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Plex Discussion Thread - Page 9

post #241 of 490
11/27/12 at 9:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by pelenor View Post

Does plex stream 1080p video to the roku xd, which says it only streams 720p? Or does it convert to playable file on the fly?

yes, you just have to set transcode high enough, which I think is 10mbps. If you LAN or PMS server can't handle it, it'll pause, and possibly a lot. I've done it, but it did pause here and there. It was testing the limits of the PMS machine.
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post #242 of 490
11/27/12 at 12:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by lovekeiiy View Post

yes, you just have to set transcode high enough, which I think is 10mbps. If you LAN or PMS server can't handle it, it'll pause, and possibly a lot. I've done it, but it did pause here and there. It was testing the limits of the PMS machine.

If you have a compatible 1080p MKV file, then I assume no transcoding is needed, and therefore playback on the ROKU should be no problem.... correct?
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post #243 of 490
11/28/12 at 11:56am
It's not the resolution, but the file format. I have the original and second generation Roku boxes. Neither can do direct playback of MKV.
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post #244 of 490
12/1/12 at 2:04pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by lovekeiiy View Post

It's not the resolution, but the file format. I have the original and second generation Roku boxes. Neither can do direct playback of MKV.

But it will Direct Stream. You might have to use unsupported profiles in the tweaks.

Philip
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post #245 of 490
12/1/12 at 2:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by lovekeiiy View Post

It's not the resolution, but the file format. I have the original and second generation Roku boxes. Neither can do direct playback of MKV.

My Roku 2 XS plays MKV via USB. I did a quick test a while back after they upgraded the firmware to support MKV playback.. There are different flavors of MKV though, so they probably all don't work.
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post #246 of 490
12/2/12 at 12:17pm
Well, I haven't tried it since the Roku XS was released to the public. It's possible the firmware has been update for direct play. I just set it to auto, and it works fine. More the point, it doesn't matter if the Roku can play MKV files or not since the PMS will transcode, on the fly, any file that is not support by the Roku, to a Roku friendly format for play. And in the settings on the Roku, there is a quality setting. At 8mb is where 1080p begins. This is only in the PC client, but most people, or at least, set it for direct play since the PC is more robust in what file formats are playable.

Remember, the Roku 2 is the third generation Roku.
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post #247 of 490
12/3/12 at 9:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lovekeiiy View Post

Remember, the Roku 2 is the third generation Roku.

Ah, that is the confusion. I thought you were talking about the Roku 2. It is the only one that has MKV support.

FWIW, I don't like transcoding if I can avoid it. I have a media server with a low power cpu that can't handle transcoding 1080 on the fly, and I suspect there is at least some loss of quality. I suspect that even though my ROKU supports MKV through usb, it still requires the HLS streaming protocol, meaning PLEX has to do some type of processing just to transport the stream.
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post #248 of 490
12/4/12 at 5:48am
Thread Starter 
So it turns out my quad core Q8400 wasn't quite powerful enough to transcode blu-ray rips on the fly. Bummer! So I decided to put together a dedicated streaming box:

Gigabyte Intel B75 Dual UEFI mATX Motherboard GA-B75M-D3P
Intel Core i5-3570K Quad-Core
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800)
Corsair Carbide Series Black 300R Mid-Tower Computer Case
Thermaltake Power Supply 240-Pin 430 Power Supply W0070RUC

Then I actually installed OSX Mountain Lion on it using this guide. I could have done Windows, but I've found Plex channels tend to work better with Mac servers. Plus Plex was originally designed for Macs and they tend to be better supported on the forums and such. And hey, I already have a Windows based server.

Anyways, this thing is an absolute animal! I was able to simultaneously transcode 3 blu-ray rips on the fly (through the new Plex web browser, my Nexus 7, and my Galaxy Nexus)! CPU usage was about 80-85%.
Edited by lockdown571 - 12/4/12 at 12:38pm
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post #249 of 490
12/4/12 at 6:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571 View Post

So it turns out my quad core e8400 wasn't quite powerful enough to transcode blu-ray rips on the fly. Bummer! So I decided to put together a dedicated streaming box:
Gigabyte Intel B75 Dual UEFI mATX Motherboard GA-B75M-D3P
Intel Core i5-3570K Quad-Core
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800)
Corsair Carbide Series Black 300R Mid-Tower Computer Case
Thermaltake Power Supply 240-Pin 430 Power Supply W0070RUC
Then I actually installed OSX Mountain Lion on it using this guide. I could have done Windows, but I've found Plex channels tend to work better with Mac servers. Plus Plex was originally designed for Macs and they tend to be better supported on the forums and such. And hey, I already have a Windows based server.
Anyways, this thing is an absolute animal! I was able to simultaneously transcode 3 blu-ray rips on the fly (through the new Plex web browser, my Nexus 7, and my Galaxy Nexus)! CPU usage was about 80-85%.


This is in your network ?

How's performance over Internet. ?
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post #250 of 490
12/4/12 at 7:10am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

This is in your network ?
How's performance over Internet. ?

This was on my network. I don't think being outside the network really affects transcoding performance though. The only problem with being outside your network is you're limited by your home's upload speed, which for me is around 5-8 mb/s.
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post #251 of 490
12/4/12 at 12:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571 View Post

This was on my network. I don't think being outside the network really affects transcoding performance though. The only problem with being outside your network is you're limited by your home's upload speed, which for me is around 5-8 mb/s.

An e8400 is dual core, the quad core chips all started with Q rather than E

I still use an e8400 with fanless Nvidia 8400 GT as a linux, server, and/or freenas playground

Before I moved my windows installation off of it (3 month ago) I had been running Plex on it, and it was transcoding just fine. I don't transcode that often, but I did use it for blu ray rips of Wall E, John Carter, and Silent House as well as a few dvd rips like supernatural and friends.

Thanks for sharing your experience on using the 3570k
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post #252 of 490
12/4/12 at 12:38pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

An e8400 is dual core, the quad core chips all started with Q rather than E
I still use an e8400 with fanless Nvidia 8400 GT as a linux, server, and/or freenas playground
Before I moved my windows installation off of it (3 month ago) I had been running Plex on it, and it was transcoding just fine. I don't transcode that often, but I did use it for blu ray rips of Wall E, John Carter, and Silent House as well as a few dvd rips like supernatural and friends.
Thanks for sharing your experience on using the 3570k

My bad, it is a Q8400.
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post #253 of 490
12/4/12 at 4:00pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

An e8400 is dual core, the quad core chips all started with Q rather than E
I still use an e8400 with fanless Nvidia 8400 GT as a linux, server, and/or freenas playground
Before I moved my windows installation off of it (3 month ago) I had been running Plex on it, and it was transcoding just fine. I don't transcode that often, but I did use it for blu ray rips of Wall E, John Carter, and Silent House as well as a few dvd rips like supernatural and friends.
Thanks for sharing your experience on using the 3570k

My office PC I was using today at my office is an E8500 Core2 with a 4870 X2 card. It's overclocked 3.8ghz on stock intel cooler. ROG asus board. SLow as dirt DDR2 800 Crucial Ballistix memory. Vertex3 120GB.

It's good enough for office PC, but it sucks way to much power for the little performance it has. Freakin video card alone uses three times a Sandy CPU does.

It's my hand me down.. excel / word / PDF beast... haha.

It sends emails with the best of em'
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post #254 of 490
12/4/12 at 4:08pm
My core 2 uses DDR3-1333 (which was $100 for 4GB, and that was a great deal), don't know how much difference that makes. What chipset were you using with the Q8400? Either way, I doubt it could support multiple transcodes simultaneously
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post #255 of 490
12/5/12 at 5:53am
Thread Starter 
Windows 8 'Metro' app just released. Very cool! I'm beginning to wonder though whether they're ever going to update the original Plex Media Center applications mad.gif
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post #256 of 490
12/6/12 at 1:24pm
Thread Starter 
Even better news. Hippojay has released version 2 of his PleXBMC plugin!

I've found a couple of minor bugs. Recently added plugins says "recently added albums", and the watched status indicator is always on for series and season views (at least in Frodo). Other than that it seems to be working great! Being able to properly integrate XBMC with Plex Media Server has been on many people's wish lists.

Keep in mind that there's only one skin right now, Quartz, that properly integrates your Plex library with the main XBMC screen. The only other major limitation I can think of is that neither the XBMC or Plex iPhone/Android remotes are going to work with this.
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post #257 of 490
12/12/12 at 6:10pm
I have Plex installed on a WHS 2011 box and everything is working great except for some of the channels. For example, the CBS channel works fine, but NBC does not. A search over at the Plex forums indicate it may be a Silverlight/Flash issue. However, I was not able to determine if installing these plugins solves the problem. Can anyone offer insight into this?
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post #258 of 490
12/13/12 at 6:01am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shanndogg View Post

I have Plex installed on a WHS 2011 box and everything is working great except for some of the channels. For example, the CBS channel works fine, but NBC does not. A search over at the Plex forums indicate it may be a Silverlight/Flash issue. However, I was not able to determine if installing these plugins solves the problem. Can anyone offer insight into this?

From my experience many channels are problematic on Windows, especially WHS 2011. I think you actually need audio and video drivers installed, and being headless (no monitor) is a problem. Remote desktop actually disrupts the audio and video driver which breaks flash and silverlight plugins. Using TightVNC is supposed to prevent that, but I still encountered issues. I wish the Plex team were more forward about this limitation.
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post #259 of 490
12/13/12 at 11:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571 View Post

From my experience many channels are problematic on Windows, especially WHS 2011. I think you actually need audio and video drivers installed, and being headless (no monitor) is a problem. Remote desktop actually disrupts the audio and video driver which breaks flash and silverlight plugins. Using TightVNC is supposed to prevent that, but I still encountered issues. I wish the Plex team were more forward about this limitation.

Thanks for the reply. That's what I was afraid of- looks like any channel that uses Flash or Silverlight doesn't work with WHS. I am surprised at the lack of information on this as well from Plex.
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post #260 of 490
12/13/12 at 2:57pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shanndogg View Post

Thanks for the reply. That's what I was afraid of- looks like any channel that uses Flash or Silverlight doesn't work with WHS. I am surprised at the lack of information on this as well from Plex.

The Plex team tends to give Windows users the cold shoulder sometimes, which is part of what drove me to build a Hackinstosh Plex server. This shouldn't have been necessary though, and it's something they really need to improve.
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post #261 of 490
12/16/12 at 9:08am
Thread Starter 
I've got to say, issues with Windows and the aging Media Center app aside, the new Plex web app is absolutely amazing. With the holidays approaching, it's going to be especially useful when I'm away from home. It's extremely fast and responsive and very easy to use. It's great for music too. Music will continue to play as you navigate the interface.

Considering it's free (amazingly), easy to setup, and doesn't interfere with your existing metadata, I don't see any reason not to use it. Your entire media library will instantly be available to you anywhere in the world on any computer. It's also easy to share your library with friends and family. The only real limitations are your upload speed and the transcoding power of your CPU.

Btw, I've updated the original post to better reflect the current state of Plex and also added pictures smile.gif
Edited by lockdown571 - 12/16/12 at 9:46am
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post #262 of 490
12/17/12 at 5:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571 View Post

I've got to say, issues with Windows and the aging Media Center app aside, the new Plex web app is absolutely amazing. With the holidays approaching, it's going to be especially useful when I'm away from home. It's extremely fast and responsive and very easy to use. It's great for music too. Music will continue to play as you navigate the interface.
Considering it's free (amazingly), easy to setup, and doesn't interfere with your existing metadata, I don't see any reason not to use it. Your entire media library will instantly be available to you anywhere in the world on any computer. It's also easy to share your library with friends and family. The only real limitations are your upload speed and the transcoding power of your CPU.
Btw, I've updated the original post to better reflect the current state of Plex and also added pictures smile.gif

Have they fixed the issues with player always transcoding the files even if the bandwidth is available (like on your local network)? That was one my key gripe with the web app. If I wanted to watch a blu-ray MKV file from my server on my network, when I clicked the movie it would always transcode the file. I want to watch it in mative format when possible. I also had issues with the transcoding. It was not the best and stuttered often. When they get these two BIG things fixed it will be a great application.
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post #263 of 490
12/17/12 at 6:09am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by stepmback View Post

Have they fixed the issues with player always transcoding the files even if the bandwidth is available (like on your local network)? That was one my key gripe with the web app. If I wanted to watch a blu-ray MKV file from my server on my network, when I clicked the movie it would always transcode the file. I want to watch it in native format when possible. I also had issues with the transcoding. It was not the best and stuttered often. When they get these two BIG things fixed it will be a great application.

I assume the web app always transcodes, considering the highest quality you can choose is 20 mbps and blu-rays are higher than that. I don't know for sure though. It's possible lower quality files are passed unfettered.

Stuttering during transcoding typically means your CPU is underpowered. If you want to play without transcoding, is there any reason you can't use the old Plex Media Center application?
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post #264 of 490
12/17/12 at 6:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571 View Post

I assume the web app always transcodes, considering the highest quality you can choose is 20 mbps and blu-rays are higher than that. I don't know for sure though. It's possible lower quality files are passed unfettered.
Stuttering during transcoding typically means your CPU is underpowered. If you want to play without transcoding, is there any reason you can't use the old Plex Media Center application?

No reason I cant use the old one except there are a couple of bugs in the most recent version that annoy me sometimes. I do use the media center, but it would be nice to have a single solution instead of having to install something.

I have a WHS 2011 box with 8GB of RAM running an i3. When it is transcoding the CPU is at about 50% and memory is at about 40%. I have never seen is spike about 70%. I do not think it is CPU. When I watched transcoded files on the older (non web version) I never had any stutters.
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post #265 of 490
12/17/12 at 10:54am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by stepmback View Post

No reason I cant use the old one except there are a couple of bugs in the most recent version that annoy me sometimes. I do use the media center, but it would be nice to have a single solution instead of having to install something.
I have a WHS 2011 box with 8GB of RAM running an i3. When it is transcoding the CPU is at about 50% and memory is at about 40%. I have never seen is spike about 70%. I do not think it is CPU. When I watched transcoded files on the older (non web version) I never had any stutters.

Hmm, bummer. I think an i3 should be fine. Is everything on the network wired? If you pause the video for a few seconds and then resume does that help?
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post #266 of 490
12/17/12 at 9:12pm
So, overall, does Plex server require a mighty CPU/machine?
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post #267 of 490
12/18/12 at 5:26am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by galileo2000 View Post

So, overall, does Plex server require a mighty CPU/machine?

It depends on your media and what you consider "mighty". Any i3, i5, or i7 processor should probably be able to transcode a blu-ray video on the fly. Lower quality content will require far less CPU power.
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post #268 of 490
12/18/12 at 5:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lockdown571 View Post

Hmm, bummer. I think an i3 should be fine. Is everything on the network wired? If you pause the video for a few seconds and then resume does that help?

Everything is wired. I have not tried the pause and restart trick, because I mostly use the client when watching movies. Maybe I will try that, but it still doesnt get around the fact that there is no player in the web version that can play unconverted MKV files.
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post #269 of 490
12/18/12 at 5:45am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by stepmback View Post

Everything is wired. I have not tried the pause and restart trick, because I mostly use the client when watching movies. Maybe I will try that, but it still doesnt get around the fact that there is no player in the web version that can play unconverted MKV files.

I don't think the Plex developers can do much about that. Wouldn't that require that your web browser have support for vc-1, mpeg-2, h.264, DTS, ac3, and the mkv container?
Edited by lockdown571 - 12/18/12 at 9:24am
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post #270 of 490
12/18/12 at 9:31am
don't forget, the web service is fairly new. Plex has said it doens't support all formats, and will be adding to it in the future. They're shooting for the most popular formats, make it stable and fairly reliable. Then see what people like, and don't like, what problems arise, so it can be tweaked. I considered it to be more of a beta project at this point.

Personally, I still use the front end clients for playback. I like there is the web option for when a client isn't available, say at a friend's home.

No Plex doesn't require a mighty CPU. I believe it's still a dual core 2ghz or better. Obviously, a better CPU helps with a lot with performance for more CPU intense activities such as transcoding.
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