I just installed Plex 0.9.9.14 on my ReadyNAS RN314. Movie videos play very smoothly, but my home videos shot with digital cameras actually stop and start every one to two seconds. These videos are 1080p .mov and .mp4 files, played in my browser. I was able to find one 720p home video and it played fine, so the problem appears to be specific to 1080p home videos.
I posted the same dilemma in the Plex forum as well. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
How are you connecting the playback devices to the Nas? Are any of you movies 1080p, if so do they play smoothly? What format are they in? The 314 is not powerful enough to transcode HD material so if it's trying to do this then that would explain your problem. If your connection is not Ethernet or gigabit ethernet then you will also have a problem. Wifi and powerline are just not fast enough.
How are you connecting the playback devices to the Nas? Are any of you movies 1080p, if so do they play smoothly? What format are they in? The 314 is not powerful enough to transcode HD material so if it's trying to do this then that would explain your problem. If your connection is not Ethernet or gigabit ethernet then you will also have a problem. Wifi and powerline are just not fast enough.
I was hoping with the Western Digital Red drives which are optimized for streaming data, I would have gotten better results. I get better results with Plex and 1080p videos on my 2011 iMac with the media files on an attached Thunderbolt drive. I'll see what they say over at the Plex forum. Hopefully I can tweak my Plex settings to at least make it usable.
Without transcoding, and over ethernet I get flawless streaming from a 316 also using Nas drives. The drives are definetly not going to be your problem. It's going to be your network connections and/ or transcoding. The iMac will have a much better ability to run plex on hd video than the 314. You did not answer the questions so good luck on the plex forums.
Without transcoding, and over ethernet I get flawless streaming from a 316 also using Nas drives. The drives are definetly not going to be your problem. It's going to be your network connections and/ or transcoding. The iMac will have a much better ability to run plex on hd video than the 314. You did not answer the questions so good luck on the plex forums.
When you say "over ethernet", what exactly do you mean? If you play plex on tablet or smart phone, that's wireless. Or if you stream to a Roku, that's wireless.
When streaming 1080p videos from the 314 to the Roku, if I change the Plex transcoding setting to "Direct" in the Roku, they stream without any noticeable buffering. However, regular movies have no sound. So I can live with this tradeoff. Everything else, the audio, photos, and movies, work very well using the NAS as the Plex server.
Plex also will work with ethernet-connected DLNA players, it is not limited to wifi players.
You seem to have isolated your issue to the audio transcoding. Perhaps you can do a mediainfo analysis of one of the home movies, and post the results here?
Plex also will work with ethernet-connected DLNA players, it is not limited to wifi players.
You seem to have isolated your issue to the audio transcoding. Perhaps you can do a mediainfo analysis of one of the home movies, and post the results here?
right-click the file and choose mediainfo, select the text view and cut/paste the analysis here.
Yes, playing with DLNA servers/clients is on my to-do list. Actually Plex also has DLNA capability, and I know you can enable DLNA for a particular share on the 314. Also, I've found that if I configure transcoding in Plex on the Roku to "Direct", the 1080p videos play with no noticeable buffering. However, regular movies then have no audio. But it's a workaround I can live with, since everything else works very well with the RN314/Plex platform.
Anyway, I use the command line version of mediainfo, and have written several wrapper scripts and OS X services around it. Here is the output of a video shot with my Canon SX280, my 5 year old's first fish. 🙂
With transcoding the difference in quality, format etc. from what the client can play is important.
The RN314 can transcode some low-bitrate 720p, but not most 720p or 1080p.
For transcoding 1080p the RN516 would be a good choice.
Are you absolutely certain that the 516 could transcode 1080p videos in Plex, and play them without stuttering?
Also, if I exchanged my 314 for a 516, would I be able to swap the two Western Digital Red drives, and maintain all of my data and settings? I'm thinking about returning the 314 and getting the 516.
Also note there is a newer version of Plex Media Server available. Can you try that?
When I click the update button in Plex it tells me I am updated to the latest version.
Do you mean update from within Plex?
You can download the newer version from plex.tv and install it via the Upload button on the apps tab in the Dashboard.
zBernie wrote:
Are you absolutely certain that the 516 could transcode 1080p videos in Plex, and play them without stuttering?
Yes. Provided the Plex transcoder supports transcoding the format, it will work.
zBernie wrote:
Also, if I exchanged my 314 for a 516, would I be able to swap the two Western Digital Red drives, and maintain all of my data and settings? I'm thinking about returning the 314 and getting the 516.
Yes.
Put a spare disk in the 516 (must not be from your array), update to the latest firmware, power down the 516, remove your spare disk and migrate your disks across.
Also note there is a newer version of Plex Media Server available. Can you try that?
When I click the update button in Plex it tells me I am updated to the latest version.
Do you mean update from within Plex?
You can download the newer version from plex.tv and install it via the Upload button on the apps tab in the Dashboard.
zBernie wrote:
Are you absolutely certain that the 516 could transcode 1080p videos in Plex, and play them without stuttering?
Yes. Provided the Plex transcoder supports transcoding the format, it will work.
zBernie wrote:
Also, if I exchanged my 314 for a 516, would I be able to swap the two Western Digital Red drives, and maintain all of my data and settings? I'm thinking about returning the 314 and getting the 516.
Yes.
Put a spare disk in the 516 (must not be from your array), update to the latest firmware, power down the 516, remove your spare disk and migrate your disks across.
Sounds simple enough. I might exchange the NAS. This is something I'm going to be living with for years. Thanks for your advice.
