PLEX...wow!

I ran a shield as a plex server for a bit. Honestly, a little hit and miss, but the miss was mostly down to storage. I was using an external 4tb drive conneted directly to the shield as my library, and found to update I had to remove the drive and plug it in to my PC etc. Bit of a ball ache - although this may of been down to me doing something incorrectly.

In the end my needs increased beyond what the shield could offer in any case, so i have a small form factor always on running plex media server and plex py, which provides enough cpu overhead to not have to worry about transcoding issues for my household plus other friends/family that use it.

If I was going to start from scratch again, I'd probably do the same again with a Shield, but with a NAS for storage.
 
I've recently considered switching from M4V to MKV and am used to using metaX to encode the metadata to the M4V files.

I've noticed that you cannot do this with MKV, so does everyone just let Plex collect the metadata and store it outside the files, or do people have other ways to lookup and encode the metadata automatically?
 
pioneer2000 said:
I've recently considered switching from M4V to MKV and am used to using metaX to encode the metadata to the M4V files.

I've noticed that you cannot do this with MKV, so does everyone just let Plex collect the metadata and store it outside the files, or do people have other ways to lookup and encode the metadata automatically?
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I use MetaX on MKVs????? I always fill the MKV with the meta data but use the Plex scrapers as the default info source, if down the line though I switch from using Plex I know I have my own meta intact on the file sources themselves.
 
The only issue I am having with Plex at the moment is that it is very slow and unusable for high quality 4K content eg movies streaming from my PC

It stutters and hangs far too much to be usable
This is using a Gigabit network from a PC with an i5 to a Samsung KU6000 TV
 
Shivy011 said:
The only issue I am having with Plex at the moment is that it is very slow and unusable for high quality 4K content eg movies streaming from my PC

It stutters and hangs far too much to be usable
This is using a Gigabit network from a PC with an i5 to a Samsung KU6000 TV
Click to expand...

The issue is almost certainly the TV not infrastructure leading up to it.
My Sammy's ethernet port gets absolutely no where near Gigabit speeds and I suffered with stuttering as well because of it, I bought a Roku 3 and connected it to the same network with the same cable and now stream 4k via the Roku PLEX app with no issues what so ever.
 
shivy011 - there was a recent my 4k stutters thread - subsequently saw the kodi site has lots of samples for making tests.

Columbo - for the 4k content streamed via roku3 - what was the codec ? presumably h264 not hevc
... but I had also not realised it would output 2160p/4k, although it is hdmi 1.4, so perhaps it does 4k@30hz ?
 
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I got an Amazon Fire TV stick last week and the other day we tried out Plex on it, after installing the Plex media server on our downstairs HTPC.

We're really impressed so far. It works really well even over wifi up to our loft room, the interface is pretty and it's scrape metadata very quicky too. For video playback and ease of setup and use it's nigh on impossible to fault it. However, the are a couple of things that stop it being a Kodi replacement candidate for me, one of which at least I hope we mght be able to resolve.

1. There doesn't seem to be a way to customise the interface like we can with Kodi. Primarily thinking here of integrating a web browser, and Steam into the interface so they can easily be accessed without having to close it down and use another program. I expect this is just a limiation of Plex and that it's intended just to be for media streaming and playback - which as I say it does exceptionally well.

2. This one I hope we might resolve. Whilst the interface is pretty, we have a huge library of films and it would be helpful to be able to filter the selection like we can in Kodi (e.g. display just family films, just Japanese films, just comedies, films from a certain time period, etc.). I can't see a way to do this, meaning we just have to browse the whole library manually. Perhaps I'm missing something, or perhaps this is just something that's not available on the Fire TV app?
 
Shivy011 said:
The only issue I am having with Plex at the moment is that it is very slow and unusable for high quality 4K content eg movies streaming from my PC

It stutters and hangs far too much to be usable
This is using a Gigabit network from a PC with an i5 to a Samsung KU6000 TV
Click to expand...

You need a beast of a server/PC to transcode 4K on the fly, that's usually the problem. The only really practical way to get 4K working via Plex is to ensure the client can direct play so transcoding isn't necessary.
 
Been using Plex recently to stream to a Chromecast via the Android app. Works nicely, apart from a few isolated metadata misses.

Incidentally I was wondering something - what happens if it can't work out what a file is? Does it just mislabel it or is it possibly hiding files from me?

crazypete00 said:
if you like plex take a look at emby. its open source mostly with a great community backing
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Damn, just paid for the Android Plex app, would have tried this first if I'd known. Prefer the open source options where possible.
 
Vertigo1 said:
You need a beast of a server/PC to transcode 4K on the fly, that's usually the problem. The only really practical way to get 4K working via Plex is to ensure the client can direct play so transcoding isn't necessary.
Click to expand...

How can I ensure direct play is possible or how do I check this is possible?

The plex server is running on the PC in my sig - is that not powerful enough either?
 
for direct playing its usually better to have the files encoded as MP4 with aac audio. most devices will direct play this format. If its just playing to another PC/laptop then it will usually just direct play anyway aslong as the bit rate isnt too crazy high for your network to handle.
 
Love Plex after being an XBMC/Kodi user for years - it's just so easy. I installed server on a QNAP NAS as they have more horsepower for what you pay compared to Synology.

Another vote for OpenPHT, it's so much nicer, or RasPlex if using a Pi.
 
Shivy011 said:
Isn't AAC audio stereo though? Or at least detracts from proper DTS
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Nope, the format can have up to 48 channels!

It won't be DTS, but you won't be able to tell the difference with 64 kbit/s per channel (128 kbit for stereo, 320 kbit for 5.1), it's extremely efficient.
 
I love/hate plex.

The server is rock solid and just works, the PS4 client is pure horse droppings and crashes at least twice before it will play anything.
 
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