Media Server thread

I have Plex set up on a shit computer and it cant stream 1080p video I was wondering if there is any other software to do it which would be less intensive on the system. I think it has 2gb of ram and an old athlon processor. Also media server thread post your setups

Have a bump.
I have the same problem with a slightly better pc

I use Kodi, I can run it on one of those minimal RaspPis without any problems. Any processor you could get your hands on + 2gb of ram should be plenty for a basic setup. Its possible that your graphics unit is shit. I assume that you're not using an external GPU, which mobo do you have? Also, which OS are you using?

I'd recommend ditching that proprietary garbage and running kodi on a minimal debianbox.

This isn't for local playing I use this device to access my shows outside my house or from another device if I'm indoors and I have no idea its some shit htpc I got for £25

Emby

The fuck you streaming? If you're trying to realtime "transcode" your shitty mkv files then you're gonna have a bad time if your plex server is a slow computer.

Try putting MP4's in your plex library and stream the "origina" stream on another computer or via the web, you'll see it streams fine even on shitty computers because it doesn't need to transcode.

What I do with MKVs is I demux and remux them back into .mp4s. If the audio track is DTS or some shit, I convert to AC3 5.1 or AAC 5.1 and then mux the m4v and aac or .ac3 into mp4.

If you don't wanna deal with having a clean .mp4 library, just get a server with a fast processor so it can transcode you cheap fuck.

Have plex preprocess your media ahead of time. Sorry I don't know the correct plex terminology but it has the ability to convert your media and store reduced quality copies so that when you go to watch it plex doesn't have to transcode in real time.

use the optimise feature

I think they all use the same transcoding libraries underneath, so the answer is probably no.

its running windows would I get better performance if I put mint or Ubuntu on it

This.
I have a plex setup as well and transcoding takes a shitton of resources, doesn't matter what platform.
Just use original quality for direct play.

Is it because your hardware is shit or because your net is shit?
I run my plex server on my raspberry pi, and set the quality to maximum, so it don't convert. Werks good

Why didn't you check the minimum requirements for plex?

Why can't Plex do this on the fly? Why do we need to change the container?

Your problem is definitely the transcoding. If you have the bandwith, either stream the conent as original (no transcoding) or download the conent to your Plex Media Player on your mobile devices. Alternatively, buy a dedicated media center box with enough power.

>post your setup
mac mini (i7 2.7, 16gb ram, 1 tb ssd)
Zyxel NAS 221 4TB
Plex Media Server on mini
Download clients on mini
AppleTV 4th gen for streaming to TV

I used to have the mini directly hooked up to the TV with OpenPHT as client, but the UIs for BotNetflix and other streaming services suck on macOS. AppleTV is a tad nicer.

>inbeforekysmacfagot

I just use a Raspberry Pi that runs the Plex server that also runs my torrent and ftp server. Works fine. In the living room we have an Amazon Fire TV box and all works well. As long as I don't use media files greater than around 1.4GB, it works beautifully.

just convert all video to a standard x264 profile, and then all you need is a potato-level fileserver

set up my old phenom 2 x6 1090T to run my home and media server.
has 8gb 1333mhz ram and is attached to 2 tb 7200 rpm drives.
also has a 750ti built in for gpu encoding.
it runs on headless on arch. i use nexcloud, emby, sickrage and couchpotato along with deluge on it.
its pretty much automated in every way. sickrage and couchpotato download shows and movies respectively through deluge. nexcloud is used for filesharing accross the network and access to files like the actually downloaded movies and family photos/documents/general files etc.
emby is used as media server and dlna and upnp playback server. it also uses a build of ffmpeg that has cuda hardware encoding on it that is good enough to encode 3 simultanious things at an about 50mb/s bitrate each without dropping frames or tasking the cpu. streams stuff directly to our tv/phones/consoles and pcs etc. you gotta install the proprietary nvidia driver though for this to work. however if you disable x afterwards you can still run headless itll just use the nvidia library for cuda encoding.
i also sometimes host game servers on that machine just for friends though.
ever since i discovered sickrage and couchpotato ive been so fucking happy.

1tb ssd for a media server wew is that not overdoing it a bit kek

not on that fucking toaster, you idiot, no. you need at least a Q6600 overclocked to stream 1080p. though really you can literally pick up a used i5 2400 sff box for like $60 nowadays so you shouldn't even need to look at any worse than that. and if you can't afford $60 on your htpc setup you probably have other more important things to worry about than streaming your anime to your living room tv.

Plex does it on the fly but you just need a decent CPU.

Something like a 4770k will do. It's literally recompressing on the fly.

I like to keep my movies/tv shows in native MP4 so I can just stream without recompressing.

That's moronic. ffmpeg can recontainer most mkvs to mp4 in seconds. You don't usually need to actually crunch frames, just re-wrap them for browser playback.
Why is Plex so shit?

Im trying to get into making a media server at my own home, I have a 4GB DDR4-2400 stick of ram an A320M motherboard, and some 1 TB hard drives. My main question is if I need a CPU what kind should I go for? I am trying to keep it cheap but I dont know how much power I would need it to keep up with?

You shouldn't need mp4 files for that. I use Emby and it doesn't transcode mkvs as long as the video codec is h264 for in-browser playback. If you're streaming to some other client it probably depends on what the client requests/what it's able to play.

Transcoding generally happens because of the wrong video codec for the playback device, though audio-only transcoding is possible for the same reason (but transcoding audio is very fast). It's also possible to require transcoding when playing shit in a browser with certain subtitle types which get burned into the video. I can't imagine Plex being so shit that it actually full-on transcodes just because the container is mkv or something instead of mp4.