Plex settings

[ShawnTD]

So lately I've been ripping some blurays to my server for plex. I3 2120, 8gb ram and an ati 6600 gpu(for shits and giggles more or less) my problem is when I try to encode them down to like h.264 it literally takes it 14 hrs for one movie. I have 3 questions. First is, are there different settings I can choose to speed up this process.

 

Second, should I just upgrade the processor to like a 4790? Or is there something decent in the 1155 socket that's better than the 2120? I know I'd have to get a new mobo. My ram seems fine if I can stay in the ddr3 family.

 

Thrid, What plex settings do you guys use when encoding down for no visual loss? I've looked at multiple sites and they all say varied things. What have you used with the best luck?

 

Thanks all.

[JohnDongus]

You could get a i7 3770 they go for a good price and preform pretty well.

[ShawnTD]

I think I'm gonna do that. I can get one from an old place of employment for about 100$ which as far as I can tell is a decent deal.

 

Still wondering about the plex settings though.

[dalekphalm]

What program are you using to transcode? Plex itself (via the “optimize” feature), or something else?

 

I’d recommend Handbrake for that task. 

 

An i5 would speed up the process, but playing with your encoding settings may also yield some results. 

[ShawnTD]

i'm using handbrake to encode down to an h.264 format, but I've also heard people using h.265? Not sure what the difference is. If I don't want to wait for my i3 to encode it I'll pull it over to my main rig with a 7700k(oc's to 4.8)  and use it, but it still takes a few hours(unless that's normal). As far as I can tell I'm using what I'm suppose for settings but I am hoping for someone that encodes alot to provide some input or screen shots. For now I have 2 500GB HDD in RAID 0 for storage but I want to upgrade to 3-4 1TBHDD and put them in raid 5.

[Jarsky]

6 hours ago, ShawnTD said:

Not sure what the difference is.

h265/x265 is a high efficiency encoder (hevc) which has far better compression than the old h264/x264 - filesizes for the same quality can be as small as 1/4 of the size. It also supports HDR and has deeper blacks. Typically with UHD (4k) always go with H265.....with other content it can be a trade off...while the blacks are deeper and color often more pronounced typically the image is darker which can be hard for darker lit shows compared with H264. 

 

Playback compatibility is the other trade off. H264 is far more widely supported, but if your hardware supports it generally H265 is the better format to use. If you're using plex to serve the content everywhere then not going to be an issue. 

[dalekphalm]

19 hours ago, ShawnTD said:

i'm using handbrake to encode down to an h.264 format, but I've also heard people using h.265? Not sure what the difference is. If I don't want to wait for my i3 to encode it I'll pull it over to my main rig with a 7700k(oc's to 4.8)  and use it, but it still takes a few hours(unless that's normal). As far as I can tell I'm using what I'm suppose for settings but I am hoping for someone that encodes alot to provide some input or screen shots. For now I have 2 500GB HDD in RAID 0 for storage but I want to upgrade to 3-4 1TBHDD and put them in raid 5.

@Jarsky did a good job of explaining the difference between the formats. With that in mind, given you're using an older processor with no native H.265 support, using it will simply increase the time it takes to encode stuff.

 

So unless you're encoding 4K content, I would opt to continue using H.264.

 

So basically, yeah - if you want faster encodes, you'll need to upgrade the CPU (or continue to use your 7700K for encoding).

 

There's actually nothing wrong with doing the initial encoding on your main rig (7700K), if you don't feel like spending the money. There's a bit of more effort involved, but you'll save a lot of time.

 

On my old system, I had to set encodes to run overnight, and I just worked that into my routine.

[Mikensan]

Just to add on to the fact h265 takes forEVER and at the moment Plex will just end up transcoding h265 anyway. However future-proofing and space savings of h265 is worth it imo.

 

My 4770k encodes h264 around 100fps, I'd bet the 3770 is pretty close. It teeter-totters between 99/100 and I feel like there's a limiter or something I overlooked, but honestly at that rate I'm happy.

[dalekphalm]

4 hours ago, Mikensan said:

Just to add on to the fact h265 takes forEVER and at the moment Plex will just end up transcoding h265 anyway. However future-proofing and space savings of h265 is worth it imo.

 

My 4770k encodes h264 around 100fps, I'd bet the 3770 is pretty close. It teeter-totters between 99/100 and I feel like there's a limiter or something I overlooked, but honestly at that rate I'm happy.

Plex can direct stream H.265, but you need to have client devices that have native decode support for it - and since most people are typically using older hardware that doesn't have support, often it'll just transcode.

 

Personally, I have enough HDD space (and next to no 4K content) that H.264 works great for me.

[Mikensan]

On 9/24/2018 at 3:51 PM, dalekphalm said:

Plex can direct stream H.265, but you need to have client devices that have native decode support for it - and since most people are typically using older hardware that doesn't have support, often it'll just transcode.

 

Personally, I have enough HDD space (and next to no 4K content) that H.264 works great for me.

Yea guess I should've elaborated a little more, but yes if you have something like a Chromecast Ultra / Amazon Fire TV 2nd gen you can stream H.265. For me most of my 1080p movies are roughly 10-15gb which isn't terrible, but I'm approaching 900 movies. Formatted and raided I only have 14tbytes which a few are dedicated to my vm environment. H265 takes that 1080p 15gb and converts it to roughly 2gb. I haven't retroactively gone back and converted my movies, just actively converting what I get.

 

**also I have a handful of remux movies that hover around 40-50gb.. not the smartest thing lol.