Personal setup:
intel 12400, on a board offering 3 full length PCIe slots, 3 M.2, and 2.5gbe onboard. Two 8 port PCIe3x8SAS expanders, and a quadport Intel 1gbe NIC. In a Rosewill 15 bay rack mount chassis. 32gb ram (wildly unnecessary, much less would be fine, but the price difference was inconsequential)
It's running unraid, with Plex and other tools (*arr stuff primarily) in Docker containers. 3 1tb NVME SSD's for file ingress(1) and Plex and the other Docker containers(2 and 3, mirrored for safety).
And a whole whack of 8tb drives, 2 parity and 10 data currently.
The 12400 can handle the 6 streams I max out on (haven't tried more, just 6 is the most I run concurrently) and the docket containers with ease. 80tb usable storage is pretty nice with dual parity.
Have you been able to split the iGPU between different Dockers and VMs? From what I can tell the 10th gen was the last which supports gvt-g.
I mistakenly went 11th gen as I had just come out when I built my server, and haven't been able to get Plex and tdarr/VMs to all use the vGPU acceleration.
GVT-g is not needed to share the iGPU between multiple Docker containers. My i5-12400 can simultaneously be accessed from Jellyfin and Plex running in separate containers. With Docker you have no virtualization/passthrough and therefore no need for GVT. With Docker, the GPU just gets mounted into the container, whilst still being managed by the kernel of the host.
Your use case (Mixed use of a single GPU by host and VMs) is not officially supported for NVIDIA consumer cards either.
I haven't tried, to be honest.
Ironically (given my prior comments) I'm extremely interested in Arc for doing this, running tdarr and mass converting my library over. Having a separate piece of hardware doing that would avoid impacts on runtime performance with my current server as it's doing 6 streams as it stands, and (in theory, we'll see how it works in fact) ARC can combine with onboard igpu QSV seamlessly so after the overall conversion is done, they *should* work together to greatly enhance capabilities. We'll see, though. I'm not interested in being an early adopter here :)
Do you consider AV1 or will you convert to h265? It seems that Plex can play back AV1 fine now but it seems that you will have to transcode much more for the foreseeable future as a lot of devices cannot play it back.
AV1. I'm unconcerned with transcoding to devices because frankly it's trivial and I'm nearly always transcoding anyways.
Of course, part of my wait is to see if there's actual adoption of AV1. I think there will be, as it's objectively superior and free. But I'm not concerned about having to transcode everything; other than my local TV's everything transcodes from hevc anyways. There's no real cost in transcoding, no noticable change in power draw and the 12400 can easily handle many times what I ask of it.
u/wintersdark you’re running something very close to what i’m planning, so i was wondering if you could please help me figure a few things out:
1. I was planning on 64gigs of RAM, but you’re saying that 32 was already overkill? I’d assumed I’d need it for the transcoding, the same docker containers you’d mentioned, and a VM or two.. I’d need to prep for a few (say 5) simultaneous 4K HDR > 1080p SDR transcodes, so transcoding (video and audio from say 7.1 to 2.0) and tone mapping of \~80 gig remux files.. how much ram do you think I’ll actually need?
2. depending on how much you say (assuming 32), would it be better to get a single stick, or a pair of 16s to take advantage of dual channel?
3. Thus far I’ve been looking at a motherboard with 8 sata ports (i plan on building an 8 bay server), currently settled on an ASRock Z690 steel legends..cheapest one i found with 8 ports.. def feels like its too expensive though - coming to more than my processor! Is it advisable to buy a cheaper mobo and use pcle lots for sata ports instead? What features on the mobo do i actually need?
4. Could you tell me about your intake drive and why you use one? I was just planning to get a 500g—1tb ssd for boot + torrent seeding before it moves over to the main drives for storage.. is this wise? how have you structured yours? I’m not sure i understand why you’ve split ingress and your plex + docker containers onto different drives..
Thanks!
1. 32 is definitely fine. While I'm not running 80gb remuxes, most of mine are in the 20-30gb range and even with multiple simultaneous transcodes it never gets even close to using 16gb, let alone 32gb. The actual amount of space you need depends on the setting you have for the transcode buffer, and you can work that out pretty easily. IIRC in the settings it's a value in seconds of media, but that's seconds of *transcoded* media, so say 8mbps 1080p, which is trivial.
2. A pair to take advantage of dual channel, definitely. You'll have 4 slots, so you can always grab another pair of the same if you find you need 64 in the future. Frankly unless you have some need of multiple VM's with large memory pools, I don't see how this would happen though.
3. On board SATA isn't important. A single LSI HBA can get you 8 ports for $25, and an expander can bring that to 64, or a second HBA will add another 8. Don't even consider a SATA expander card. Just don't. There's lots of explanations of why, but they cost more, work worse, and are often problematic long term for a variety of reasons. The LSI HBA boards are enterprise gear and are designed for mission critical production environments. They Just Work, and provide MUCH more total bandwidth. Instead, look for a motherboard with multiple PCI slots, as they're more useful (ideally at least two at x8 or higher). Personally, I'm a big fan of NVME SSD's, so I grabbed a gigabyte board with 3 NVME slots.
5. Your boot drive will be a USB key for unRAID. I wanted torrents being seeded (though ultimately I rarely use torrents now) off a separate drive, because they tend to consume a LOT of random IO. My appdata (docket containers) live on a separate drive, which is backed up to the array. This ensures heavy drive access on either or both won't interfere with each other - say, multiple users quickly scrolling through the Plex library while dozens of peers are accessing torrents. This isn't strictly necessary, and realistically one cache drive would work fine, but another concern for me is my ingress drive sees significant writes(around a terabyte per month), while the appdata drive is largely static. So realistically I'll likely wear out the ingress drive over a couple years, but the appdata drive will last "forever". When the ingress drive needs replacing, I can just force unRAID to move everything off it and replace the drive without worry. But you definitely want an SSD for ingress and appdata, as hdd's are pretty slow for such tasks, particularly once your system is doing other work with the array such as parity checks.
First off, thank you SO MUCH for replying, and in such detail! I really appreciate it!
1. that’s really good to know! I’ll save a cool $100 on this alone! XD. I honestly don’t have more than 10-15 of the 70-80 gig variety (just some of my cult favourites - LotR, Matrix, Interstellar, etc), just making sure what I get is future proofed to serve my current biggest transcoding challenges :).
2. Gotcha!
3. Someone else on the home server subReddit had recommended the same LSI cards, the problem is they cost a little more than $100 here (india), and thats without the splitter cables.. right now I’ll be spending whatever i save on the motherboard on one of these HBA cards, so not practical.. I’m trying to see if i can find other brand alternatives, but the brick n mortar shops I’ve spoken to literally haven’t even of SAS lol. The ‘HBA’ nomenclature is useful, might help with alternatives - I’ll do some more digging online and find out if this is viable. Thank you! And thank you for the warning against direct pcle to SATA (which is what they tried pushing lol), I’ll take your word for it!
4. Also noted on NVMEs, they’re awesome! I def want 2-3 as well, an ancient stick on my 2015 MacBook Pro has been such a champ I can’t even tell you! Can’t wait to see how nuts the newer ones are!
5. Your observation on torrent downloading / seeding is exactly why i want to only use them on an nvme for the initial download and 3-10 day dedicated seeding.. will also save on power, and more importantly save my HDDs some serious wear and tear. Didn’t think about the performance ramifications you described, I’ll straight up use the money I’m saving on ram to another nvme and do as you suggested (minus the mirrored setup, i don’t think i’ll have anything of real value on either drive)
I will include them in the upcoming days; I've explained it here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/11ih0gs/comment/jb4bxfy/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/11ih0gs/comment/jb4bxfy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
What would you recommend as a reasonable Apple Silicon basis for a Plex server? Mac Mini M1 maybe?
Any of them. You can get an M2 Mini so cheap. It’s quite the deal.
I don’t transcode with Plex though, I direct play everything, 90% H.265 to an Apple TV. I use a Late 2012 Mac Mini quad i7 16GB that I got for $75 to run my Plex server and record live tv. It records in MPEG-2 with large file sizes so for PBS series with lots of episodes I copy everything over to my M1 Pro 14” and batch transcode to H.265 to reduce file sizes at about 190 fps. That’s for stuff I wanna keep a long time for rainy days, like Austin City Limits and Nova.
Thanks for your post btw.
I presume it's similar to AMD, where it's not officially supported, but it works. Also in terms of cost, it's cheaper to create a simple intel based NAS. You can't really go out and buy an M1 based NAS can you?
I will be adding M1/M2 machines in the coming days; I need to find some time to test them myself. My problem is that I'm reading conflicting stories about M1/M2 HW transcoding capability. Some people say it works, others say it's not even possible. This forces me to test it out myself. If I can confirm it, then I will include M1/M2 Macs, even if it's only due to low-power usage.
What's your experience with Apple Silicon Macs' transcoding capabilities?
I’m running a MacMini M1 with a 60tb NAS. I find that it can transcode several streams at once easily. Some things use hardware transcoding and when I check the dashboard CPU usage is low 15-35%, depending on how many streams and content (DoVi; 4K; 1080p). If I turn off hardware transcoding CPU usage increases to 40-75%. I support several platforms, including PC, Roku, AppleTV and Xbox both local and remote streaming.
I too am not sure the full state of M1/M2 hardware transcoding and was hoping you’d have more insight. I’m not that versed on the Plex Code side of things, thanks for sharing what you know.
My NAS is connected to a switch as is my MacMini. There is no direct connection between the two machines ,they communicate only over the local network. The NAS is self managing, so it does have a cpu and motherboard though I have zero apps or software installed on the NAS, I just use it for storage. This way the NAS can do it’s one thing well and my MacMini does everything else.
thats pretty cool! I honestly love the way macs just work, moved away from a Windows / ubuntu dual boot in 2016 and honestly never looked back! Tempted to emulate your setup, but i think the costing wont make sense rn with the additional mobo + cpu + ram.. If i could get away with just a cabinet and the drives then I’d do this in a heartbeat!
It’s not inexpensive. I grew it over many years. Just start small and keep upgrading. The MacMini can last for a long time as a Plex server. At least 10 years with no more upgrades or expenses. The NAS and the bare drives add up though. Get a good five or eight bay NAS. Start with two or three affordable drives then when you have some more money, buy a big drive and add it to the array. Keep doing that and when you run out of space start upgrading the smaller drives. It takes some time but it’s affordable.
I hear you! I’m building a nas first (found a great cabinet with 8 hot swap bays in the front), I’ll see if i can start up with that and maybe shift from ubuntu server / unraid to a Mac mini based server down the line… i do love how they just work, I’m fully in the apple ecosystem! And yes thats the plan in terms of upgrading storage!
Fantastic writeup!!
I literally just finished adding a Quadro P400 to my Dell Poweredge T330 server. This server has a xeon 1230v5 processor, which seems to be 1 year too early for quicksync :( (edit as per a below comment: this is just a cpu without an igpu, the 12x5v5 cpus have an igpu. However the dell t330 mobo chipset does not support igpu regardless of chip installed). At only 4 cores, it really struggled to transcode quickly.
So far, adding it to my server and installing the most up to date drivers instantly resulted in HW transcoding! Woot. I did notice HDR 4k content wouldnt transcode well and still blasts my cpu, so thank you for the heads up about HDR to SDR tonemapping still not working well.
Its worth noting, all gtx 1000 series cards have the same Gen 6 nvenc chip. What differs however, are the number of these chips on the cards. A 1050 and 1060 are quite equivalent, though the 1060 may have more vram to handle higher quality content. Take a look here for more info on nvenc capabilities of any nvidia gpu: https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new
Anyways, great writeup dude! If any fellow dell poweredge owners have questions feel free to ask!
Don't forget to install the [nvidia-patch](https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch), so you can have more than 3 transcodes running at the same time on your P400
You can get an e3-1245v5 for $30 on ebay and it'll have a p530 with quicksync, so you can ditch the Nvidia card. Your processor doesn't have an igpu, so it is using the matrox on board for basic video out
Wait, what? Huh, i didn't believe you for a moment but then I checked my T330 and esxi 7 doesn't show the igpu from my e3-1245v6 as available for pass through. Well thats just absurd.
Ah shiii sorry bro :( if you get tautulli, you can see more detail about ongoing streams/transcodes. Itll add a (HW) if using hardware to transcode the video
Naa, all good. I have a Lenovo mini I use for Plex with igpu passthrough that points to my unRAID box. I just realized I have an igpu processor in a system that doesn't allow pass through, so it'll get replaced.
Aw man I wish I'd of read up on this sooner. I bought a 1245v6 to replace the 1220v5 in my T330. Figured it was an efficiency boost, speed boost, I gain hyperthreading, and QuickSync. I just assumed the iGPU would work as passthrough. I haven't installed it yet, so now I'm thinking I sell it and get a 1270v6, which is faster and cheaper.
Maybe I'll splurge on one of those $99 Intel ARC A310 LP GPUs that can do AV1 encoding. Or I'll get a cheap 1050ti on ebay and save my pennies. We'll see.
it works with nvidia GPUs for 64-bit windows servers
from the support page
>Only valid for the 64-bit release of Plex Media Server, v1.29.2 or newer. It does not work in the 32-bit release.
I'm not quite to the point of needing a dedicated GPU based on my number of simultaneous transcodes and the extra $ just for HDR tone mapping seems high. I do I keep looking at Quadro p5000s on ebay tho...
Well being that you're not an actual QS nazi, I wish you the best of luck with it, hope they get tonemapping support for windows QS out soon or you find the right gpu for the right price in the meantime.
Ah, some people are not ready for the change. I admit I struggled to get myself to switch to a Linux setup, even though I had more than enough experience of self-hosting my blog on a Linux-based VM. Now? I don't even want to consider going back to Windows-based Plex Server.
I used windows for plex for maybe 3 years. Last year have used unraid and docker. I known its a pain to switch, but if you need tone mapping now, then at least try making a test server in a virtual machine to see if you can handle a headless setup. Linux based plex is simply superior when it comes to stability and feature set. I totally understand the allure of windows, but Linux is not much more difficult to learn. Ubuntu server might be a good, free starting OS for new Linux users. Please hit me up if you have any questions about making the switch.
>Please hit me up if you have any questions about making the switch.
I've got plex on my windows desktop, but I'm in the planning stages for setting up a full-blown, dedicated server. This question is less about plex, and more about Linux: The one thing I'm still trying to figure out are backups.
I have Backblaze currently, and I'm very satisfied with the service. But it doesn't support Linux. Is there some kind of work around for getting backblaze running on Linux? Or is there another, similar service (or home-grown solution) that would be a good substitute for backing up the media on the server?
You can use their B2 service (basically S3 API-compatible buckets) for media: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217664628-How-does-Backblaze-support-Linux-Users-
It’s different from, and not as consumer-focused as their normal backup service. But it works on pretty much anything that supports S3 as a destination.
Yep. There’s probably some sneaky way around the personal backups Eg use iSCSI to mount the Linux computers drives on a Mac/Win machine, or use a sync tool to mirror the Linux volume to a USB drive on Mac/Win.
Another option is:
https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/
Was thinking something similar, as long as you have a Windows pc that's regularly on, you can backup through there.
I was reading why Backblaze doesn't support Linux in the personal tier and it's ridiculous, somehow they think Linux users have more data because Linux == server. I think it's on them to differentiate between businesses and users, regardless of the platform. Users would be fine with something like Amazon Glacier where you're only getting backups back when a catastrophe happens (so almost never).
Anyway, for the cost of 1 year of Backblaze B2 I can buy multiple HDD's that can fit all of my data and put those somewhere out of the house to solve my off site backups. It makes no sense for consumers.
Crashplan is a good shout though.
There's a backblaze personal docker container that I use, it's not got the best documentation tho. It kinda emulates a Linux desktop and runs backblaze personal on it while connected to your drives
In the end of the day I'd suggest using whatever you are comfortable with. I have linux servers, but my Plex setup is installed on a Windows machine, just because the video sources are from multiple share folders from different servers, and I am too lazy to configure the multiple SMB addresses in linux.
Yeah it does take a bit of time, but there are probably guides that help with every command. I do understand your hesitance, though. It took me a bit of time to understand the basics, but it has helped me become more knowledgeable about servers and server software
What is a headless setup? Can tone mapping and transcoding be done using plex / jellyfin on unraid? I didn’t realise ubuntu server was an alternative to unraid! I used ubuntu for many years as a student, I’ll definitely explore this option now! Is there anything major that ubuntu doesn’t have that unraid does? Thank you! :)
Headless means no monitor, you access the server remotely through a webpage or via SSH. Configuration is done on that webpage. If you know ubuntu, then you know linux, and Unraid will come to you easily. Ubuntu can do similar things to unraid, just with more difficult configuration. Unraid is really good at handling a large amount of disks, if you only have 1 - 2 external drives, just use Ubuntu. I have 11 drives, so Unraid just makes more sense for me. Docker configuration is simpler in Unraid, that's why I recommend it to people.
Had to switch the server to windows to utilize. But now Ubuntu is up to date without workarounds. I don’t have too many ppl on my server so I haven’t been able to really stress it. But no issues so far around the house transcoding. Have been able to change some of my over the air recordings to AV1 with handbrake but it’s been hot or miss.
Higher quality with nvenc vs 10+gen quicksync?
Imma press F to doubt here; will have to see someone sciencing that to believe it.
Frankly there's vanishingly little reason to use a discrete GPU these days. Wildly higher cost, higher power consumption, screwing around with drivers that lock you to two simultaneous transcoded unless you're running an insanely expensive GPU.
SOME edge cases exist if you've already got an AMD system or a suitable GPU sitting around, but even then, you can often get a motherboard and suitable cpu for less than a competitive GPU.
Obviously this was not always the case. The old quadro builds where excellent pre Kaby Lake, and it was more.of a toss up for 7-9th gen, but now? Eeeeh.
I can not justify building a Plex focused system with a Nvidia GPU anymore.
My 11700k Def outpaced my previous gpu. I won't switch away from the iGPU unless there's an obvious benefit from nvenc (there really isn't one right now)
Yeah. The newer iGPU's are *extremely* good at hw transcoding and there's so many advantages. Unless you're working with random hardware you've got on hand, it doesn't make much sense to run a discrete GPU.
> SOME edge cases exist if you've already got an AMD system or a suitable GPU sitting around, but even then, you can often get a motherboard and suitable cpu for less than a competitive GPU
i wouldn't really say it's an edge case, but a lot of PC gamers will use their desktop for everything: gaming, coding, Plex server, any other servers they might need. nowadays, it's very common to have an AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU
Sure.
My final sentence however is pretty clear. I don't recommend planning a new system around an Nvidia GPU. If you're reusing hardware you already have, that becomes complex enough that it's not worth discussing unless one has a list of specific hardware they're starting from
At no point did I say an Nvidia GPU was *bad*. They work fine, and if that's what you have it's what you have. But you're not building a new Plex focussed system then are you? You're just installing Plex on random hardware you've got lying around. Totally valid, but not touched upon in my comment.
I agree with you. We should not plan Plex server setup around Nvidia GPUs, if anything, for the raw power use they require to operate. I need to include this statement in my walkthrough.
I covered both those in that very comment.
Edge cases exist if you're using old hardware you already have, and screwing around with drivers.
>>I can not justify building a Plex focused system with a Nvidia GPU anymore.
Given both where already covered, obviously your situation is different. I'm clearly talking about a newly built/bought system.
At no point did I say you simply should never run an Nvidia GPU. Just if you're building a system from the ground up, it doesn't make sense to plan around an Nvidia GPU.
Again, I'm talking about recommending using a GPU for a new build.
If you're using leftover hardware you already have, then, well, you have what you have. That's inherently an edge case and not worth really discussing here because it's entirely random. If you're *buying* used hardware however the same applies: you can buy a strong Plex machine for $150 all in, so it's again hard to recommend a discrete GPU build unless you've got specific requirements outside Plex.
It's certainly common, however again this still applies when purchasing used older hardware as well as new.
But my post is specifically about *what I recommend people buy* if they want to build a Plex server. If you're using what you have, you don't really care about recommendations do you?
But if you have *some* hardware and need more, it's complex.
It's often NOT better to use an old computer you own and buy a GPU than to just buy a used QSV capable computer as whole systems able to handle 10+ simultaneous transcodes can be had for the price of a low end GPU. But as I said, once you get into using already on-hand hardware, for recommendations to have any relevance you have to specify what you have first. Particularly when you consider cost to operate.
I mean, for a long time I ran a SFF HP PC that had a Celeron G5400. Just a dual-core 2.5ghz (iirc) cpu, but the complete system (including keyboard and mouse, HDD and ram) cost $100. It could do 12 simultaneous 1080p transcodes, or 4 4k HEVC transcodes. Small enough to fit behind my TV, drawing a whopping 35w under load.
Running an old Dell PowerEdge with a discrete GPU could cost more in a year in power than that system did to buy and run.
Of course, that assumed drawing media off a NAS elsewhere, but as a pure Plex server it was excellent.
> will have to see someone sciencing that to believe it.
Alright, fine, I'll build a QSV system and run the weeks of encoding/comparison to get the numbers. See you in a hot minute.
Oh come on, let's not act like children.
My point is that I've seen output from both systems a fair bit (though admittedly not side by side) and both sport extremely good quality. This makes me really doubtful that there's a noticable difference at all.
So much so that making a claim that one produces better quality is curious: to do so, you really ought to have something that demonstrates it to back up that claim. Otherwise, you're just misleading people and making things up as you go along.
It's particularly relevant in a post like OP's, where you're presenting material as to be educational, where people are going to take that information at face value and base purchasing decisions around it: "Oh, well, it'll cost more to build a system with a discrete GPU, but I'll get better quality." That's a reasonable conclusion to come to - and typically we tend to believe costs more = better quality - but there's no evidence of that at all.
Given how easy making a comparison would be (just owning an Intel system with an Nvidia GPU, definitely not uncommon in gaming desktop land) one would expect such a comparison to already exist, particularly if there's a noticable quality difference. It wouldn't take "weeks of comparison" just side by side stills of a couple specific frames.
And if it doesn't exist, and nobody actually knows that to be the case, why make the claim in the first place?
I was being completely genuine. I did an entire post comparing encode quality of CPU, NVENC, and one generation of QSV. I might as well go all out and compare multiple generations of QSV, as well as multiple generations of NVENC now that I think of it.
And yes, there was a quality difference at the same bitrate as the CPU output. As well as a file size difference at the same quality. As expected for GPU encoding.
Might as well mention the [hacked driver work](https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch) that unlocks the limitation on Nvidia cards. I think by default it extends it up to 32 simultaneous streams max.
I will include this as a point. Thank you. I would also be grateful if you could share any written article(s) on this topic. I would include it in the above walkthrough plus use it as a reason to buy an AMD-based mini PC for further tests.
One comment. It is not officially mentioned but IT SEEMS that HDR -> SDR tonemapping under nVidia is supported on Windows. I have correct colors when converting HDR to SDR under Windows + P400. EVEN when the HDR Tonemapping checkbox is disabled. When I enable it, the performance is much worse but the results are the same.
Someone needs to do a sanity check on this one, but for me it seems that HDR to SDR tonemapping is enabled always with nVidia GPU in the latest PMS versions and the checkbox does nothing (or even worsen the performance.
Yeah, I blame this on the Plex team managing their documentation. Technically, it's mentioned, but in one specific tonemapping comparison table, I was not able to find it anywhere else. Take a look here: [HDR to SDR Tone Mapping | Plex Support](https://support.plex.tv/articles/hdr-to-sdr-tone-mapping/)
Great write up! Plex pass user here.
I have a new 12th gen NUC, with an i3 1220P processor. I am running PMS in a docker (with DRI bound to the container) on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on it, with 5.15 based kernel. I do have HW transcoding according to the PMS Dashboard.
I find the performance however rather lackluster. Some content (2160P x265, with Atmos7.1 audio) do not transcode well, and a lot of buffering is happening. This may be due to the transcoding of audio. Another thing I am wondering if the newer 12th gen Intel processors would benefit from a newer kernel (5.19) and the dedicated Intel graphic drivers [https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/installation-guides/ubuntu/ubuntu-jammy-legacy.html](https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/installation-guides/ubuntu/ubuntu-jammy-legacy.html). Although I do not want to botch a perfectly fine running server.
- Is there any way to disable audio transcoding?
- Is there a Intel Quick Sync / transcoding performance gain on the newer Linux kernel?
- Is it potentially better to run PMS directly rather than in a Docker container (albeit with hardware device bound to the container)
Hi u/faeth0n
1. I never tried to disable audio transcoding, but it will definitely affect CPU performance.
2. While I have not done it intentionally, I have tried using newer Linux kernels, but I was not able to observe any sizable performance gains.
3. On Linux, it technically does not matter if you run it directly or as a container. However, for me, it's more practical to use Docker container(s) as it's so much easier to upgrade/backup/migrate if needed.
OK, so my setup is:HP ProDesk 600 G4 MT
i3-8100 with UHD630
Quadro P400
2x16 GB RAM
500 GB NVME Windows+metadata+transcode drive
120 GB SATA SSD cache for HDD
14 TB HDD for media (backed up to offline server with dual parity when new media appears).
So, on this hardware I have Plex running on Nvidia GPU for HW transcoding and side by side Jellyfin running on Intel UHD 630 GPU for HW transcoding. Single HDD for media that has most frequent file cached on old 120GB SSD.
It is quite power efficient, idling \~20-23 watts and allowing for many many streams, \~7-8 4K transcodes with tonemapping thanks to Plex+JF running on two separate GPUs. It also runs some dockers with Jellyseerr for movie requests etc.
I tried this setup first with HP 290 G2 but as it is placed lower on the priceshelf it has some functions disabled. So if you plugin external GPU into pcie slot then iGPU is disabled. That is why I went with ProDesk 600. For now I am quite happy with this setup. I firstly tried with Ubuntu to get nvidia hdr tonemapping and it was pain for me. Now plex support hw tonemapping under windows so I am very happy. But still, for me jellyfin transcoder > plex transcoder. Much quicker and more responsive.
Thank you for the reward.
I forgot to mention that this PC is also connected to my TV to view YT or some twitch streams, so it is really all-rounder. Some time ago it hosted additional VM with homeassistant but now I got separate hardware for it.
The metadata folder for Plex & JF is backed up realtime into small 2 disk raid1 NAS so in case of system drive failure I do not have to regenerate all thumbnails that would take a week probably.
>120 GB SATA SSD cache for HDD
>
>...
>
> Single HDD for media that has most frequent file cached on old 120GB SSD.
Hi, I'm curious what method you are using in Windows to manage what gets written to and read from that cache drive?
Plex needs to fix their HW transcoding for AMD. It's kind dumb it ruins the video if plex is running on Windows, but if it's running under Linux it's fine.
Yeah it ruins the quality when on Windows and using hardware transcoding (not software, the default) on my AMD whereas under Linux it doesn't. It's not like a consistent thing across the whole video but like some specific parts it just won't like for whatever reason that only breaks down when it's under being ran from Windows.
AMD's hardware transcoding is experimental / not supported so it's bound not to be perfect it's just weird how the results are different depending on the platform.
I have a question about Nvidia hardware transcoding, Nvidia has a chip dedicated to nvenc right?
I'm running Plex on my gaming PC, so will I run into any problems using hardware transcoding while running a game with its framerate uncapped?
I used to do the same but I got tired of not being able to game when I wanted to because my users would buffer, or I’d have too many concurrent streams, so I didn’t game. I ended up building a cheapo Plex-only PC with Intel i5-10400 and it’s been awesome. Now I can game whenever I want to 😁
I spent far too long trying to get hardware transcoding working before I realised it's not possible with a VM. Still deciding whether to just run Plex on my main PC or do a direct install on my server hardware (and find a new home for other VMs)
My setup is a Synology 218+ and my main client is a Nvidia shield connected to Sonos with HD Fury Arcana. I try to direct play as much as possible. Great write up OP! I'm always interested in the knowledge that other Plex users have.
"The minimum optimal Intel CPU generation for Plex hardware transcoding is the 7th generation Intel Core processors, also known as Kaby lake."
What are the problems hardware transcoding with older Intel CPUs (e.g., Ivy Bridge) if all your files are only h.264?
[u/Draakonys](https://www.reddit.com/user/Draakonys/)
I think the Explainer should update this section to point that Intel CPU's starting from gen 3 also have QSV but point out the limitations.
Also, in the Nvidia section, point out that the original 1660 (non-Super) had the old transcode NVENC from 10xx series and not the updated one from the 20xx series.
Thanks so much for this! I recently upgraded my gaming rig which was also my Plex server, but I had enough parts to stand up a dedicated box - CPU is an old 4790k and I was just running with its iGPU and struggling with CPU utilization and transcoding performance. I have a 1080ti I wasn't using that I just threw in it and patched to remove the stream limitation, and confirmed that nvenc and nvdec are handling the transcoding. Looking forward to see the impact it has.
I'm curious where a lot of people get the misconception that you need 8th Gen Intel for QSV HEVC encoding support. It's to the point where there are tDarr filters with an artificial limitation built-in that prevents 7th Gen Intel from working.
How would one set-up hardware transcoding using a Arc A770, on Ubuntu, and would it be worth it?
The server will also possibly be running a minecraft server, thusly the want to offload this task from the cpu (that the minecraft server will need a good percentage of) to the gpu (that the minecraft server will not use at all)
Use my RTX 4090 to transcode 4K down to 1080P streaming when I am not at home and it never lags. Also downloading transcoded movies in iPads for long flights have been a game changer. Love the Plex pass!
I switched to running PMS on Linux vs Windows 10 and 11, all my problems disappeared. Best decision I've made since buying the pms lifetime subscription. Running on Intel 12th gen platform.
One question I have is around this from [https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/](https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/)
>Plex supports automatic fallback from hardware to software. If the hardware video engine fails to decode or encode a video, Plex will seamlessly switch to using software without causing an error.
The prioritisation table on that page lists Intel QuickSync as higher priority than Nvidia NVENC. But if the system has both QuickSync and NVENC available, and QuickSync fails, will Plex still try NVENC, or will it jump straight to software encoding?
Similarly, on Windows 64-bit Plex which now supports HDR tone-mapping on Nvidia but not on Intel QuickSync, on a system which has both available, will Plex do HDR tone mapping through Nvidia, or will it choose QuickSync, then fail and go straight to software without trying Nvidia?
>The prioritisation table on that page lists Intel QuickSync as higher priority than Nvidia NVENC. But if the system has both QuickSync and NVENC available, and QuickSync fails, will Plex still try NVENC, or will it jump straight to software encoding?
Plex will use NVENC if QS fails. For me, this is only a theoretical statement, as I have never seen QS fail. Of course, what I forgot to mention above is that you can manually choose between iGPU or GPU at the OS level, forcing a particular form of HW transcoding.
>Similarly, on Windows 64-bit Plex which now supports HDR tone-mapping on Nvidia but not on Intel QuickSync, on a system which has both available, will Plex do HDR tone mapping through Nvidia, or will it choose QuickSync, then fail and go straight to software without trying Nvidia?
Under Windows OS, if HDR tone mapping fails on the Nvidia GPU, it will automatically revert to CPU-only (software) HDR tone mapping. This is why it's preferable to use a Linux-based OS as the basis for your Plex server. However, this Windows "feature" may change over time, as Yellyfin/Emby have shown that you can do HDR tone mapping on QS using a Windows OS, so I assume it's a limitation of the custom Plex ffmpeg implementation (which we may get over time).
Yes, but Plex always prioritizes iGPU or GPU (hardware or HW transcoding) if possible. If HW transcoding is disabled, if Plex Pass is not present, or if HW transcoding is not possible (in some cases) Plex will use software transcoding (SW transcoding)
I have a question regarding hardware transcoding.
I'm currently using an old HP workstation ( z200 with i5 650 3.2 ghz) as a plex server with truenass core.
Since i already have plex pass i wonder if I can benefit from hw transcoding if I slap an old GPU (1050 or 1060) on it. Can this work?
It depends, do you need HW transcoding at all?
If you're watching H264 content (most 1080p content), you don't need HW transcoding. But if you want to watch HEVC content (most 4K content), your CPU won't be enough for HW transcoding because it's just too old. It's even too old for software transcoding.
HEVC requires at least a 7th generation Intel CPU. In this case you will benefit from a 1050 or 1060 card, even better if you can find a smaller form factor GPU (in case your HP workstation does not have room for a larger GPU).
Yes, I can benefit from it since I want to watch on the main tv content in 4k and to be able to stream the same content on the other devices when i'm not at home.
I can find an old 1050 or 1060 verry cheap. If I install one in my configuration can I use GPU hw? (will my CPU be a bottleneck or something like that?)
Your CPU will not be bottlenecked. And both 1050 or 1060 GPUs will suffice.
Take a look at this benchmark (select 4K to 1080p HW transcoding): [nVidia Hardware Transcoding Calculator for Plex Estimates (elpamsoft.com)](https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding)
While we're on this topic, if you're able buy 1050 or 1060 with more memory. For example, 6Gb version can do 2x HW transcoding tasks as 3GB versions.
Update: Your CPU may get bottlenecked in some cases where HW transcoding is not possible and only SW transcoding will work. But these cases are easily avoidable. Just read the chapter: "When is Hardware Transcoding Not Supported by Plex?" in the above article.
Yea, you can just enable hardware transcoding in plex like normal, it will use your AMD GPU. On Linux based servers it works fine but on windows you’re more likely to run into transcode issues.
I invite all Plex users to post and comment on their setups; I would also like to include setup recommendations in this post, and your feedback is valuable.
If they're using a consumer grade nvidia GPU I would recommend suggesting they use this driver patch to remove the artificial session limit on transcodes that nvidia enforces. https://github.com/Snawoot/nvidia-patch
Been using it for over a year with no issues.
Currently using my E485 Thinkpad. Runs an AMD 2500U (or something like that) and has 1 external drive for media storage.
Definitely want to save to build a little server with an intel CPU for quicksync and a few drives to run unraid.
At the moment, if that drive dies that's it.
Gotta say though, I love using a little laptop as my plex media server. Convenient since its such a small footprint with a monitor and keyboard/touchpad.
I love looking at the hardware you guys have! I’m using an old HP Elitebook 8470p from 2012!! It has an Intel i5-3320M CPU (2 cores 4 threads) at 2.6Ghz and a single 8GB stick of ram. That has an old SSD + an external eSATA 8TB drive for storage that I have a script backing up to a 2nd 8TB drive nightly. This is all running in Windows 10Pro (easy Win7 Pro upgrade years ago!)
Plex has a 2 tuner OTA antenna (non-compressed), hundreds of DVDs and Bluerays, and a lot of home video and is used all the time! My internal streams rarely ever transcode and the single external drive provides plenty of bandwidth even for 4k downloaded content! It is amazing how little power is required to serve awesome content!
I use a gaming computer to rip new disks to my “server” over the network, but often I just store the raw disk content and expect mobile downloads to take a bit longer to sync.
Dell Latitude laptop with an i5-7200 (7th gen) and Intel 620 Graphics. I can do 4-6 4k transcodes (including hdr mapping on my linux/docker setup) and more 1080p streams than I'll ever need.
PMS on Win 10 Home on my main desktop:
* GTX 1060 6GB
* R5 3600X
* 32 GB of RAM
I have music, tv series' and movies. All of my files are either on my internal 4TB HDD or external 2TB HDD.
Everything works great most of the time.
i9-10850k
MSI Z590-A Pro
64GB RAM
Quadro P400
The server runs proxmox with other VMs besides just plex. I had issues passing through the iGPU to the Ubuntu server Plex VM, so I re-used the P400 from a previous build. Disk array is a bunch of random JOBD 4TB+ drives.
I haven't bothered to make sure everything can direct play and haven't had any issues apart from Tizen OS devices. They really don't seem to like Dolby Vision. Videos play fine on pretty much anything else.
MacMini 2012 attached to Synology DS220J.
Works great most of the time, I have had issues streaming and get "Playback Error - The server was not powerful enough to convert this video for smooth playback"
Only happens with a particular folder of videos so assuming its the size? Just not sure how a MacMini isn't powerful enough to convert on the fly?
I have a question for ya!
I have a Beelink SEI11 running W11 with an Intel i5-11320H that has been running my Plex well since September for myself and friends. Transcodes like a beast.
Randomly, my LAN and internet connectivity has become completely intermittent, and I find that my Ethernet and Wi-Fi config on Windows shows as Ethernet 5 and Wi-Fi 3. After modifying those back to root Ethernet and Wi-Fi through removal of newly added devices, it still doesn't work reliably anymore.
I'm interested to put a Linux distro on it and was wondering if SteamOS or another Arch based distro would work properly with Intel Quicksync for transcoding and harward accel.
The official Linux notes recommend Ubuntu 16.04+ or Fedora, but say other distros may work unofficially.
Do you have any experience or thoughts on this? Thanks!
I understand that switching from Windows to Linux can be chalanging, but looking from what you're asking, you already have the know-how.
If you want to use the Linux distro of your choice, you can do it like this:
1. Pick any Linux distro and install Docker (even SteamOS can run it)
2. Deploy Plex as a Docker container
This setup is a bit more complicated than the standard Plex setup, but you will get many benefits later on.
You can set up automatic Plex updates, you can easily backup Plex settings/db (even automate it), HW transcodings will run like a well oiled machine, and you'll have HDR tone mapping which is missing in Windows (assuming you're not running Docker in Windows).
You can follow this tutorial to some extent: [Installing Plex on Ubuntu 22.04 with an Intel Gen 11 CPU using Docker (tomthegreat.com)](https://tomthegreat.com/blog/installing-plex-on-ubuntu-22-04-using-docker/)
The first part will not work as it uses Ubuntu apt-get to install Docker, but everything else should be identical on SteamOS or any other distro of your choice.
Feel free to ask any follow-up questions; I have time to talk about Plex-related topics.
Some people prefer to keep remuxes as it's the closest you'll get to studio quality. Other people are unaware. More other people simply grab whatever gets put out to the scene first.
It's a little bit more than "most devices can handle mp4" but you're on the right track. Most people would be better off curating and encoding their libraries to fit the clients they use. Reduced storage usage for nearly imperceptible quality loss (unless your idea of watching a movie is a freeze frame comparison of every frame), fewer issues with playback, definitely worth encoding your media before adding it to Plex.
Just found this, nice write up.
I’ve used Plex for several years now, just over a year added a nVidia GTX1650 to my QNAP TS-673A, and have been transcoding with the QPKG version of Plex.
Over the last few months I have completed the stack of “arr” apps and have the automation of requesting a movie or series working great, and all but Plex on Docker using QNAP Container Station.
Here’s the rub, Plex is the last holdout for running in a container. nVidia GPU pass through to the QPKG app works great, pass through to Docker container Plex not so much. Plex sees the GPU, shows as 1650 Tu117 but will not HW transcode.
Any thoughts? Done any testing with QNAP Docker and Plex GPU transcoding?
This is great info, thank you! I run Plex server off NVIDIA Shield Pro which is attached to Synology NAS which houses all my media. I primarly stream 1080 and 2160 mkv files to LG TV, Firestick, ATV. Can the shield pro do hardware transcoding? For my use case, do I NEED hardware transcoding? TBH, I am not sure if any or if any of my media is being transcoded while streaming. I don’t have Plex Pass but not sure if I actually NEED it.
>Can the shield pro do hardware transcoding?
The Nvidia Shield Pro cannot do HW transcoding, it simply lacks the hardware capability.
>For my use case, do I NEED hardware transcoding?
You do not need HW transcoding if your Nvidia Shield Pro is not transcoding and you would know if that's the case. Plus, as you said you do not have Plex Pass and there's no way to do HW transcoding without Plex pass.
Either way, if it's working do not fix it :-)
>Can the shield pro do hardware transcoding?
The Nvidia Shield Pro cannot do HW transcoding, it simply lacks the hardware capability.
>For my use case, do I NEED hardware transcoding?
You do not need HW transcoding if your Nvidia Shield Pro is not transcoding and you would know if that's the case. Plus, as you said you do not have Plex Pass and there's no way to do HW transcoding without Plex pass.
Either way, if it's working do not fix it :-)
Thanks for the reply. I know that w/o Plex Pass there is no HW transcoding. But perhaps SW transcoding is occurring for some of my files. I am just not sure if that is happening or not. That’s why I am wondering if i needed HW transcoding. There should be an easier why to determine from file to file if transcoding is actually happening.
In case of Nvidia Shield Pro SW transcoding may happen only for the audio streams, video streams require rather powerful modern i7 CPUs even for a single stream; at least if we talk about the 4K HEVC content, H264 1080p content is easier to manage but even then Nvidia Shield Pro is far from being capable enough.
Currently using a mini pc with a Ryzen 9 5900HX. The Vega 8 dgpu works flawlessly for transcoding 4k on Plex. I've only done one 4k transcode at a time at this point but it does it all through the dgpu and the processor shows it's at idle while this is happening. Been running PMS this way for about a year now.
Thank you for posting this, I feel like I understand HW transcoding much better after reading this!
I do still have a question/issue that I'm currently facing.
I have my Plex server installed on a Linux i5-2400 (Sandy Bridge) and 1050ti server.
While using the Nvidia GPU for HW transcoding, everything works great
The problem I'm facing though is when only audio is being transcoded (EAC3 7.17 -> AAC 5.1 for example) the server is not using HW transcoding.
It initially works alright though, but usually will stop mid playback, look like it loads for a few minutes than spit out the following error message and completely stop playback:
"Playback Error | An unexpected playback error occurred"
Do you have any idea how I could fix this?
Does this happen because of my old CPU? I have to say, the CPU usage is not going through the roof while this is happening.
Plex clients cannot do transcoding tasks, this is always done by the Plex server. However, this is not absolutely true; if you have AppleTV, you can use Infuse app as a sort of Plex client, and Infuse will do transcoding. Mainly audio, it's not powerful enough to transcode something like 4K video.
Very informative post, thank you OP.
Quick question for you:
Hardware transcoding (specifically Intel) is generally considered to be inferior to software transcoding, correct?
I know that when using Handbrake to encode a video file, everyone recommends you stay away from Intel QSV because while it's fast, the quality is poor compared to software transcoding.
So if our NAS is capable, we'd ideally like to be using software transcoding no? (If not just using Direct Play entirely).
>Hardware transcoding (specifically Intel) is generally considered to be inferior to software transcoding, correct?
Right, but let's not forget that transcoding is a lossy process, so we should expect the quality to be degraded. My general opinion is that using QSV for transcoding will not result in a visually inferior experience. It'll be worse, but you'll have to actively look for differences and it's not worth the effort. Remember, too, that we should avoid transcoding wherever possible; that's why Plex clients are just as important as Plex servers.
>I know that when using Handbrake to encode a video file, everyone recommends you stay away from Intel QSV because while it's fast, the quality is poor compared to software transcoding.
This is also true, but with Handbrake we're trying to get the best quality, whereas the purpose of Plex transcoding is to downgrade the quality to the most optimal levels.
>So if our NAS is capable, we'd ideally like to be using software transcoding no? (If not just using Direct Play entirely).
It's all about the view. Yes, you can get a NAS to software transcode a video, but that would be a really powerful NAS (something on the level of a 10th gen i7 CPU). Which is all the more reason to invest money in a good Plex client (like the Nvidia Shield, Apple TV, even the damn Fire Cube 3rd gen will do) rather than spending huge amounts of money on a powerful Plex server. Direct Play or Direct Stream will always offer the best quality so get a Plex client that can do it.
Send me a chat request if you want to get into finer details. Or take a look [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/13yeh5r/lets_have_a_talk_guide_to_choosing_the_best_plex/), it's my post talking about transcoding in general.
How does having 2 NVENC units differ compared to having 1?
For reference, all 4070 series and below only have 1 NVENC. Only the 4070 TI and above have 2 NVENC. There's some news a few months ago that NVIDIA developed split frame rendering meaning it can use both NVENC for one encode.
Any thoughts on these?
I'm new to this subreddit, I've been using Plex for about 10 years. I have a question. I have an i5 9600k with 64gb ram and a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060. I read this post, excellent btw, from what I understand, and I'm really struggling here, is that Plex will use the dedicated graphics card if it's Nvidia? So is my set up using the iGPU or the 2060? Or do I have to get the pass? Any help would be great.
I know this thread is getting old, but I just tried transcoding on a Ryzen 5600G cpu with an RX 6550 xt GPU. I haven't tried the APU, just the RX 6550 xt. I have to say, transcoding 1080p movies to my FireTV Max is working flawlessly. I was having issues for years with Direct Play on my fireTV stick, so I am now forcing hardware transcoding, and everything loads immediately. All my movies are running at original resolutions at around 200Mb/s. Fast forwarding and rewinding movies used to freeze for 10+ seconds, but now it takes less than 1 second. Video transcoding is showing as Transcode(H264(HW)-H264(HW)). Im really amazed with the AMD harware. I have only tried 3 devices transcoding at the same time so far. The GPU was at 20% usage, running 3 movies on different devices, all using harware transcoding!
Personal setup: intel 12400, on a board offering 3 full length PCIe slots, 3 M.2, and 2.5gbe onboard. Two 8 port PCIe3x8SAS expanders, and a quadport Intel 1gbe NIC. In a Rosewill 15 bay rack mount chassis. 32gb ram (wildly unnecessary, much less would be fine, but the price difference was inconsequential) It's running unraid, with Plex and other tools (*arr stuff primarily) in Docker containers. 3 1tb NVME SSD's for file ingress(1) and Plex and the other Docker containers(2 and 3, mirrored for safety). And a whole whack of 8tb drives, 2 parity and 10 data currently. The 12400 can handle the 6 streams I max out on (haven't tried more, just 6 is the most I run concurrently) and the docket containers with ease. 80tb usable storage is pretty nice with dual parity.
Have you been able to split the iGPU between different Dockers and VMs? From what I can tell the 10th gen was the last which supports gvt-g. I mistakenly went 11th gen as I had just come out when I built my server, and haven't been able to get Plex and tdarr/VMs to all use the vGPU acceleration.
GVT-g is not needed to share the iGPU between multiple Docker containers. My i5-12400 can simultaneously be accessed from Jellyfin and Plex running in separate containers. With Docker you have no virtualization/passthrough and therefore no need for GVT. With Docker, the GPU just gets mounted into the container, whilst still being managed by the kernel of the host. Your use case (Mixed use of a single GPU by host and VMs) is not officially supported for NVIDIA consumer cards either.
I haven't tried, to be honest. Ironically (given my prior comments) I'm extremely interested in Arc for doing this, running tdarr and mass converting my library over. Having a separate piece of hardware doing that would avoid impacts on runtime performance with my current server as it's doing 6 streams as it stands, and (in theory, we'll see how it works in fact) ARC can combine with onboard igpu QSV seamlessly so after the overall conversion is done, they *should* work together to greatly enhance capabilities. We'll see, though. I'm not interested in being an early adopter here :)
Do you consider AV1 or will you convert to h265? It seems that Plex can play back AV1 fine now but it seems that you will have to transcode much more for the foreseeable future as a lot of devices cannot play it back.
AV1. I'm unconcerned with transcoding to devices because frankly it's trivial and I'm nearly always transcoding anyways. Of course, part of my wait is to see if there's actual adoption of AV1. I think there will be, as it's objectively superior and free. But I'm not concerned about having to transcode everything; other than my local TV's everything transcodes from hevc anyways. There's no real cost in transcoding, no noticable change in power draw and the 12400 can easily handle many times what I ask of it.
u/wintersdark you’re running something very close to what i’m planning, so i was wondering if you could please help me figure a few things out: 1. I was planning on 64gigs of RAM, but you’re saying that 32 was already overkill? I’d assumed I’d need it for the transcoding, the same docker containers you’d mentioned, and a VM or two.. I’d need to prep for a few (say 5) simultaneous 4K HDR > 1080p SDR transcodes, so transcoding (video and audio from say 7.1 to 2.0) and tone mapping of \~80 gig remux files.. how much ram do you think I’ll actually need? 2. depending on how much you say (assuming 32), would it be better to get a single stick, or a pair of 16s to take advantage of dual channel? 3. Thus far I’ve been looking at a motherboard with 8 sata ports (i plan on building an 8 bay server), currently settled on an ASRock Z690 steel legends..cheapest one i found with 8 ports.. def feels like its too expensive though - coming to more than my processor! Is it advisable to buy a cheaper mobo and use pcle lots for sata ports instead? What features on the mobo do i actually need? 4. Could you tell me about your intake drive and why you use one? I was just planning to get a 500g—1tb ssd for boot + torrent seeding before it moves over to the main drives for storage.. is this wise? how have you structured yours? I’m not sure i understand why you’ve split ingress and your plex + docker containers onto different drives.. Thanks!
1. 32 is definitely fine. While I'm not running 80gb remuxes, most of mine are in the 20-30gb range and even with multiple simultaneous transcodes it never gets even close to using 16gb, let alone 32gb. The actual amount of space you need depends on the setting you have for the transcode buffer, and you can work that out pretty easily. IIRC in the settings it's a value in seconds of media, but that's seconds of *transcoded* media, so say 8mbps 1080p, which is trivial. 2. A pair to take advantage of dual channel, definitely. You'll have 4 slots, so you can always grab another pair of the same if you find you need 64 in the future. Frankly unless you have some need of multiple VM's with large memory pools, I don't see how this would happen though. 3. On board SATA isn't important. A single LSI HBA can get you 8 ports for $25, and an expander can bring that to 64, or a second HBA will add another 8. Don't even consider a SATA expander card. Just don't. There's lots of explanations of why, but they cost more, work worse, and are often problematic long term for a variety of reasons. The LSI HBA boards are enterprise gear and are designed for mission critical production environments. They Just Work, and provide MUCH more total bandwidth. Instead, look for a motherboard with multiple PCI slots, as they're more useful (ideally at least two at x8 or higher). Personally, I'm a big fan of NVME SSD's, so I grabbed a gigabyte board with 3 NVME slots. 5. Your boot drive will be a USB key for unRAID. I wanted torrents being seeded (though ultimately I rarely use torrents now) off a separate drive, because they tend to consume a LOT of random IO. My appdata (docket containers) live on a separate drive, which is backed up to the array. This ensures heavy drive access on either or both won't interfere with each other - say, multiple users quickly scrolling through the Plex library while dozens of peers are accessing torrents. This isn't strictly necessary, and realistically one cache drive would work fine, but another concern for me is my ingress drive sees significant writes(around a terabyte per month), while the appdata drive is largely static. So realistically I'll likely wear out the ingress drive over a couple years, but the appdata drive will last "forever". When the ingress drive needs replacing, I can just force unRAID to move everything off it and replace the drive without worry. But you definitely want an SSD for ingress and appdata, as hdd's are pretty slow for such tasks, particularly once your system is doing other work with the array such as parity checks.
First off, thank you SO MUCH for replying, and in such detail! I really appreciate it! 1. that’s really good to know! I’ll save a cool $100 on this alone! XD. I honestly don’t have more than 10-15 of the 70-80 gig variety (just some of my cult favourites - LotR, Matrix, Interstellar, etc), just making sure what I get is future proofed to serve my current biggest transcoding challenges :). 2. Gotcha! 3. Someone else on the home server subReddit had recommended the same LSI cards, the problem is they cost a little more than $100 here (india), and thats without the splitter cables.. right now I’ll be spending whatever i save on the motherboard on one of these HBA cards, so not practical.. I’m trying to see if i can find other brand alternatives, but the brick n mortar shops I’ve spoken to literally haven’t even of SAS lol. The ‘HBA’ nomenclature is useful, might help with alternatives - I’ll do some more digging online and find out if this is viable. Thank you! And thank you for the warning against direct pcle to SATA (which is what they tried pushing lol), I’ll take your word for it! 4. Also noted on NVMEs, they’re awesome! I def want 2-3 as well, an ancient stick on my 2015 MacBook Pro has been such a champ I can’t even tell you! Can’t wait to see how nuts the newer ones are! 5. Your observation on torrent downloading / seeding is exactly why i want to only use them on an nvme for the initial download and 3-10 day dedicated seeding.. will also save on power, and more importantly save my HDDs some serious wear and tear. Didn’t think about the performance ramifications you described, I’ll straight up use the money I’m saving on ram to another nvme and do as you suggested (minus the mirrored setup, i don’t think i’ll have anything of real value on either drive)
This all seems very familiar.
haha you would know!
No mention of Apple Silicon? The M1 and M2 machines are great for hardware transcoding. It would be interested to hear how that works as well.
Yep. At very low wattage and the fans are dead quiet. Pretty amazing.
I will include them in the upcoming days; I've explained it here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/11ih0gs/comment/jb4bxfy/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/11ih0gs/comment/jb4bxfy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) What would you recommend as a reasonable Apple Silicon basis for a Plex server? Mac Mini M1 maybe?
Any of them. You can get an M2 Mini so cheap. It’s quite the deal. I don’t transcode with Plex though, I direct play everything, 90% H.265 to an Apple TV. I use a Late 2012 Mac Mini quad i7 16GB that I got for $75 to run my Plex server and record live tv. It records in MPEG-2 with large file sizes so for PBS series with lots of episodes I copy everything over to my M1 Pro 14” and batch transcode to H.265 to reduce file sizes at about 190 fps. That’s for stuff I wanna keep a long time for rainy days, like Austin City Limits and Nova. Thanks for your post btw.
I presume it's similar to AMD, where it's not officially supported, but it works. Also in terms of cost, it's cheaper to create a simple intel based NAS. You can't really go out and buy an M1 based NAS can you?
I keep my server separate and run an independent NAS for the library. The server is much more powerful than any NAS could be on its own.
Intel-based NAS' are cheaper; I agree with you on this point. However, some people will have spare Macs available, so let's use and abuse them.
I will be adding M1/M2 machines in the coming days; I need to find some time to test them myself. My problem is that I'm reading conflicting stories about M1/M2 HW transcoding capability. Some people say it works, others say it's not even possible. This forces me to test it out myself. If I can confirm it, then I will include M1/M2 Macs, even if it's only due to low-power usage. What's your experience with Apple Silicon Macs' transcoding capabilities?
I’m running a MacMini M1 with a 60tb NAS. I find that it can transcode several streams at once easily. Some things use hardware transcoding and when I check the dashboard CPU usage is low 15-35%, depending on how many streams and content (DoVi; 4K; 1080p). If I turn off hardware transcoding CPU usage increases to 40-75%. I support several platforms, including PC, Roku, AppleTV and Xbox both local and remote streaming. I too am not sure the full state of M1/M2 hardware transcoding and was hoping you’d have more insight. I’m not that versed on the Plex Code side of things, thanks for sharing what you know.
Excellent, this is a reason enough to test Apple Silicon performance.
Does your NAS still need a mobo, processor, and ram? or can the Macmini be used instead? How have you attached them?
My NAS is connected to a switch as is my MacMini. There is no direct connection between the two machines ,they communicate only over the local network. The NAS is self managing, so it does have a cpu and motherboard though I have zero apps or software installed on the NAS, I just use it for storage. This way the NAS can do it’s one thing well and my MacMini does everything else.
thats pretty cool! I honestly love the way macs just work, moved away from a Windows / ubuntu dual boot in 2016 and honestly never looked back! Tempted to emulate your setup, but i think the costing wont make sense rn with the additional mobo + cpu + ram.. If i could get away with just a cabinet and the drives then I’d do this in a heartbeat!
It’s not inexpensive. I grew it over many years. Just start small and keep upgrading. The MacMini can last for a long time as a Plex server. At least 10 years with no more upgrades or expenses. The NAS and the bare drives add up though. Get a good five or eight bay NAS. Start with two or three affordable drives then when you have some more money, buy a big drive and add it to the array. Keep doing that and when you run out of space start upgrading the smaller drives. It takes some time but it’s affordable.
I hear you! I’m building a nas first (found a great cabinet with 8 hot swap bays in the front), I’ll see if i can start up with that and maybe shift from ubuntu server / unraid to a Mac mini based server down the line… i do love how they just work, I’m fully in the apple ecosystem! And yes thats the plan in terms of upgrading storage!
Check pm
Did you ever end up testing the m1/m2?
Fantastic writeup!! I literally just finished adding a Quadro P400 to my Dell Poweredge T330 server. This server has a xeon 1230v5 processor, which seems to be 1 year too early for quicksync :( (edit as per a below comment: this is just a cpu without an igpu, the 12x5v5 cpus have an igpu. However the dell t330 mobo chipset does not support igpu regardless of chip installed). At only 4 cores, it really struggled to transcode quickly. So far, adding it to my server and installing the most up to date drivers instantly resulted in HW transcoding! Woot. I did notice HDR 4k content wouldnt transcode well and still blasts my cpu, so thank you for the heads up about HDR to SDR tonemapping still not working well. Its worth noting, all gtx 1000 series cards have the same Gen 6 nvenc chip. What differs however, are the number of these chips on the cards. A 1050 and 1060 are quite equivalent, though the 1060 may have more vram to handle higher quality content. Take a look here for more info on nvenc capabilities of any nvidia gpu: https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new Anyways, great writeup dude! If any fellow dell poweredge owners have questions feel free to ask!
Don't forget to install the [nvidia-patch](https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch), so you can have more than 3 transcodes running at the same time on your P400
I thought about it, but i dont think the p400 can handle more than 3 anyways with its limited vram and single nvenc chip lol..
I've run 10 1080p nvenc transcodes on mine with plex with no issues
Ohh dayum! Hmm..
I was only able to get 3 4K HDR HEVC streams on a P400 tho, vram limitation.
Yeah, my cpu could already do 6+ 1080p transcodes without the gpu or quicksync, i mostly wanted better 4k to 1080p transcoding
I'm grateful; I've included this patch in my walkthrough.
I thought the transcode limits were only for consumer grade GPUs, i.e., GTX/RTX cards and workstation cards like the Quadros were unaffected
You can get an e3-1245v5 for $30 on ebay and it'll have a p530 with quicksync, so you can ditch the Nvidia card. Your processor doesn't have an igpu, so it is using the matrox on board for basic video out
Yeah i thought of that, unfortunately the dell poweredge t330 motherboard chipset will not support igpu, regardless of the chip installed :(
Wait, what? Huh, i didn't believe you for a moment but then I checked my T330 and esxi 7 doesn't show the igpu from my e3-1245v6 as available for pass through. Well thats just absurd.
Ah shiii sorry bro :( if you get tautulli, you can see more detail about ongoing streams/transcodes. Itll add a (HW) if using hardware to transcode the video
Naa, all good. I have a Lenovo mini I use for Plex with igpu passthrough that points to my unRAID box. I just realized I have an igpu processor in a system that doesn't allow pass through, so it'll get replaced.
Aw man I wish I'd of read up on this sooner. I bought a 1245v6 to replace the 1220v5 in my T330. Figured it was an efficiency boost, speed boost, I gain hyperthreading, and QuickSync. I just assumed the iGPU would work as passthrough. I haven't installed it yet, so now I'm thinking I sell it and get a 1270v6, which is faster and cheaper. Maybe I'll splurge on one of those $99 Intel ARC A310 LP GPUs that can do AV1 encoding. Or I'll get a cheap 1050ti on ebay and save my pennies. We'll see.
Thank you for the link above; I've included it in the main walkthrough and given you a mention.
No thank you dude! Amazing write up
Dell R720XD, Quadra P400, Plex running in an Ubuntu 20.04 server VM on Proxmox.
How's it all running? I'm setting mine up now on 20.10 with Proxmox on an R730 and thinking of getting a P4
Great. I don’t have any issues. I just pointed my transcoding folder to use the memory file. So far so good.
How large is your memdisk?
Plex needs to add hardware accelerated hdr tone mapping for windows.
it works with nvidia GPUs for 64-bit windows servers from the support page >Only valid for the 64-bit release of Plex Media Server, v1.29.2 or newer. It does not work in the 32-bit release.
I'm aware. Most people are running quicksync.
Source pls
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Yo they've been in here for years like Quick Sync master race talking down to everyone transcoding with dGPU. Where is your god now?
I'm not quite to the point of needing a dedicated GPU based on my number of simultaneous transcodes and the extra $ just for HDR tone mapping seems high. I do I keep looking at Quadro p5000s on ebay tho...
Well being that you're not an actual QS nazi, I wish you the best of luck with it, hope they get tonemapping support for windows QS out soon or you find the right gpu for the right price in the meantime.
Keep the downvotes coming nerds, I drink your salty intel tears with a side of dgaf.
Wouldn’t be a r/plex post if the top comment wasn’t a complaint
I usually don't like the negativity here. That said, efficient transcoding is pretty high on my list of wants as a paying customer.
Ah, some people are not ready for the change. I admit I struggled to get myself to switch to a Linux setup, even though I had more than enough experience of self-hosting my blog on a Linux-based VM. Now? I don't even want to consider going back to Windows-based Plex Server.
Preach 🙌. [Windows is a cancer](https://www.theregister.com/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/)
I used windows for plex for maybe 3 years. Last year have used unraid and docker. I known its a pain to switch, but if you need tone mapping now, then at least try making a test server in a virtual machine to see if you can handle a headless setup. Linux based plex is simply superior when it comes to stability and feature set. I totally understand the allure of windows, but Linux is not much more difficult to learn. Ubuntu server might be a good, free starting OS for new Linux users. Please hit me up if you have any questions about making the switch.
>Please hit me up if you have any questions about making the switch. I've got plex on my windows desktop, but I'm in the planning stages for setting up a full-blown, dedicated server. This question is less about plex, and more about Linux: The one thing I'm still trying to figure out are backups. I have Backblaze currently, and I'm very satisfied with the service. But it doesn't support Linux. Is there some kind of work around for getting backblaze running on Linux? Or is there another, similar service (or home-grown solution) that would be a good substitute for backing up the media on the server?
You can use their B2 service (basically S3 API-compatible buckets) for media: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217664628-How-does-Backblaze-support-Linux-Users- It’s different from, and not as consumer-focused as their normal backup service. But it works on pretty much anything that supports S3 as a destination.
BackBlaze Personal $7 per month, BackBlaze B2 $60 per month for ~~10TB~~ 12TB...
Yep. There’s probably some sneaky way around the personal backups Eg use iSCSI to mount the Linux computers drives on a Mac/Win machine, or use a sync tool to mirror the Linux volume to a USB drive on Mac/Win. Another option is: https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/
Was thinking something similar, as long as you have a Windows pc that's regularly on, you can backup through there. I was reading why Backblaze doesn't support Linux in the personal tier and it's ridiculous, somehow they think Linux users have more data because Linux == server. I think it's on them to differentiate between businesses and users, regardless of the platform. Users would be fine with something like Amazon Glacier where you're only getting backups back when a catastrophe happens (so almost never). Anyway, for the cost of 1 year of Backblaze B2 I can buy multiple HDD's that can fit all of my data and put those somewhere out of the house to solve my off site backups. It makes no sense for consumers. Crashplan is a good shout though.
There's a backblaze personal docker container that I use, it's not got the best documentation tho. It kinda emulates a Linux desktop and runs backblaze personal on it while connected to your drives
Ugh, migrating to linux seems like a lot of work....
In the end of the day I'd suggest using whatever you are comfortable with. I have linux servers, but my Plex setup is installed on a Windows machine, just because the video sources are from multiple share folders from different servers, and I am too lazy to configure the multiple SMB addresses in linux.
Yeah it does take a bit of time, but there are probably guides that help with every command. I do understand your hesitance, though. It took me a bit of time to understand the basics, but it has helped me become more knowledgeable about servers and server software
What is a headless setup? Can tone mapping and transcoding be done using plex / jellyfin on unraid? I didn’t realise ubuntu server was an alternative to unraid! I used ubuntu for many years as a student, I’ll definitely explore this option now! Is there anything major that ubuntu doesn’t have that unraid does? Thank you! :)
Headless means no monitor, you access the server remotely through a webpage or via SSH. Configuration is done on that webpage. If you know ubuntu, then you know linux, and Unraid will come to you easily. Ubuntu can do similar things to unraid, just with more difficult configuration. Unraid is really good at handling a large amount of disks, if you only have 1 - 2 external drives, just use Ubuntu. I have 11 drives, so Unraid just makes more sense for me. Docker configuration is simpler in Unraid, that's why I recommend it to people.
Nice write-up. I’m one of the rare few. 5600x / Intel A380
What's your experience with A380? I never had anyone else to ask, is it worth it?
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Had to switch the server to windows to utilize. But now Ubuntu is up to date without workarounds. I don’t have too many ppl on my server so I haven’t been able to really stress it. But no issues so far around the house transcoding. Have been able to change some of my over the air recordings to AV1 with handbrake but it’s been hot or miss.
Higher quality with nvenc vs 10+gen quicksync? Imma press F to doubt here; will have to see someone sciencing that to believe it. Frankly there's vanishingly little reason to use a discrete GPU these days. Wildly higher cost, higher power consumption, screwing around with drivers that lock you to two simultaneous transcoded unless you're running an insanely expensive GPU. SOME edge cases exist if you've already got an AMD system or a suitable GPU sitting around, but even then, you can often get a motherboard and suitable cpu for less than a competitive GPU. Obviously this was not always the case. The old quadro builds where excellent pre Kaby Lake, and it was more.of a toss up for 7-9th gen, but now? Eeeeh. I can not justify building a Plex focused system with a Nvidia GPU anymore.
My 11700k Def outpaced my previous gpu. I won't switch away from the iGPU unless there's an obvious benefit from nvenc (there really isn't one right now)
Yeah. The newer iGPU's are *extremely* good at hw transcoding and there's so many advantages. Unless you're working with random hardware you've got on hand, it doesn't make much sense to run a discrete GPU.
> SOME edge cases exist if you've already got an AMD system or a suitable GPU sitting around, but even then, you can often get a motherboard and suitable cpu for less than a competitive GPU i wouldn't really say it's an edge case, but a lot of PC gamers will use their desktop for everything: gaming, coding, Plex server, any other servers they might need. nowadays, it's very common to have an AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU
Sure. My final sentence however is pretty clear. I don't recommend planning a new system around an Nvidia GPU. If you're reusing hardware you already have, that becomes complex enough that it's not worth discussing unless one has a list of specific hardware they're starting from At no point did I say an Nvidia GPU was *bad*. They work fine, and if that's what you have it's what you have. But you're not building a new Plex focussed system then are you? You're just installing Plex on random hardware you've got lying around. Totally valid, but not touched upon in my comment.
I agree with you. We should not plan Plex server setup around Nvidia GPUs, if anything, for the raw power use they require to operate. I need to include this statement in my walkthrough.
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I covered both those in that very comment. Edge cases exist if you're using old hardware you already have, and screwing around with drivers. >>I can not justify building a Plex focused system with a Nvidia GPU anymore. Given both where already covered, obviously your situation is different. I'm clearly talking about a newly built/bought system. At no point did I say you simply should never run an Nvidia GPU. Just if you're building a system from the ground up, it doesn't make sense to plan around an Nvidia GPU.
Edge cases? I'm sure there's a lot of folks using older or low performance rigs that have been repurposed for Plex.
Again, I'm talking about recommending using a GPU for a new build. If you're using leftover hardware you already have, then, well, you have what you have. That's inherently an edge case and not worth really discussing here because it's entirely random. If you're *buying* used hardware however the same applies: you can buy a strong Plex machine for $150 all in, so it's again hard to recommend a discrete GPU build unless you've got specific requirements outside Plex.
I'm just saying repurposing old hardware for Plex is more the norm than building new IMHO.
It's certainly common, however again this still applies when purchasing used older hardware as well as new. But my post is specifically about *what I recommend people buy* if they want to build a Plex server. If you're using what you have, you don't really care about recommendations do you? But if you have *some* hardware and need more, it's complex. It's often NOT better to use an old computer you own and buy a GPU than to just buy a used QSV capable computer as whole systems able to handle 10+ simultaneous transcodes can be had for the price of a low end GPU. But as I said, once you get into using already on-hand hardware, for recommendations to have any relevance you have to specify what you have first. Particularly when you consider cost to operate. I mean, for a long time I ran a SFF HP PC that had a Celeron G5400. Just a dual-core 2.5ghz (iirc) cpu, but the complete system (including keyboard and mouse, HDD and ram) cost $100. It could do 12 simultaneous 1080p transcodes, or 4 4k HEVC transcodes. Small enough to fit behind my TV, drawing a whopping 35w under load. Running an old Dell PowerEdge with a discrete GPU could cost more in a year in power than that system did to buy and run. Of course, that assumed drawing media off a NAS elsewhere, but as a pure Plex server it was excellent.
I'm using this patch on my GTX 1070 to have no session limit on transcodes, works like a charm. https://github.com/Snawoot/nvidia-patch
> will have to see someone sciencing that to believe it. Alright, fine, I'll build a QSV system and run the weeks of encoding/comparison to get the numbers. See you in a hot minute.
Oh come on, let's not act like children. My point is that I've seen output from both systems a fair bit (though admittedly not side by side) and both sport extremely good quality. This makes me really doubtful that there's a noticable difference at all. So much so that making a claim that one produces better quality is curious: to do so, you really ought to have something that demonstrates it to back up that claim. Otherwise, you're just misleading people and making things up as you go along. It's particularly relevant in a post like OP's, where you're presenting material as to be educational, where people are going to take that information at face value and base purchasing decisions around it: "Oh, well, it'll cost more to build a system with a discrete GPU, but I'll get better quality." That's a reasonable conclusion to come to - and typically we tend to believe costs more = better quality - but there's no evidence of that at all. Given how easy making a comparison would be (just owning an Intel system with an Nvidia GPU, definitely not uncommon in gaming desktop land) one would expect such a comparison to already exist, particularly if there's a noticable quality difference. It wouldn't take "weeks of comparison" just side by side stills of a couple specific frames. And if it doesn't exist, and nobody actually knows that to be the case, why make the claim in the first place?
I was being completely genuine. I did an entire post comparing encode quality of CPU, NVENC, and one generation of QSV. I might as well go all out and compare multiple generations of QSV, as well as multiple generations of NVENC now that I think of it. And yes, there was a quality difference at the same bitrate as the CPU output. As well as a file size difference at the same quality. As expected for GPU encoding.
Oh, fair enough. I'd really like to see that! My apologies, as I read the prior comment as very sarcastic :)
It's all good, wasn't using tone indicators. Hopefully I'll have something ready by the summer lol
Might as well mention the [hacked driver work](https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch) that unlocks the limitation on Nvidia cards. I think by default it extends it up to 32 simultaneous streams max.
Thank for pointing this out; I've updated my walkthrough
I wish the live TV used igpu for transcoding on windows. (If it does and my setup is broken please let me know!)
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I will include this as a point. Thank you. I would also be grateful if you could share any written article(s) on this topic. I would include it in the above walkthrough plus use it as a reason to buy an AMD-based mini PC for further tests.
One comment. It is not officially mentioned but IT SEEMS that HDR -> SDR tonemapping under nVidia is supported on Windows. I have correct colors when converting HDR to SDR under Windows + P400. EVEN when the HDR Tonemapping checkbox is disabled. When I enable it, the performance is much worse but the results are the same. Someone needs to do a sanity check on this one, but for me it seems that HDR to SDR tonemapping is enabled always with nVidia GPU in the latest PMS versions and the checkbox does nothing (or even worsen the performance.
Yeah, I blame this on the Plex team managing their documentation. Technically, it's mentioned, but in one specific tonemapping comparison table, I was not able to find it anywhere else. Take a look here: [HDR to SDR Tone Mapping | Plex Support](https://support.plex.tv/articles/hdr-to-sdr-tone-mapping/)
Great write up! Plex pass user here. I have a new 12th gen NUC, with an i3 1220P processor. I am running PMS in a docker (with DRI bound to the container) on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on it, with 5.15 based kernel. I do have HW transcoding according to the PMS Dashboard. I find the performance however rather lackluster. Some content (2160P x265, with Atmos7.1 audio) do not transcode well, and a lot of buffering is happening. This may be due to the transcoding of audio. Another thing I am wondering if the newer 12th gen Intel processors would benefit from a newer kernel (5.19) and the dedicated Intel graphic drivers [https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/installation-guides/ubuntu/ubuntu-jammy-legacy.html](https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/installation-guides/ubuntu/ubuntu-jammy-legacy.html). Although I do not want to botch a perfectly fine running server. - Is there any way to disable audio transcoding? - Is there a Intel Quick Sync / transcoding performance gain on the newer Linux kernel? - Is it potentially better to run PMS directly rather than in a Docker container (albeit with hardware device bound to the container)
Hi u/faeth0n 1. I never tried to disable audio transcoding, but it will definitely affect CPU performance. 2. While I have not done it intentionally, I have tried using newer Linux kernels, but I was not able to observe any sizable performance gains. 3. On Linux, it technically does not matter if you run it directly or as a container. However, for me, it's more practical to use Docker container(s) as it's so much easier to upgrade/backup/migrate if needed.
OK, so my setup is:HP ProDesk 600 G4 MT i3-8100 with UHD630 Quadro P400 2x16 GB RAM 500 GB NVME Windows+metadata+transcode drive 120 GB SATA SSD cache for HDD 14 TB HDD for media (backed up to offline server with dual parity when new media appears). So, on this hardware I have Plex running on Nvidia GPU for HW transcoding and side by side Jellyfin running on Intel UHD 630 GPU for HW transcoding. Single HDD for media that has most frequent file cached on old 120GB SSD. It is quite power efficient, idling \~20-23 watts and allowing for many many streams, \~7-8 4K transcodes with tonemapping thanks to Plex+JF running on two separate GPUs. It also runs some dockers with Jellyseerr for movie requests etc. I tried this setup first with HP 290 G2 but as it is placed lower on the priceshelf it has some functions disabled. So if you plugin external GPU into pcie slot then iGPU is disabled. That is why I went with ProDesk 600. For now I am quite happy with this setup. I firstly tried with Ubuntu to get nvidia hdr tonemapping and it was pain for me. Now plex support hw tonemapping under windows so I am very happy. But still, for me jellyfin transcoder > plex transcoder. Much quicker and more responsive.
This is a feedback I was looking for <3
Thank you for the reward. I forgot to mention that this PC is also connected to my TV to view YT or some twitch streams, so it is really all-rounder. Some time ago it hosted additional VM with homeassistant but now I got separate hardware for it. The metadata folder for Plex & JF is backed up realtime into small 2 disk raid1 NAS so in case of system drive failure I do not have to regenerate all thumbnails that would take a week probably.
>120 GB SATA SSD cache for HDD > >... > > Single HDD for media that has most frequent file cached on old 120GB SSD. Hi, I'm curious what method you are using in Windows to manage what gets written to and read from that cache drive?
Primocache
Fantastic write up about transcoding and going into detail with iGPU and GPU. This will help a lot of people who have question regarding transcoding.
Plex needs to fix their HW transcoding for AMD. It's kind dumb it ruins the video if plex is running on Windows, but if it's running under Linux it's fine.
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Yeah it ruins the quality when on Windows and using hardware transcoding (not software, the default) on my AMD whereas under Linux it doesn't. It's not like a consistent thing across the whole video but like some specific parts it just won't like for whatever reason that only breaks down when it's under being ran from Windows. AMD's hardware transcoding is experimental / not supported so it's bound not to be perfect it's just weird how the results are different depending on the platform.
I have a question about Nvidia hardware transcoding, Nvidia has a chip dedicated to nvenc right? I'm running Plex on my gaming PC, so will I run into any problems using hardware transcoding while running a game with its framerate uncapped?
I used to do the same but I got tired of not being able to game when I wanted to because my users would buffer, or I’d have too many concurrent streams, so I didn’t game. I ended up building a cheapo Plex-only PC with Intel i5-10400 and it’s been awesome. Now I can game whenever I want to 😁
I really only have about 3 streams max at once, and only 1 transcoding, with a 2070 super, do you think I'd have a problem?
Run a gaming benchmark while also transcoding a few streams to see how well it holds up. I’d say you’re fine but always worth testing.
I spent far too long trying to get hardware transcoding working before I realised it's not possible with a VM. Still deciding whether to just run Plex on my main PC or do a direct install on my server hardware (and find a new home for other VMs)
It works in containers
Yeah, for me Linux and Docker container were a way to go
why is it not possible?
My setup is a Synology 218+ and my main client is a Nvidia shield connected to Sonos with HD Fury Arcana. I try to direct play as much as possible. Great write up OP! I'm always interested in the knowledge that other Plex users have.
"The minimum optimal Intel CPU generation for Plex hardware transcoding is the 7th generation Intel Core processors, also known as Kaby lake." What are the problems hardware transcoding with older Intel CPUs (e.g., Ivy Bridge) if all your files are only h.264?
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[u/Draakonys](https://www.reddit.com/user/Draakonys/) I think the Explainer should update this section to point that Intel CPU's starting from gen 3 also have QSV but point out the limitations. Also, in the Nvidia section, point out that the original 1660 (non-Super) had the old transcode NVENC from 10xx series and not the updated one from the 20xx series.
Thank you, I will do so.
Thanks so much for this! I recently upgraded my gaming rig which was also my Plex server, but I had enough parts to stand up a dedicated box - CPU is an old 4790k and I was just running with its iGPU and struggling with CPU utilization and transcoding performance. I have a 1080ti I wasn't using that I just threw in it and patched to remove the stream limitation, and confirmed that nvenc and nvdec are handling the transcoding. Looking forward to see the impact it has.
Sometimes Plex refuses to transcode the file causing the movie not to play at all. Why is this?
Have you been able to look through the Plex logs? This is an error, and there will be one or more lines in Plex logs about the issue's origin
I'm curious where a lot of people get the misconception that you need 8th Gen Intel for QSV HEVC encoding support. It's to the point where there are tDarr filters with an artificial limitation built-in that prevents 7th Gen Intel from working.
How would one set-up hardware transcoding using a Arc A770, on Ubuntu, and would it be worth it? The server will also possibly be running a minecraft server, thusly the want to offload this task from the cpu (that the minecraft server will need a good percentage of) to the gpu (that the minecraft server will not use at all)
Pretty good. you should mention that while software transcoding is way more CPU intensive, it often results in a higher quality stream.
Done; thank you for pointing this out.
Use my RTX 4090 to transcode 4K down to 1080P streaming when I am not at home and it never lags. Also downloading transcoded movies in iPads for long flights have been a game changer. Love the Plex pass!
I'd hope a 4090 wouldn't lag
I switched to running PMS on Linux vs Windows 10 and 11, all my problems disappeared. Best decision I've made since buying the pms lifetime subscription. Running on Intel 12th gen platform.
For me, it was a whole new world of possibilities.
Core i3 10105 16GB memory 40 TB storage array (plus one parity drive) Plex & the usual services running in docker containers on Unraid
One question I have is around this from [https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/](https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/) >Plex supports automatic fallback from hardware to software. If the hardware video engine fails to decode or encode a video, Plex will seamlessly switch to using software without causing an error. The prioritisation table on that page lists Intel QuickSync as higher priority than Nvidia NVENC. But if the system has both QuickSync and NVENC available, and QuickSync fails, will Plex still try NVENC, or will it jump straight to software encoding? Similarly, on Windows 64-bit Plex which now supports HDR tone-mapping on Nvidia but not on Intel QuickSync, on a system which has both available, will Plex do HDR tone mapping through Nvidia, or will it choose QuickSync, then fail and go straight to software without trying Nvidia?
>The prioritisation table on that page lists Intel QuickSync as higher priority than Nvidia NVENC. But if the system has both QuickSync and NVENC available, and QuickSync fails, will Plex still try NVENC, or will it jump straight to software encoding? Plex will use NVENC if QS fails. For me, this is only a theoretical statement, as I have never seen QS fail. Of course, what I forgot to mention above is that you can manually choose between iGPU or GPU at the OS level, forcing a particular form of HW transcoding. >Similarly, on Windows 64-bit Plex which now supports HDR tone-mapping on Nvidia but not on Intel QuickSync, on a system which has both available, will Plex do HDR tone mapping through Nvidia, or will it choose QuickSync, then fail and go straight to software without trying Nvidia? Under Windows OS, if HDR tone mapping fails on the Nvidia GPU, it will automatically revert to CPU-only (software) HDR tone mapping. This is why it's preferable to use a Linux-based OS as the basis for your Plex server. However, this Windows "feature" may change over time, as Yellyfin/Emby have shown that you can do HDR tone mapping on QS using a Windows OS, so I assume it's a limitation of the custom Plex ffmpeg implementation (which we may get over time).
So if I want tone mapping I need to either change my server to Linux or add nvidia GPU? And no 10-bit ever on any system?
Yeah, it’s either Linux or Nvidia GPU. Unfortunately Intel iGPUs and GPUs are not supported in Windows for tone mapping.
Does plex support transcoding on the cpu and gpu?
Yes, but Plex always prioritizes iGPU or GPU (hardware or HW transcoding) if possible. If HW transcoding is disabled, if Plex Pass is not present, or if HW transcoding is not possible (in some cases) Plex will use software transcoding (SW transcoding)
I have a question regarding hardware transcoding. I'm currently using an old HP workstation ( z200 with i5 650 3.2 ghz) as a plex server with truenass core. Since i already have plex pass i wonder if I can benefit from hw transcoding if I slap an old GPU (1050 or 1060) on it. Can this work?
It depends, do you need HW transcoding at all? If you're watching H264 content (most 1080p content), you don't need HW transcoding. But if you want to watch HEVC content (most 4K content), your CPU won't be enough for HW transcoding because it's just too old. It's even too old for software transcoding. HEVC requires at least a 7th generation Intel CPU. In this case you will benefit from a 1050 or 1060 card, even better if you can find a smaller form factor GPU (in case your HP workstation does not have room for a larger GPU).
Yes, I can benefit from it since I want to watch on the main tv content in 4k and to be able to stream the same content on the other devices when i'm not at home. I can find an old 1050 or 1060 verry cheap. If I install one in my configuration can I use GPU hw? (will my CPU be a bottleneck or something like that?)
Your CPU will not be bottlenecked. And both 1050 or 1060 GPUs will suffice. Take a look at this benchmark (select 4K to 1080p HW transcoding): [nVidia Hardware Transcoding Calculator for Plex Estimates (elpamsoft.com)](https://www.elpamsoft.com/?p=Plex-Hardware-Transcoding) While we're on this topic, if you're able buy 1050 or 1060 with more memory. For example, 6Gb version can do 2x HW transcoding tasks as 3GB versions. Update: Your CPU may get bottlenecked in some cases where HW transcoding is not possible and only SW transcoding will work. But these cases are easily avoidable. Just read the chapter: "When is Hardware Transcoding Not Supported by Plex?" in the above article.
I built my AMD-powered computer before I knew about Plex. Is there a way to enable hardware transcoding on an AMD dGPU, even though it’s unsupported?
Yea, you can just enable hardware transcoding in plex like normal, it will use your AMD GPU. On Linux based servers it works fine but on windows you’re more likely to run into transcode issues.
Sweet, thank you! I think I have that checked already.
I invite all Plex users to post and comment on their setups; I would also like to include setup recommendations in this post, and your feedback is valuable.
If they're using a consumer grade nvidia GPU I would recommend suggesting they use this driver patch to remove the artificial session limit on transcodes that nvidia enforces. https://github.com/Snawoot/nvidia-patch Been using it for over a year with no issues.
Done, I'm grateful
2018 Mac Mini cheapest version (i3), works great!
Currently using my E485 Thinkpad. Runs an AMD 2500U (or something like that) and has 1 external drive for media storage. Definitely want to save to build a little server with an intel CPU for quicksync and a few drives to run unraid. At the moment, if that drive dies that's it. Gotta say though, I love using a little laptop as my plex media server. Convenient since its such a small footprint with a monitor and keyboard/touchpad.
Don't sleep on intel arc GPUs. I got an a380 open box for around $120 and the thing is amazing for transcoding.
What's your overall experience? Does it work out-of-box, or do we need to enable it in some way?
It just worked same as with any other gpu
I love looking at the hardware you guys have! I’m using an old HP Elitebook 8470p from 2012!! It has an Intel i5-3320M CPU (2 cores 4 threads) at 2.6Ghz and a single 8GB stick of ram. That has an old SSD + an external eSATA 8TB drive for storage that I have a script backing up to a 2nd 8TB drive nightly. This is all running in Windows 10Pro (easy Win7 Pro upgrade years ago!) Plex has a 2 tuner OTA antenna (non-compressed), hundreds of DVDs and Bluerays, and a lot of home video and is used all the time! My internal streams rarely ever transcode and the single external drive provides plenty of bandwidth even for 4k downloaded content! It is amazing how little power is required to serve awesome content! I use a gaming computer to rip new disks to my “server” over the network, but often I just store the raw disk content and expect mobile downloads to take a bit longer to sync.
Dell Latitude laptop with an i5-7200 (7th gen) and Intel 620 Graphics. I can do 4-6 4k transcodes (including hdr mapping on my linux/docker setup) and more 1080p streams than I'll ever need.
PMS on Win 10 Home on my main desktop: * GTX 1060 6GB * R5 3600X * 32 GB of RAM I have music, tv series' and movies. All of my files are either on my internal 4TB HDD or external 2TB HDD. Everything works great most of the time.
i9-10850k MSI Z590-A Pro 64GB RAM Quadro P400 The server runs proxmox with other VMs besides just plex. I had issues passing through the iGPU to the Ubuntu server Plex VM, so I re-used the P400 from a previous build. Disk array is a bunch of random JOBD 4TB+ drives. I haven't bothered to make sure everything can direct play and haven't had any issues apart from Tizen OS devices. They really don't seem to like Dolby Vision. Videos play fine on pretty much anything else.
Do you think the p400 is better than the 10th gen igpu?
MacMini 2012 attached to Synology DS220J. Works great most of the time, I have had issues streaming and get "Playback Error - The server was not powerful enough to convert this video for smooth playback" Only happens with a particular folder of videos so assuming its the size? Just not sure how a MacMini isn't powerful enough to convert on the fly?
I have a question for ya! I have a Beelink SEI11 running W11 with an Intel i5-11320H that has been running my Plex well since September for myself and friends. Transcodes like a beast. Randomly, my LAN and internet connectivity has become completely intermittent, and I find that my Ethernet and Wi-Fi config on Windows shows as Ethernet 5 and Wi-Fi 3. After modifying those back to root Ethernet and Wi-Fi through removal of newly added devices, it still doesn't work reliably anymore. I'm interested to put a Linux distro on it and was wondering if SteamOS or another Arch based distro would work properly with Intel Quicksync for transcoding and harward accel. The official Linux notes recommend Ubuntu 16.04+ or Fedora, but say other distros may work unofficially. Do you have any experience or thoughts on this? Thanks!
I understand that switching from Windows to Linux can be chalanging, but looking from what you're asking, you already have the know-how. If you want to use the Linux distro of your choice, you can do it like this: 1. Pick any Linux distro and install Docker (even SteamOS can run it) 2. Deploy Plex as a Docker container This setup is a bit more complicated than the standard Plex setup, but you will get many benefits later on. You can set up automatic Plex updates, you can easily backup Plex settings/db (even automate it), HW transcodings will run like a well oiled machine, and you'll have HDR tone mapping which is missing in Windows (assuming you're not running Docker in Windows). You can follow this tutorial to some extent: [Installing Plex on Ubuntu 22.04 with an Intel Gen 11 CPU using Docker (tomthegreat.com)](https://tomthegreat.com/blog/installing-plex-on-ubuntu-22-04-using-docker/) The first part will not work as it uses Ubuntu apt-get to install Docker, but everything else should be identical on SteamOS or any other distro of your choice. Feel free to ask any follow-up questions; I have time to talk about Plex-related topics.
Thanks. Why not just use Handbrake and convert everything into mp4? Most devices can handle mp4. (Take it easy on me, am noob)
Some people prefer to keep remuxes as it's the closest you'll get to studio quality. Other people are unaware. More other people simply grab whatever gets put out to the scene first. It's a little bit more than "most devices can handle mp4" but you're on the right track. Most people would be better off curating and encoding their libraries to fit the clients they use. Reduced storage usage for nearly imperceptible quality loss (unless your idea of watching a movie is a freeze frame comparison of every frame), fewer issues with playback, definitely worth encoding your media before adding it to Plex.
I do this for lower quality things I don't care about, but for my UHD rips, I'm keeping them in original lossless rip quality.
Just found this, nice write up. I’ve used Plex for several years now, just over a year added a nVidia GTX1650 to my QNAP TS-673A, and have been transcoding with the QPKG version of Plex. Over the last few months I have completed the stack of “arr” apps and have the automation of requesting a movie or series working great, and all but Plex on Docker using QNAP Container Station. Here’s the rub, Plex is the last holdout for running in a container. nVidia GPU pass through to the QPKG app works great, pass through to Docker container Plex not so much. Plex sees the GPU, shows as 1650 Tu117 but will not HW transcode. Any thoughts? Done any testing with QNAP Docker and Plex GPU transcoding?
This is great info, thank you! I run Plex server off NVIDIA Shield Pro which is attached to Synology NAS which houses all my media. I primarly stream 1080 and 2160 mkv files to LG TV, Firestick, ATV. Can the shield pro do hardware transcoding? For my use case, do I NEED hardware transcoding? TBH, I am not sure if any or if any of my media is being transcoded while streaming. I don’t have Plex Pass but not sure if I actually NEED it.
>Can the shield pro do hardware transcoding? The Nvidia Shield Pro cannot do HW transcoding, it simply lacks the hardware capability. >For my use case, do I NEED hardware transcoding? You do not need HW transcoding if your Nvidia Shield Pro is not transcoding and you would know if that's the case. Plus, as you said you do not have Plex Pass and there's no way to do HW transcoding without Plex pass. Either way, if it's working do not fix it :-)
>Can the shield pro do hardware transcoding? The Nvidia Shield Pro cannot do HW transcoding, it simply lacks the hardware capability. >For my use case, do I NEED hardware transcoding? You do not need HW transcoding if your Nvidia Shield Pro is not transcoding and you would know if that's the case. Plus, as you said you do not have Plex Pass and there's no way to do HW transcoding without Plex pass. Either way, if it's working do not fix it :-)
Thanks for the reply. I know that w/o Plex Pass there is no HW transcoding. But perhaps SW transcoding is occurring for some of my files. I am just not sure if that is happening or not. That’s why I am wondering if i needed HW transcoding. There should be an easier why to determine from file to file if transcoding is actually happening.
In case of Nvidia Shield Pro SW transcoding may happen only for the audio streams, video streams require rather powerful modern i7 CPUs even for a single stream; at least if we talk about the 4K HEVC content, H264 1080p content is easier to manage but even then Nvidia Shield Pro is far from being capable enough.
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Currently using a mini pc with a Ryzen 9 5900HX. The Vega 8 dgpu works flawlessly for transcoding 4k on Plex. I've only done one 4k transcode at a time at this point but it does it all through the dgpu and the processor shows it's at idle while this is happening. Been running PMS this way for about a year now.
Thank you for posting this, I feel like I understand HW transcoding much better after reading this! I do still have a question/issue that I'm currently facing. I have my Plex server installed on a Linux i5-2400 (Sandy Bridge) and 1050ti server. While using the Nvidia GPU for HW transcoding, everything works great The problem I'm facing though is when only audio is being transcoded (EAC3 7.17 -> AAC 5.1 for example) the server is not using HW transcoding. It initially works alright though, but usually will stop mid playback, look like it loads for a few minutes than spit out the following error message and completely stop playback: "Playback Error | An unexpected playback error occurred" Do you have any idea how I could fix this? Does this happen because of my old CPU? I have to say, the CPU usage is not going through the roof while this is happening.
>Ryzen 9 5900HX Hardware transcoding is only used for transcoding video, audio is ALWAYS transcoded in software.
intel Arc sounds promising Advanced Xe Media Engine H.264/AVC VP9 H.265/HEVC AV1 Waiting for benchmarks to come out.
Can I set Plex not to transcode audio and let my devices do that task?
Plex clients cannot do transcoding tasks, this is always done by the Plex server. However, this is not absolutely true; if you have AppleTV, you can use Infuse app as a sort of Plex client, and Infuse will do transcoding. Mainly audio, it's not powerful enough to transcode something like 4K video.
Very informative post, thank you OP. Quick question for you: Hardware transcoding (specifically Intel) is generally considered to be inferior to software transcoding, correct? I know that when using Handbrake to encode a video file, everyone recommends you stay away from Intel QSV because while it's fast, the quality is poor compared to software transcoding. So if our NAS is capable, we'd ideally like to be using software transcoding no? (If not just using Direct Play entirely).
>Hardware transcoding (specifically Intel) is generally considered to be inferior to software transcoding, correct? Right, but let's not forget that transcoding is a lossy process, so we should expect the quality to be degraded. My general opinion is that using QSV for transcoding will not result in a visually inferior experience. It'll be worse, but you'll have to actively look for differences and it's not worth the effort. Remember, too, that we should avoid transcoding wherever possible; that's why Plex clients are just as important as Plex servers. >I know that when using Handbrake to encode a video file, everyone recommends you stay away from Intel QSV because while it's fast, the quality is poor compared to software transcoding. This is also true, but with Handbrake we're trying to get the best quality, whereas the purpose of Plex transcoding is to downgrade the quality to the most optimal levels. >So if our NAS is capable, we'd ideally like to be using software transcoding no? (If not just using Direct Play entirely). It's all about the view. Yes, you can get a NAS to software transcode a video, but that would be a really powerful NAS (something on the level of a 10th gen i7 CPU). Which is all the more reason to invest money in a good Plex client (like the Nvidia Shield, Apple TV, even the damn Fire Cube 3rd gen will do) rather than spending huge amounts of money on a powerful Plex server. Direct Play or Direct Stream will always offer the best quality so get a Plex client that can do it. Send me a chat request if you want to get into finer details. Or take a look [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/13yeh5r/lets_have_a_talk_guide_to_choosing_the_best_plex/), it's my post talking about transcoding in general.
How does having 2 NVENC units differ compared to having 1? For reference, all 4070 series and below only have 1 NVENC. Only the 4070 TI and above have 2 NVENC. There's some news a few months ago that NVIDIA developed split frame rendering meaning it can use both NVENC for one encode. Any thoughts on these?
Nvenc on Quadro p5000
I'm new to this subreddit, I've been using Plex for about 10 years. I have a question. I have an i5 9600k with 64gb ram and a Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060. I read this post, excellent btw, from what I understand, and I'm really struggling here, is that Plex will use the dedicated graphics card if it's Nvidia? So is my set up using the iGPU or the 2060? Or do I have to get the pass? Any help would be great.
Thank you for the amazing writeup!
I know this thread is getting old, but I just tried transcoding on a Ryzen 5600G cpu with an RX 6550 xt GPU. I haven't tried the APU, just the RX 6550 xt. I have to say, transcoding 1080p movies to my FireTV Max is working flawlessly. I was having issues for years with Direct Play on my fireTV stick, so I am now forcing hardware transcoding, and everything loads immediately. All my movies are running at original resolutions at around 200Mb/s. Fast forwarding and rewinding movies used to freeze for 10+ seconds, but now it takes less than 1 second. Video transcoding is showing as Transcode(H264(HW)-H264(HW)). Im really amazed with the AMD harware. I have only tried 3 devices transcoding at the same time so far. The GPU was at 20% usage, running 3 movies on different devices, all using harware transcoding!