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Forum Discussion
Plex Cloud Alternative - ReadyNAS NAS Storage
Barb Gonzalez of SoundAndVision.com posted a great article about using ReadyNAS NAS Storage as an alternative to the soon-to-be-canceled Plex Cloud. We've posted a few snippets below. Read...
Sandshark wrote:
With typical home internet upload speeds, calling a NAS a "viable alternative" for remote access is a stretch, especially with 4K content.
That does depend on your ISP of course. FiOS has always had symmetric upload/download speeds, and they've been promoting near-gigabit service in my area for a while now.
Though the article focus is Plex Cloud (not Plex in general). That was a service that allowed you to create a plex library on Google Drive (and perhaps some other cloud storage). I played with it a bit, but I don't think it was ever linked to real-time transcoding.
Blanker-2 wrote:
Yeah, I agree. That's why I never chose to transcode or even use dlna. I chose paying for more storage vs compressing. just straight rips to 3 dunes in my house.
Well, I'd disagree on this one. DLNA is just another delivery mechanism, it has nothing to do with transcoding or the amount of storage needed. Playing back directly over SMB or NFS has it's advantages, but I don't think DLNA is relevant to space or transcoding.
Reducing a 35-40 GB BluRay down to 15 GB 1080p or so seems like a good option to me.
BluRays use much higher video bitrates than is needed, partly to support full random access. To do this they include a lot more I frames than are really needed for straight playback and chapter navigation. You can easily reduce the storage needed for the video in a typical BluRay by at least 30% (typically ~6 gigabytes) with no loss of perceptual video quality, even on high-end equipment. I'm fine with 1080p AVC at 8-10 mbps myself, which typically saves 10 gigabytes of space.
Another aspect is that most BluRays contain a lot of unneeded audio (lots of languages, and often multiple lossless formats (TrueHD, DTS-MA). If you filter out languages you don't speak, and eliminate some of the alternative audio formats you can shrink many BluRays by ~15 gigabytes or so, with no loss of quality at all.
StephenB wrote:
Though the article focus is Plex Cloud (not Plex in general). That was a service that allowed you to create a plex library on Google Drive (and perhaps some other cloud storage). I played with it a bit, but I don't think it was ever linked to real-time transcoding.
Yes, but one thing that Plex Cloud offered was that it was the upload speed of the storage host (Google) that delivered the content remotely. So, transcoding was generally unnecessary, at least if you do some of the things you mention to reduce file size and bit rate (which I have always done, though a bit higher rate than you to account for action movies). But even taking those steps, my paltry upload speed is insufficient to deliver content taken even from standard blu-ray without some jerkiness, and forget about 4K. So a NAS is not a viable alternative for many who used the cloud option for remote delivery.
FIOS is available to me, but other factors have kept me from changing. To increase my upload speed on Spectrum, I would need a commercial account.
There are no current readynas devices that have the cpu power to transcode 4k in real time.
And no readynas devices with a GPU to offload transcoding to, which would need to be a 600 series intel igpu or 1000 series nvidia gpu, or newer versions.
Further, plex currently doesn't support converting from HDR to SDR, nor does it support nvidia hardware encoding while on linux.
So the only real option currently for any 4k transcoding on linux is an intel cpu with a 630 or similar igpu, and washed out colors if any HDR is transcoded to SDR.
Either way, upload speeds for most people are no where near the 100+ meg for a single 4k outbound plex stream to remote. Nor will 4k be remote streamed over mobile any time soon.
The only real current solution is to keep a separate 4k library for use with only local 4k clients that can direct play anyway.
If you are collecting 4k media, and you are worried about the extra hassles or space used by keeping separate 4k and 1080p copies, then you have bigger problems. And in that case you probably shouldn't even be storing 4k media in the first place.
But thats just my opinion.
Sandshark wrote:
StephenB wrote:
Though the article focus is Plex Cloud (not Plex in general). That was a service that allowed you to create a plex library on Google Drive (and perhaps some other cloud storage). I played with it a bit, but I don't think it was ever linked to real-time transcoding.
Yes, but one thing that Plex Cloud offered was that it was the upload speed of the storage host (Google) that delivered the content remotely. So, transcoding was generally unnecessary, at least if you do some of the things you mention to reduce file size and bit rate (which I have always done, though a bit higher rate than you to account for action movies). But even taking those steps, my paltry upload speed is insufficient to deliver content taken even from standard blu-ray without some jerkiness, and forget about 4K. So a NAS is not a viable alternative for many who used the cloud option for remote delivery.
Plex Cloud was a good idea, and I agree that it solved the upload bottleneck issue. Though when I'm away from home I often see download bottlenecks (hotel wifi speeds or bandwidth throttling). It didn't help with that.
Real-time transcoding is also a good idea, and it would be great if there was ReadyNAS support for GPU acceleration. Support for Thunderbolt + (customer supplied) external GPU is one option - which would allow upgrades, and also keep the cost down for folks who don't need the feature.
One observation - you mention setting up ZeroTier to enable download. That of course works, but I think it's worth mentioning that the Plex app has a similar feature (mobile sync). Unfortunately that isn't available for PCs, only for tablets and smartphones.
Sandshark wrote:
though a bit higher rate than you to account for action moviesI agree that the type of content matters (as well as the viewing conditions). The rate should be high enough that you don't notice any video quality issues when you watch it.
I use VBR encoding, which I find handles action movies ok. Also, I'm fine with 720p for a lot of content. FWIW, the rates I'm using are the same (or higher) than Amazon and Netflix streaming.
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