Re: Plex Cloud Alternative - ReadyNAS NAS Storage

BretD · ‎2018-09-14

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 the entire article: Plex Cloud Is Gone But Here’s a Viable Alternative. Have you used ReadyNAS For Plex? Let us know your feedback below.

>>

Streaming media company, Plex has announced the end of its Plex cloud.

For Plex Cloud users with large libraries the question becomes: Where can I save movie files so they’re always accessible without having to leave a computer powered on all the time? The answer: A network attached storage (NAS) drive, of course.

Users could save their media libraries online to stream to the Plex app on devices at home or on the road. The end of the Plex Cloud means users now have to store their media files on computers or hard drives at home.

Plex Cloud Is Gone But Here’s a Viable Alternative | Sound & Vision

For home theater enthusiasts who’ve invested in large movie libraries, it’s worth considering as a replacement for the Plex Cloud. The 626X is easy to use, provides fast access to files, and delivers an experience akin to having an external hard drive connected to a computer. The NAS effectively becomes your own personal cloud.

Blanker-2 · ‎2018-09-14

Cool, I have to pay more attention to readycloud. I'm stuck in the google drive universe.

TeknoJnky · ‎2018-09-14

netgear needs a new readynas hardware refresh with a Version 6 (Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake) quick sync supported intel cpu, for 4k hardware transcoding support from plex.

Then you would have an ultimate plex server.

Direct 4k streaming (not transcoding) will work great from most os6 devices, but 4k content has exploded and while storing the content on a nas is great, not every client/tv device supports 4k and will need transcoded down to 1080 or 720.

Not to mention mobile streaming, no one is going to be direct streaming 4k from home to mobile over LTE any time soon, mobile streams will need transcoding support, and intel quicksync is the simplest way to get plex hardware transcoding support.

Netgear product development, are you listening!?!?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

craer87 · ‎2018-10-30

stock 528x 4)10tb drives

seems to work just fine to me. tested up to 6 local and 5 remote streems goin at once (ran out of devics)

not i use it as a back up plex server for my PE r710

but the 710 pulls all its data from the 528x and still nothing bad to say

TeknoJnky · ‎2018-10-30

sure, when used as a file storage server, its awesome.

its even pretty awesome when plex server is ran directly on the nas.

for 1080 content and below.

Please retry your streaming tests with 4k content transcoded down to something else (like mobile or 1080). while running directly on the readynas.

since there is no GPU on these nas, there is no plex hardware accelerated transcoding.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MfYoJkiwSqCXg8cm5-Ac4oOLPRtCkgUxU0jdj3tmMPc/edit#gid=1274624...

craer87 · ‎2018-10-30

its not bad ...

no. theres no gpu nor is there one in my rig now

i have tested on 4 xbox1, 4 phones (all ios) 2 ipads and had 2-3 web gui running with nothing to bark about

no its not hard core testing but real world testing of asmuch as i can pull togeather in time localy and remote

the 528x worked well (i did see) if i was hitting the nas hard with other things large file dumps to it 300+gig or things like scrubing o ya i did see things going wrong there.. but as a home rig that is on all day long... for some one i would say 4 users or less on plex/ large file moves

its cheep to get started.

i can not speek for any of the slower smaller boxes i have a newer 4 bay ( the backup) and a older os4 4bay and a 2 bay i have (not) tested plex on..

So if you have a readynas and want to try plex i would say its a good small home and starter to get into it. and then can move on to cheep servers on ebay from there.

Bippin · ‎2019-01-07

I purchased the ReadyNAS 214 specifically to run as a Plex server about 2 years ago. I have not had any ReadyNAS related issues in running Plex. I also run Tautulli for the statistics it keeps on the Plex server. It has been a great combination and met my needs.

I don't have any 4K content yet but expect to start recording some on my GoPro. We'll see how that serves up via Plex. 🙂

Sandshark · ‎2019-01-12

With typical home internet upload speeds, calling a NAS a "viable alternative" for remote access is a stretch, especially with 4K content. Since my daughter moved out, I wanted to give her access to my videos remotely, so I decided to set up Plex. She had a lot of jerkiness, which I thought might be from her WiFi. But even wired, it persisted. Ultimately, I set her up with ZeroTier so she can copy the files and then watch the local copy. That does require a bit more forethought, but works much better.

I probably could have set up transcoding to a slower bit rate, but then what's the point of having HD content?

Blanker-2 · ‎2019-01-12

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. Though I've nevered considered playback for clients outside my network. Interesting. Perhaps transcoding to a smaller file size would be beneficial? But then I guess you would need 2 copies of everything.

Sandshark · ‎2019-01-12

I was referring to on-the-fly transcoding, so you wouldn't need two copies. There is a way to reduce it down, but I believe there is only one setting -- not one for local and one for remote. Not that I typically need local transcoding.

StephenB · ‎2019-01-13

@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.

Blanker-2 · ‎2019-01-13

Your lucky. On Long Island Optimum has some sort of stronghold in our town that won't allow fios in.

Some dlna servers transcode. I keep it simple, ISO and I like menu support on some dvd and BDs, which as we know none of this is supported by most dlna AFAIR. And the iso allows me to put it back on disc in the event the original gets destroyed. No disrespect to compressing. I'm more of a "would it look better?" Kind of a person, so it eases my mind. Main movie only, one audio track, subs, and forced subs. And the dunes read java so I can usually avoid playlist obfuscation and all that. Where i compromise is not putting everything on the nas if I don't plan on watching it often. And I still get dvds for things like comedies. We'll see what happens when/if I ever get into 4k.....

Sandshark · ‎2019-01-13

@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.

TeknoJnky · ‎2019-01-13

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.

StephenB · ‎2019-01-14

@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 movies

I 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.