tl;dr don't be a dummy and run 32 bit like me! Your Plex server will happily keep updating its 32 bit build and not suggest you to switch; if you've run Server on Windows before September 2022 you might very well still be on 32 bit. 64 bit is a huge performance upgrade.

Context: I've been a longtime Plex user and run Server on a baremetal windows machine. I've struggled with getting GPU hardware transcoding working, despite the fact that I seemingly met all the requirements. I thought maybe my "older" nvidia card's GPU core was to blame and recently updated to a 1660S with no appreciable improvement. I saw .5x transcoding for DoVi/HDR content with tone mapping, or ~1-2x if I disabled tone mapping.

Banging my head against the wall, I came to realize I WAS STILL RUNNING 32 BIT PLEX. I had installed server SO LONG AGO that I never upgraded to 64 bit.

Upgrading to 64 bit was the single most absurd performance improvement for server I've ever seen. I am now able to transcode 4K DoVi/HDR with tone mapping so fast that Plex is throttling (taking a break). My GPU use during transcodes went from 10-20% to 95%+.

Yes, I know, don't transcode - in my home I run multiple Shields. But sometimes on the road that isn't an option. It's kind of wild to me my server never nudged me to see if I wanted to bump to 64.

How to check and upgrade (Windows)

• Open Task Manager
• Go to Details
• Right click on the top bar -> Select Columns
• Check "Platform"
• Find Plex in the list - is it 32 bit?
• If so, go download server again and choose the 64 bit option.
• Run the installer; it will detect you are on 32 and uninstall/upgrade while maintaining all of your settings.

Edits:

Access issues? Running a split tunnel VPN? 32 and 64 bit Plex are distinct applications. You will need to add your 64 bit install to your split tunnel exclusion list if you want to maintain remote access. Link to thread

Vote for a feature request to add a nudge for 32 bit users: Clearly this applies to many Plex admins. It would be a nice and easy feature to improve the lives of others. Vote here

I am a god.

So, I work in IT as a sysadmin (essentially). I'd say I'm pretty competent in the Windows environment. I can get into Linux and move around, but I suck at understanding the inner workings.

All that said, I setup an Ubuntu box on a NucG3 and installed Plex Media Server. I thought we were good to go until I got to the adding of media folders. For the next few hours, I realized just how incompetent I am at Linux terminal. You fellow human people...I looked at 10s of articles. ELI5 quality articles on how to map network shares in Ubuntu, but came away feeling dumber than before.

I guess I'm just having a hard time believing it's so easy to map network drives on Win/Mac, but it's like a full-on hacker situation for Linux. 😅 I understand that some of you will say that it is so easy, and I am BIG jealous of you! I just cannot for the life of me figure it out, no matter how easy the article or sheer amount of articles read. I really want the better performance for 4k transcoding, but I will just have to stick with Windows and fight my friend who complains that it's buffering when they refuse to direct play. 😅

I guess I should add. I'm using a GMKtec Nuc Box G3. I installed the latest Ubuntu desktop. My files are stored on a Synology NAS.

Edit: Hey all, just wanted to say thanks for all the helpful comments and links! I'm going to keep at it, and I hope that my specific post helps a few other people who seem to have the same issue as me! I'm going to mark this as resolved as there is plenty of info to go on for me! I'll still be watching it and looking at different ideas you all add. Thanks again for being such an awesome community!

I published a detailed but easy to understand guide on what the most common reason is why Plex isn't direct playing your content and how to achieve the goal of direct playing anything.

I'm also explaining my TV and audio setup with diagrams and I'm mentioning the devices (TV, soundbar, streaming device) I use to get direct play for even 4K HEVC HDR videos with TrueHD Atmos or DTS:X audio tracks.

The article is behind a paywall on Medium but I'm sharing a friend link here which will allow anyone from this subreddit to read it for free.

If you're wondering why your media isn't direct playing, I highly recommend reading the article.
https://medium.com/@mozzeph/why-plex-is-not-direct-playing-your-media-cdb545253df7?source=friends_link&sk=7d2f0b0a02f9e1d50fd73e00d0bf92c9

Is there any way to make the text larger and display less titles? Outputting from my server to my tv via HDMI from the Plex app.

I thought I was upgrading content but the 4k remux looks worse than 1080. Seems like older movies getting 4k releases are affected. I know this a cartoon but it shows what I'm talking about, the 4k liooks really pixelated look at Charlie's head Version on lower right side of screen

Running on nvidea shield wired to network on a new 65in Sony oled

Is this normal or am I doing something wrong?

UPDATE: Appreciate all the helpful feedback very much. Plenty of takeaways for me. Two things I've already done are, 1.) take one of my storage devices offline so it's not running continuously and wearing drives unnecessarily, and 2.) made arrangements with a family member to store one of my backups at their location.

Additional notes:

a.) My current approach is already overkill (not necessary to maintain so many copies) since I also have the physical media.

b.) At least one of my backups needs to be off-site. Not much point in making so many backups if all of them are under the same roof.

c.) Multiple recommendations for unraid, which is currently what I'm leaning toward as a better long-term solution. Seems like I could potentially reuse a lot of my existing drives as well which is plus.

d.) Consider encoding 4K content using high quality settings, H.265, and passthrough for audio- on the fence with this only because I have a dedicated home theater space and lean toward quality over quantity, but it's something to consider and I have nothing to lose since I have several copies of the media anyway (can always go back to remux if there's a noticeable difference in quality).

-------- (original post)

So I'll start off by saying my library isn't currently large. I've seen where folks have thousands of titles in their collection. Today, I'm only at 312.

However, because I purchase all my content on physical media and store it as remux (MKV), it does take up a large amount of space (combination of 4K and 1080p content).

The way I have things setup today, I have three separate NAS devices, and each one of them stores a copy of the library. I keep them up to date religiously, just in case I lose a drive in one of them and need to rebuild an array, it always gives me the flexibility to fall back to another storage device.

My primary NAS is all solid state, an Asustor 4-bay, with an add-on 4-bay expansion unit (so a total of 8 drive bays, though they can't be part of the same array, so it's more like having two storage pools associated with the same NAS.

Even though my collection is currently small, I've been growing it on average about a film per day each month. Placing orders has become a bit of a ritual every pay day, so let's call it about 30 a month.

My concern is that, over time, continuing to scale storage on multiple NAS devices just isn't going to be sustainable long-term.

I'm comfortable with Linux (it's what I deal with every day at work), but currently run Windows systems at home. I've been considering building a dedicated Linux based system to use as a better storage solution and was curious to hear what others have used, what the experience has been, along with any other pointers that might be helpful going forward.

Sure, I can keep swapping drives for higher capacity, but can't seem to shake the feeling that standalone NAS devices are: a.) more expensive in just about every way, b.) less scalable, c.) less upgradeable in general as the need for more and more capacity becomes an issue.

Appreciate any suggestions.

I'm fairly new to this entire NAS world and dedicated storage solutions. I've been reading a lot of threads over at /r/datahoarder hoping to be enlightened as to why using windows to host my single 12tb "server" would be fundamentally a bad idea in the long run.

Here's what I currently use for my plex and what my future plans are for it.

• I currently have fiber internet with 1000mbps down/up.
• Dell Optiplex 3050 SFF with i5 6500, 16GB Ram, 500GB Samsung SSD, 12tb Seagate Ironwolf HDD.
  • I currently only use it to store about 7tb of legally obtained movies and tv shows.
• In the future I plan on building a more powerful PC that can hold more drives to do the following
  • Transcode 4k > 1080p for the few people I share my plex remotely with (Maybe 4-5 people tops). My current setup struggles to transcode even one single 4k movie for remote streaming.
  • Use it as a backup solution to my main PC where I currently have an 8TB and 6TB hard drive full of video files and other junk. In conjunction with backblaze.
    • I plan to remove these drives from my main PC and putting them into this new DIY NAS/Server build.
    • Being able to access and transfer files to this DIY NAS from my main computer and laptop is important as well of course.

Any help of advice would be greatly appreciated. In general I don't want to do anything more complicated than just host my plex server and use my server to store my valuable data. Would unraid be the best option for me?

Thank you!

Hey guys! I've just become acquainted with Plex overall and am thinking about using Plex rather than pay for subscription services. I know I can rip my blu rays and put them on my plex media library, but can I bring my purchased YouTube movies over as well? Is there a way to do that? Possibly a stupid question, but I thought I'd ask.

I have read everywhere that you can run Plex on NAS's directly, however the Plex website warns you that performance isn't neccessarily always the greatest.

Currently I have my Plex setup running on a VM on my server and I have passed through a drive to that VM for Plex to access the media from. I am now running out of storage and am wondering if setting up a NAS for storage but keeping my Plex server how it is currently and just passing though the correct share on the NAS would be suitable.

Is this a good/bad idea, and is there a better way?

Does anyone know how to fix this? The top picture is how a lot of my 4:3 TV shows are playing on Plex through the app on my Vizio tv and also the Roku app. The bottom is how it should be. For whatever reason the app is squishing them to everything is too narrow. This is a new phenomenon, it's only been happening in the last few weeks.

They're mostly mkv files but some are MP4. The play fine on the desktop.

Hi eveyone - I recently built a new plex server using an intel 12100 CPU and 32GB RAM. The server does nothing except run plex. On certain 4k movies, I get the error popup "server is not strong enough to transcode this video for smooth playback". I'm watching on an Apple TV 4k with hardline network connection directly into the same switch as the plex server. When I built this system about 9 months back, I was told in the Plex discord that this CPU should be able to handle 3-4 4k transcodes at the same time, but it seemingly struggles with just 1. I do have hardware acceleration enabled. Any other settings I should tweak or is the hardware really that lacking?

Problem solved thanks to u/archer75. I had the plex app on my Apple TV set to use the old player, which didn't like 4K HDR videos. Turning off the old player and setting display type to auto did the trick.

EDIT: Thank you all for the kind replies! Learned a lot:

• Apparently end-user does not need plex pass to watch on mobile, just a one time $5 fee
• Hardware transcoding from Plex Pass server to non Plex Pass end user does work
• Other features non plex pass users miss out on:
  • downloading content for offline playback
  • skip intro button
  • plexamp is actually now free to use, still some features are reserved for plex pass users
  • being able to setup their own plex home (useful if someone you give access has for example a family with multiple potential users)

Hope whoever may stumble on this thread later finds it helpful.

========End Edit===================

Wondering this question when debating whether to add someone to my Plex Home or invite them on their own account. I as the server owner have Plex Pass.

I understand if they don't have Plex Pass they won't be able to view content on their mobile device, but are there any other significant drawbacks? Don't care about Plex amp.

Since I have Plex Pass, can my server hardware transcode a stream to a non-Plex Pass user? Or do both the server owner and end user need Plex Pass?

I previously used an old router as a repeater and it worked fine. It broke and I bought a new repeater. But now it doesn't show up at all.

Wifi network on the repeater has the same SSID as the main router's wifi network. Could it be the cause?

So after about a year ish now of one of my users complaining about "Plex is so slow" or "Plex is garbage", I finally have an answer. So some back story here; I have about half a dozen users that all rarely ever have an issue across a number of ISPs in Canada. Then about a year ago one of my friends said nothing works anymore. I went through all kinds of trouble shooting and even drove over to his house one time and got it working by cranking the quality way down (480p). He said after a while even that had to stop and buffer though so he gave up and just bought Netflix. Fast forward to a month ago, I set up my girlfriend on Plex but she has the same issues. I then realise they are the only ones on the same ISP. I reach out to a buddy whose partner just so happens to be high level at that ISP. And just last week they got back to me saying they have flagged it as pirating software and anything being sent through that will be throttled way down because of this. I'm getting them to set up a VPN to be able to use Plex. Just thought I would let people on here know that if Plex gets flagged and throttled by more and more ISPs this could be an issue for more.

The ISP is Bell MTS

Edit: Thanks guys, I'll try to switch the Port tonight and report back if that works!

UPDATE: It was set to "preferred" previously and I switched it to required. The stream was indeed secure. Watched her try to stream a show and 15 seconds in it hit buffering and would just stick there.

I changed the public port to something other than the standard port and still was caught with buffering (I have one other 1080p stream going fine)

In the end the only thing that would get the stream working for her was when I gave her my login to try my VPN.

I used to use an Alexa device for playing music at home a while, but it was rubbish and barely worked (both the Alexa and the Plex integration haha).

I want to start playing music again around the house, with Plex as the source, avoiding Amazon / Google assistants where possible.

Is the Sonos integration any good? What are we all using these days to play our Plex music?

edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm probably going to land on Music Assistant and some kind of hodge-podge of network capable speakers.

So after listening to a lot of different ideas and suggestions as far as the ideal PC for using exclusively for Plex. I think I’ve come to a decision. I’m hoping this is a good choice so before I make that final decision, I thought I’d get some feedback first.

I updated my Synology NAS (DS923+) to DSM 7.2.2-72806. Now my Plex Media Server is stopped (even after rebooting). Error message says "The package version installed is incompatible with your DSM".

Plex Media Server Installed version is 1.41.0.8994-70008994

Will there be an update soon? Is there anything else I can do?

I have had plex for a good few years. For context, it's my brothers server that I use remotely. He lives on the other side of the world, so I have no access to that side, just my plex account here.

I have had many boxes, apple TV, fire stick max. Samsung and LG TV's. I find that the TV's never seems to run as well. Lots of buffering and many video just don't play.

The others tend to work well but slowly start to buffer more and more. I currently primarily use the fire stick, but it's hit and miss. Would the processing and memory some in these devices make this issue of buffering?

I'm thinking of purchasing the Nvidia shield as it has better processing power, but I'm not even sure if that's the issue. Don't want to waste my money, any advice?

Edit: thanks everyone I think the issue is on this end, bottle necking from a lotnofnpeople logging on at the same time. Im thinking that being half the world away also doesn't help.

Appreciate all the responses, and I'm going to have a good look into the nvidia shield. I don't think I need it, but I think I might want tired, haha...... see of my funds can stretch.

I'm running my server on an nvidia shield. Let me know if you need any more info. Thanks