Plex Server

[Big Red Man]

I am making a Raspberry Pi Plex server. The general plan for it is to acquire tv shows & movies for me using a custom script or more than likely, Sick Beard. I need help with a few things.

 

1. How much storage do I need? (I'm leaning toward 4TBs to start.)

2. Which Pi should I use? (Thinking the 3 model B.)

3. Is there any better software than Sick Beard?

4. Is there a software - preferably automatable- to make sure change the format to make sure everything is in 480p? (I want this to save space and keep an equal resolution across all video)

[tt2468]

8 minutes ago, Big Red Man said:

I am making a Raspberry Pi Plex server. The general plan for it is to acquire tv shows & movies for me using a custom script or more than likely, Sick Beard. I need help with a few things.

 

1. How much storage do I need? (I'm leaning toward 4TBs to start.)

2. Which Pi should I use? (Thinking the 3 model B.)

3. Is there any better software than Sick Beard?

4. Is there a software - preferably automatable- to make sure change the format to make sure everything is in 480p? (I want this to save space and keep an equal resolution across all video)

1. You need as much storage as YOU think you need. We cannot tell you how much you need.

2. The pi 3 is the newest, so yes.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id stay away from a pi and use a nas like a synoology https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1476208825&sr=1-7&keywords=synology

 

The 100mbit port will be slow and your limited to usb drives.

[unixbird]

Just now, Big Red Man said:

I am making a Raspberry Pi Plex server. The general plan for it is to acquire tv shows & movies for me using a custom script or more than likely, Sick Beard. I need help with a few things.

 

1. How much storage do I need? (I'm leaning toward 4TBs to start.)

2. Which Pi should I use? (Thinking the 3 model B.)

3. Is there any better software than Sick Beard?

4. Is there a software - preferably automatable- to make sure change the format to make sure everything is in 480p? (I want this to save space and keep an equal resolution across all video)

1. I have a 900GB partition for my plex server (i wish i had 4tb). I would definitely get 4TBs

2. Any pi with a beefy cpu will be good

3. I use normal plex on a headless debian vm with a chrooted sftp server for easy upload as well as a seedbox that connects to it via an nfs share

4. this part im not quite sure about, are you talking about downscaling all videos? you can make plex only shoot 480p etc

 

[Big Red Man]

1 minute ago, unixbird said:

 

4. this part im not quite sure about, are you talking about downscaling all videos? you can make plex only shoot 480p etc

 

yes, I am looking at downscaling the videos. I also need to write some kind of software to sort them into the specific folders I think.

[Big Red Man]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id stay away from a pi and use a nas like a synoology https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=sr_1_7?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1476208825&sr=1-7&keywords=synology

 

The 100mbit port will be slow and your limited to usb drives.

The thing is though, that significantly increases my costs. Considering at most, 3 people would be accessing this at once, would USB 3 severely limit the service? 

[unixbird]

Just now, Big Red Man said:

yes, I am looking at downscaling the videos. I also need to write some kind of software to sort them into the specific folders I think.

then yes plex can make the videos only stream in 480p. Its pretty easy to put them into specific folders yourself, but if you want you can symlink certain folders to each other so they automatically go into their respective folders

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Big Red Man said:

The thing is though, that significantly increases my costs. Considering at most, 3 people would be accessing this at once, would USB 3 severely limit the service? 

You got a usb2 port. If you want cheaper, here is a one bay unit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MO6ZV52/ref=twister_B01JRI1S56

[manikyath]

20 minutes ago, Big Red Man said:

I am making a Raspberry Pi Plex server. The general plan for it is to acquire tv shows & movies for me using a custom script or more than likely, Sick Beard. I need help with a few things.

 

1. How much storage do I need? (I'm leaning toward 4TBs to start.)

2. Which Pi should I use? (Thinking the 3 model B.)

3. Is there any better software than Sick Beard?

4. Is there a software - preferably automatable- to make sure change the format to make sure everything is in 480p? (I want this to save space and keep an equal resolution across all video)

1: as much as you intend to access over USB 2.0

2: i honestly still prefer the 2, because i'm having enough difficulty as is to keep it within voltage spec. although the 3 should be fine with a decent power supply and short cable

3: probably, but i'm not into this kind of software

4: probably, but no way in hell would i recommend you transcode pretty much anything on a pi.

[System Error Message]

You wont be able to use the pi because of your 2nd requirement.

In order to transcode videos (basically have them in 1 format) plex must be used on a CPU that is powerful enough. the ARM version of plex does not support this and perhaps not even for the low power x86 CPUs too so even using a NAS is out of the question.

 

Build yourself a PC cheap with either an i3 or low end AMD equivalent and you'll be able to use transcoding feature so that you can set the quality rather than use source.

[Big Red Man]

1 minute ago, System Error Message said:

You wont be able to use the pi because of your 2nd requirement.

In order to transcode videos (basically have them in 1 format) plex must be used on a CPU that is powerful enough. the ARM version of plex does not support this and perhaps not even for the low power x86 CPUs too so even using a NAS is out of the question.

 

Build yourself a PC cheap with either an i3 or low end AMD equivalent and you'll be able to use transcoding feature so that you can set the quality rather than use source.

What if I was to push the files from the Pi to my Gaming PC to transcode and then have them pushed back?

 

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

You wont be able to use the pi because of your 2nd requirement.

In order to transcode videos (basically have them in 1 format) plex must be used on a CPU that is powerful enough. the ARM version of plex does not support this and perhaps not even for the low power x86 CPUs too so even using a NAS is out of the question.

 

Build yourself a PC cheap with either an i3 or low end AMD equivalent and you'll be able to use transcoding feature so that you can set the quality rather than use source.

to be honest, i heard using a pi as a nas is already painfully slow because of USB2 (the network and usb ports share a single usb link to the arm chip, by the way)

[System Error Message]

Just now, Big Red Man said:

What if I was to push the files from the Pi to my Gaming PC to transcode and then have them pushed back?

 

that would work but you would have to manually transcode every video.

 

You will find that 100Mb/s will be very slow for all this though. It will be fast enough for multiple 480p streams. I find that even gigabit is slow for file transfers still.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Big Red Man said:

What if I was to push the files from the Pi to my Gaming PC to transcode and then have them pushed back?

 

to explain you how slow the storage will be, in a best case scenario (which the pi is not) you'll need to write for 4 days straight in order to fill up your storage. as a comparison, a well built nas/media centre system would need a mere 9 hours to fill the same amount of storage, and you're talking about sending files back and forth to be transcoded as well.

[Big Red Man]

4 minutes ago, manikyath said:

to be honest, i heard using a pi as a nas is already painfully slow because of USB2 (the network and usb ports share a single usb link to the arm chip, by the way)

So what I'm hearing is that I should ditch the Small Form Factor of the Pi because of its drawbacks and use the i7-920 machine I have sitting around? would that be better? It's in an old silverstone case. Silverstone SV02 to be exact, so I kind of wanted to avoid using it but this might be out of the range of a Pi

[manikyath]

9 minutes ago, Big Red Man said:

Silverstone SV02

that wouldnt look half bad as a NAS/HTPC combo, actually.

[Big Red Man]

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

that wouldnt look half bad as a NAS/HTPC combo, actually.

It's just big and wont be as easy to hide. I'll probably look at a smaller case sooner then. Stick with less storage for a little while and get an ITX case and all that jazz.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Big Red Man said:

It's just big and wont be as easy to hide. I'll probably look at a smaller case sooner then. Stick with less storage for a little while and get an ITX case and all that jazz.

i just noticed my confusion, all hits for the case name hit up the same silverstone case, but a different model with a similar name.