know what that meant. It does make alot of sense to me. I get that the Transcoding is CPU Intensive so Remotely (mostly due to internet) im going to have issues with multiple transcoding but locally my issues have been solved.(mostly because locally i wont be bottlenecked by the internet and the CPU is strong enough to transcode anything i need locally). What I wanted to know was if it was done remotely. Which you just told me it was.. That's really good! Maybe I should contact my ISP and see if there is a way to get better upload speeds.i mean i am understanding what youre saying correctly? yes?

I am sorry if my formatting of my question was way off. I really wanted to know what people were doing for remote connections to plex. I really feel like you guys gave me alot of great information. Thank you both! :-)

[jkirkcaldy]

your best bet if you're having issues remotely is to limit the bandwidth in the server settings in Plex directly. It sounds like your setup - hardware wise - should be more than enough to handle multiple streams of transcoded media. 

 

Here are the settings that I use for my server (this is with an i73770) this solved all my remote streaming issues. For whatever reason increasing the limit on the remote stream to anything more than 3mbps and I started to have issues with buffering etc. Even though my connection is a 100/100 constantly but I don't have the time or know enough about the ways in which this works to try and figure it out properly. 

 

 

[HUSKER222]

ill try that now

[HUSKER222]

it didnt change much but i called comcast and i am gonna do a business account 20mbps up and like 200 down it says and it wasnt much more expensive then residential side and no data caps so maybe that will help.

[CtrlAltELITE]

My Shield TV transcodes to 3 different streams without much bother, runs fine with my 5tb library on a mounted NAS. Sips electricity too. I have my whole library encoded into x264/x265 which it has a HW encoder for, it does struggle if you try to push divx through it (or 10bit x265). It will push a 4th stream but everything begins to chug at that point, not bad for a little arm chip though, coupled with my low power NAS and RPi web server my home equipment costs buttons to run.

[HUSKER222]

i use shield as my watchimg device plays plex the best

[Mikensan]

Why do you @HUSKER222 believe that remotely streaming a movie, and streaming a movie locally - has anything to do with the hardware? You've emphasized buying hardware to support remote streaming - I think if you explain why you think that is, maybe we can explain why that's wrong.

 

I'm glad to see you've taken an interest in increasing your upload. Be careful with comcast, their "upload" is usually advertised at their "burst" rates. Meaning for the first 100mb of a transfer it'll go at whatever, then after it'll slow down to say 5. Comcast is a pretty terrible ISP in my experience.

[KuJoe]

I can confirm that hardware is not a huge factor when streaming. I have a Plex server on another continent (I'm in FL, the server is in Europe) with 2GB of RAM, a single 500GB SATA drive, and a single core VIA Nano processor U2250 CPU in it. No issues with multiple HD streams.

[HUSKER222]

33 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

I can confirm that hardware is not a huge factor when streaming. I have a Plex server on another continent (I'm in FL, the server is in Europe) with 2GB of RAM, a single 500GB SATA drive, and a single core VIA Nano processor U2250 CPU in it. No issues with multiple HD streams.

yeah thats weird. im very surprised it works well. What internet connection is the person streaming on and what internet connection is the person watching it on? I upgraded today to 20mbps up so hopefully thatll help. also hardware does play a factor to an extent. I bet it will depend on what your playing and what your watching it on. I bet if you watch it on your computer through plex.tv it will work better across the ocean then watching it in the vizio or samsung app. and depending on how many remote streams are going simultaneously and from what ive learned in the difference between transcoding and direct play that will also play a factor on your hardware local or remote

[HUSKER222]

52 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

Why do you @HUSKER222 believe that remotely streaming a movie, and streaming a movie locally - has anything to do with the hardware? You've emphasized buying hardware to support remote streaming - I think if you explain why you think that is, maybe we can explain why that's wrong.

 

I'm glad to see you've taken an interest in increasing your upload. Be careful with comcast, their "upload" is usually advertised at their "burst" rates. Meaning for the first 100mb of a transfer it'll go at whatever, then after it'll slow down to say 5. Comcast is a pretty terrible ISP in my experience.

If youre running several processes on a computer and running plex with multiple streams (transcoding is CPU intensive from what ive been told in this forum) the amount of cores can come into play. Internet i know plays a huge huge role infact probably the biggest role but im streaming media files that are very large if i have 15 streams going at once and im also running a game on that computer hardware comes into play. i mean i assume it does? and yes sometimes there are 15 streams going at once.

 

also i found out that comcast business has no data caps so no slower speeds when i hit a data cap and i wont share bandwidth with my street anymore i get my own private line.

[KuJoe]

10 minutes ago, HUSKER222 said:

yeah thats weird. im very surprised it works well. What internet connection is the person streaming on and what internet connection is the person watching it on? I upgraded today to 20mbps up so hopefully thatll help. also hardware does play a factor to an extent. I bet it will depend on what your playing and what your watching it on. I bet if you watch it on your computer through plex.tv it will work better across the ocean then watching it in the vizio or samsung app. and depending on how many remote streams are going simultaneously and from what ive learned in the difference between transcoding and direct play that will also play a factor on your hardware local or remote

It's streaming from a 1Gbps port and I have a 50Mbps down connection. I stream it to my phone (Plex app on Android), my tablet (Plex app on Android), my PCs (browser), and my Roku (built in app). I don't have a paid account so I don't think I can use the Plex Cloud feature. As long as you don't adjust the quality of the stream and keep it at "Original" the CPU usage is minimal. I had 4 streams going at once and the CPU usage was less than 10% although if I reduced the quality of one stream below 720p it would peg the CPU at 100%.

[HUSKER222]

8 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

It's streaming from a 1Gbps port and I have a 50Mbps down connection. I stream it to my phone (Plex app on Android), my tablet (Plex app on Android), my PCs (browser), and my Roku (built in app). I don't have a paid account so I don't think I can use the Plex Cloud feature. As long as you don't adjust the quality of the stream and keep it at "Original" the CPU usage is minimal. I had 4 streams going at once and the CPU usage was less than 10% although if I reduced the quality of one stream below 720p it would peg the CPU at 100%.

interesting. Well the PC probably gets a direct play, I have to say next to nvidia shield tv and a pc roku stick plays plex the best (ive gotten different result on depending on streaming device i assume its due to the transcoding and directplay) alot of my content at original streams very very high. Was the file you are watching are they 1080p 5.1 DTS? i try not to put anything on that isnt exactly that or better. Yeah thats normal internet also im impressed. I've tried it across the ocean in norway but it didnt work well. ive had 3 or 4 different computers run plex. everytime ive upgraded one it has ran a little better everytime. My internet at this point i think is my issue so hopefully better upload speeds will help. and im not saying that a computer with lower specs cant run it well either. I had a core 2 duo originally running plex and i had some issues sometimes but for the most part it ran great locally. changed my router and modem i got some better results local and remotely but i feel like i can get even better ones and clearly i should be able to if you can watch across an ocean.