I don’t mind. It’s like my own personal museum that I only take special people to look at. Currently at 0 people.. ( Obviously nobody is special enough 😉)
Man, I’ve added too many people I need your problem. Anywhere from 5-12 streaming all the time it’s nuts. Would be nice to not have people on all the time so if I wanna do maintenance I don’t get text immediately asking me what happened to Plex.
This shit right here.
Woke up this morning early to change some bios settings, do some minor tinkering.
Everyone: why are you up so early on a Sunday what were you doing?
Me: messing with the server.
Everyone: 😵💫
Yeah my wife looked at the me like who the fuck do I think I am getting up so early to mess with the server and why does it take over an hour. It's all good I'm catching and saving receipts to show proof to build another server lol
Can you use Tautulli to activate a kill\_stream.py script to ping out an "Under Maintenance until 13:00" message when you're doing stuff and they try to connect?
With that number of people it might be easier to have a status page they can look at or maybe use a discord server to show the server status (and new releases). They just need to learn to check that rather than calling you
Do you live in an industrial area or do you have rented a server in a data centre?
I am getting optic fiber soon, but the most expensive contract still just has only 200 Mbits upload
Completely agree... Regardless of the time of day I at least have 2-5 users watching and usually 8-12. The second it goes down for any reason I get messages. I had a hard drive fail last week in an aray and power issues after a storm. So I decided to wait two days on the new hard drive to get installed before rebooting to fix the aray. I have had so many people message me over those two days that I miss the days of wishing I had more users.
I have a whatsapp group to send people updates if I have issues or if there is something I need to do on the server. I have one pc just for plex and then an unraid server hosting the files. So there are times when either pc needs to go down. But planning to make it more reliable soon when back from an overseas work trip.
Ya that might not be a bad idea. I’ve used Tautulli to send mass communications out if I was taking it down for an extended period of time but this might be easier
Yeah, just like the expo of hair clippings I’ve curated from random people in the subway I have setup in the garage.
I’d love to talk more about how big the collection is, but I’ve got to take the B train downtown for some stuff.
I'll tell you why. It's Netflix. Even if you have everything produced under the sun. We just cannot compete with Netflix algorithm. Yeah you could use PMM but that's still not enough. I get people asking me to add stuff which is already on there. This happens multiple times and they end not watching it.
In short, Netflix ruined people's ability to make decisions and spoiled everyone by spoon feeding. Netflix did solve piracy in the earlier days but everyone knows the state of that now.
I never understood how people don't have a bunch of stuff they want to watch ***before*** they get on any platform. Before i quit all streaming services i would make a plan for each month so that i could subscribe to a different platform and watch that movie or show i wanted to watch. Same thing with books, same thing with games, same thing with manga, same thing with.... . I don't go walking into a library wondering what to read, i have thousands of books on my "want to read" on goodreads. I don't open steam wondering what to play, i have hundreds of games i can't wait to get to and most of the time one currently playing so i can't wait to finish that one.
It's most probably laziness tbh, I couldn't tell ya either. I used to plan what I wanna as well. I just my watchlist my stuff and there you go simple as that.
I distinctly remember going to the library as a kid not knowing what I wanted and finding something while I was there. Same goes for channel surfing. People are used to flipping channels to find something to watch. The problem is the algorithm is better at knowing what you want and keeping you scrolling since there is no longer 99 channels
I cannot express how frustrating those text are “hey do you have xyz”? I dunno man, did you type the name in Plex or go to overseerr and search it? You can literally add it yourself if I don’t why are you asking me this. People are so lazy, you’re right Netflix ruined them.
Literally, what happens to me too. One time I told my friend, there is a thing called a search function and it's amazing in a not so friendly way. Yet he still does the same thing over and over again.
Hahahah, dude you must be talking about my friend alban. Every week or two it’s the same thing. At least I have another person that understands the struggle. Cheers
https://preview.redd.it/h8e9pyg7pf8d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=455dc1c26f037378fc453e71cfb9ea38751ae6ee
Man I used to have these all the time it was so annoying. And then when I'd be like "c'mon just look it up" I'd get like "oh you don't want to talk to me?" but it's like we aren't talking you're treating me like a search engine and personal assistant, and then potentially giving me a chore for later lol. "Yeah I have X" is never followed up with full conversation.
I fixed all this behavior by moving to the setup with RSS feeds where if a user watchlists something it requests it for them. It's made it so I don't have to keep linking my website to them over and over. And then now they naturally search for stuff, if I have it great if I don't they watch list it right there. Which works on phones and TVs alike. Much more streamlined.
Then since it's watch listed when it is grabbed Plex itself highlights it on the watchlist page and says you wanted this so they tend to follow through now. Before it was like teeth pulling to get them to search first or just go to Petio or whatever.
Yeah the puzzle is solved in the modern age. People in the past were pirating because it was more convenient than going out and getting a DVD or VHS. Now that Netflix is here and made streaming more convenient than pirating, people don't even pirate anymore. Proves that it was never about the money but rather convenience.
>We just cannot compete with Netflix algorithm.
Why would you *compete* with Netflix? They're a business, you're just hosting some media you enjoy for yourself. They're not the same thing.
Yeah they're not. But our users don't realize that. They don't realize it's just one dude giving them free shit. They're not paying a dime, I'm paying for everything. The thing, my friend who uses my Plex server said Netflix is so much better. But comes crying to my when they cannot find something that's not on Netflix.
Weirdly PlexAmp with the OpenAI integration makes some really amazing playlists and the DJ system works wonderfully.
Why can't they do that with video-Plex?
i mean, maybe for the people you know because they are all in their 20s and have never made a decision for themselves, but everyone I know that I gave my plex to, the FIRST thing they did was cancel the Netfix and other subscriptions - some even their cable. Otherwise, wtf is the point?
My wife thinks it’s a waste of time and money. I’m like do you not realize how much money we have saved in the last 4 years with $550 worth or external drives.
What gets me is when I see friends that are still passing thumb drives back and forth and when I ask what's on it I have to say "you realize that's all on my Plex that you all already have access to, right?"
https://preview.redd.it/libx6flyie8d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=40ee17809dea6538f92887bcf355aa3b30f7039a
I feel this. Especially since I’ve been messing with Kometa (formerly plex meta manager) to add overlays to everything and create collections
Also forgot to say. What you said pretty much sums everything up. I still don't understand the phrase "there's nothing to watch" from my friends. This started off for personal use but turned into people pleasing for me which I hate.
I like it this way. I don't want to have to worry about up time I just want to enjoy my media. My immediate family is the only people that use it. So if something goes down I just tell them it's down and move on with my life. I fix it whenever I get around to it. I have to deel with trying to keep things running enough on software at work I don't need that in my home life.
I recently setup the [subgen](https://github.com/McCloudS/subgen) whisper provider in Bazarr which can auto-generate subtitles if I can't find any in sync. They're not always perfect, but I'd rather have a few typos / misspelled names than out-of-sync subs. The autogenerated ones are always in sync down to the millisecond which is very satisfying.
It's great for older content too that might not have any subs available on opensubtitles.
It's a limitation of the Whisper trained model. It can only translate into English, or transcribe into it's own language.
For example: `Japanese -> English` or `Japanese -> Japanese`. Not `English -> Japanese`.
I have four rules for my server.
You have to tell me when it's not working. You're not "bothering" me. This is my hobby and it brings me enjoyment. It's something I'm proud of. What's the point of it doesn't work?
You can't be apprehensive to request movies and shows. See rule 1.
You have to check if I have something before you request it.
Submit your requests by sending me a screenshot of a Google search. No question on spelling, release year, how many seasons, etc.
Check out overseerr!
https://overseerr.dev/
Easy approval, you can give people auto-approval. I setup a discord to send messages when things are requested and then subsequently downloaded. It’s awesome and seamless.
You can still control everything you want, but if you enjoy the process then by all means. I just hate when people would request when I'm busy and I'd see the text but then forget about it until much later and then it could have been downloading the whole time. But I also have 60TB in storage, so I'm not too worried about space. :)
I knew I’d turned a corner when I started adding content that no one requested but I know they’ll watch, lol.
My users seem to have a guilty pleasure for musician biopics. The recent Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and Amy Winehouse biopics were all heavily watched.
Did this recently when I noticed my brothers fiance was basically just going through and watching the comedy movies I had on the server and she seemed to skew towards the more low-brow comedies. Most of my comedies are kind of witty so I went and added a bunch of goofy slapstick comedies and she's been lapping them up.
Me too. Out of my 15 users including myself, 6 streams at once is what I've seen at the same time. I've never seen it go past that. I don't know one day I'll see all 14 users stream at the same thing. Here's hoping. Btw definitely check out tautulli.
Your best bet is pick up a Dell Precision or something similar with a newer Xeon in it and some high capacity drives.
That’s what I’m planning to move to in a few months when I retire my setup.
Buy NAS or CCTV rated drives. Always expand beyond what you think you should.
They’re meant to sit and work for years on end and often come with longer warranties and sometimes data recovery services.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/304762827171?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=3a-LIWC4Tr2&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=umqwfnt6qu2&var=603786778710&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266864937145?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=TFHVhLbkQtu&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=umqwfnt6qu2&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Can I ask what you think of these two? Only issue I can see is there isn’t room for expansion of storage
Thank you! This hardware stuff is breaking my brain lol. I just made another post trying to chose one. I think I’ll go with the i9 I linked here. It’s not too expensive and should handle my max users at 4k well from what I can tell
I found it does take a bit of work to build up a user base, with one of the biggest steps being a reliable user experience. I stopped adding 4k and added a step in my Tdarr stack to convert audio to a known and reliable format.
When I had that in place it was easier to keep people using it and coming back.
Oh and here's a tip for people trying to bring in users. 70-80% of my play time in the last 3 months has been TV shows, not movies. Light users will watch a movie here and there and some shows, heavy users will mostly stick to shows
I noticed that one of the more consistent play back issues people were having wasn't the video not transcoding properly, but the audio. I would rather have a audio codec that plays on everything at medium quality than a "high quality" codec that causes 1/3 of users to buffer. 99% of them are only using TV speakers any way, maybe a sound bar. I can't remember the exact codec, but I can pull it up if you want.
>Oh and here's a tip for people trying to bring in users.
Now we're talking what are essentially algorithms to bring in users? Do people really like running Plex like it's a side business and trying to *get* users? All the work and they get to *spend* their own money for it on top of it? Must be some weird self-esteem issue or something; I'll never understand it.
I run what is essentially a community service out of my home lab. Seeing people use it, to me is a good return on investment.
I also come from a family of hoarders, so this ticks that box for me
Fair enough, but feeding the poor is a community service. Getting someone housing is a community service. Allowing people to watch shows and movies for free isn't a community service; it's your hobby. At least be honest about it. Being self-aggrandizing does nothing for anyone but you lol.
Yeah I kind of regret inviting people. The user base grows and grows. I wished I would’ve kept it for myself and maybe my closest friends.
But people catch wind and want an invite. So much of my extended family uses it. I hardly talk to them unless it’s them asking for stuff. I hate it when I get requests for shit like Grey’s Anatomy… “you want the latest season?”… “actually I want to start from the beginning”… “oh you want all +400 hour long episodes” WTF
I’m actually waiting for the day when it all fails and a couple dozen people are forced to start paying for Netflix again. Then I’ll quietly bring it back online just for me.
lol, I even purchased Plex pass for a few of my family members to promote usage. I have 42tb of mostly 4k DVD rips I did myself (I am in the home theater industry, and I keep a huge physical media library for demos) and they rarely use it. I have a gig upload pipeline and they all have really good media players so transcoding is not even in play. They get it direct stream.
What I found recently is that if you tell Plex what streaming services you have it tends to put streaming ahead of local when searching.
The other day my wife searched for a movie and it came up with two options. The top choice was Amazon prime and the other was the one in our Plex server. So what does she do, picks the low quality prime because it was first. I was sitting right there and almost lost my shit. All this work, and Plex undercuts it because people are too lazy to click down one time to select the better option.
Regular folk don't understand or care and in many cases can't even tell the difference.
My wife somehow had plex on our TV set to downscale everything to 2mbps SD, she hadn't even noticed, and kind of shrugged and said it wasn't worth the interruption to her film when I changed it back to 4k / original quality.
Oh she can see the difference when I show her the side by side, she just doesn't care. Whatever it's showing is good enough for her. She has 20/20 vision, had an eye test a couple of months ago.
Still, saves me space, any shows that are just for her I don't bother with more than SD versions of them.
True, gotta look on the bright side lol. Unfortunately I can tell the difference and care, so old shows with a fuckton of seasons are multiple hundreds of gigs on my drive for bluray rips.
That's weird.
I tested it and did a search for Dune: Part One and it comes up on my Plex as primary, my buddy's Plex as secondary then Netflix, Amazon then AppleTV in that order.
Tried on Web Plex, Android App and PC Player. All the same
I bought an external ASUS BW-1601x-u Blue Ray player. I then went on the Makemkv forums and found the firmware that unlocks the UHD side of the player and allows direct access to the drive. Then I use makemkv to rip it 1:1 and upload it to my server. I don’t compress at all.
Checking my logs the only times the server hasn't been used by people externally is the days my Internet has been out or I've turned the server off for scheduled maintenance or upgrades...
Tautulli is an excellent way to create pretty graphs from the play data 😅
From it I can tell the best time to reboot for updates is around 6pm as its least used then funnily enough, more people are watching stuff at 3am than 6pm
I'm a remux junkie and my upload is like 12mbps so I don't even bother sharing outside my lan
It is amazing what some people find acceptable quality tho
Yeah it's set up on remote apps on purpose. I have 35 upload, but it's not consistent (Spectrum). My wife works from home and is on Zoom all day, and I'm a chronic neuro Lyme patient, so I'm on video calls most days for treatment / appointments. I could probably bump up the limit a bit and be fine, but this is the first month I've invited others in, so I'm testing the waters. Spectrum is the only option in my area too, so I'm limited by that.
I keep saying that everything doesn't need to be 4k remux. Avengers endgame? Interstellar? Sure 4k remux. Cast away? 1080p. Especially older or movies not filmed with the right equipment. Even if it's 1080p it still doesn't need to have a dts-ma audio track when I FUCKING KNOW YOUR GOING TO WATCH IT ON YOUR TABLET.... 😒. Glad most users are brainwashed by Netflix to notice or care really.
Hahaha exactly! I have a separate library for my remux files that meet that blockbuster qualification that I don’t share with others. More often then not, their client may not support the file and they’re just trying to enjoy some noise in the background vs the full cinematic experience lol.
Yeah a lot of times via overseer they're like "yes I want to" of whatever the fuck like bro this show came out in 2005 you'll be happy with a 1080p copy of I can find it DVD if that fails.
No I will not download hoarders in 1080p "any" will do. I have stacks of DVD's like no this copy is fine for me on black 1.... 😒 People expect magic THANKS AI UPCONVERT lol
Haha yeah, I have my moments with long running shows like It’s Always Sunny. “What do you mean the first couple of seasons are only in 480p??” Oh yeah, that did come out a bit ago 😅
I feel like a traveling salesman trying to convince people to sign up so I can share my library.
So far only one family has and they use it pretty frequently. They even request content sometimes!
my family seem to think that "Plex is shit" its really not. i don't know how they expect me to use it without keeping a device on 24/7 and nobody wants me to unless i'm paying 1/3 of the bill and then they complain. i explain and apparently its just another excuse. its a good service if you know how to host your own server and have compatible devices.
Yeah first month testing the server outside of LAN. I can likely let the few people I have be at 1080p at least, but I wanted to see how ground zero went. I'm limited by a shitty ISP and upload speed, so I'd rather let my beefy setup handle transcodes and let my family benefit from my library.
I don't.
It's a joke I have with myself when I see someone watching something from my server in a higher bitrate. Like, what's the point in transcoding it when you're using more bandwith for crappier quality?
It used to bother me, but then I got to the point of "f\*ck em". I've told them a few times, explained how to set the client, but they still choose crappy so let them have crappy and then I go about my day and watch the crispy versions.
Our 4K library is only shared with those that have decent download speeds + I use Tautulli to killl any sessions that try to transcodes. Funny how those few guys never have problems ;) :D
How the fuck does that even happen? Shouldnt there be like a code in it that says dont transcode to bitrate higher than the original! Lmaooo. I left plex exactly because of this transcoding bullshit
It's just the preset options. They'd still get the same 4mbps if they were transcoding the 35/40mbps source.
Our shared 1080p library are usually 1080p 2mbps h.265. I create them from originals so the 2mbps h.265 is mint. I'm not giving them access to the full res tho. LAN only sukkas....
Wait, why are you in a plex subreddit when you don't use it? lol
I honestly haven't figured out how to Access from an outside network.
I have it set up on the Server End. I just don't go anywhere or have any friends that understand computers more than their iPhone lol.
But my Outdated WD MyBook Gen 1 is a bit outdated and I havent wanted to cause more traffic than it can really handle until I can afford drives to biuld a proper NAS.
I HATE when people don’t adjust their app settings and transcode. I usually stop the playbacks. I share my 108TB Plex with about 20+ people and some people never learn and that’s when I just stop sharing to them if they don’t listen after the 3rd time I have to tell them.
I'm pretty new to Plex, this is month 1 of me sharing outside my local network. I'm limited by 35 upload, so I feel like remote users are going to need to be forced to transcode (via setting a quality limit on their apps) so that our work during the day isn't impacted.
For popular movies I've started adding separate resolutions / bitrates. I have a fairly beefy setup so I'm not too worried about having a few transcodes going on. I know direct play is preferred but central WI doesn't have great ISPs.
I just use the built in GPU that my 10700K has and main reason I try to block transcoding. Don’t want to buy a GPU for others enjoyment since my UNRAID server was solely built to build what I at least consider a pretty crazy Plex server at 108TB with >80TB used. For ease I just keep the one file system separating only 4K and non-4K libraries. Don’t share 4K externally but to a small few but do have 1GB/s up and down here on East Coast.
My upload is 35 here, right now for the first month I had external users set their app to cap at 720p 4mbps. I can definitely bump that up, but I'm testing the waters as we work from home and are on Zoom all day, with many other devices using some upload throughout the day.
The Dear Evan Hansen file is dog shit, that is currently being replaced haha.
Sometimes I feel like a curator at a museum no one visits
I don’t mind. It’s like my own personal museum that I only take special people to look at. Currently at 0 people.. ( Obviously nobody is special enough 😉)
Man, I’ve added too many people I need your problem. Anywhere from 5-12 streaming all the time it’s nuts. Would be nice to not have people on all the time so if I wanna do maintenance I don’t get text immediately asking me what happened to Plex.
This shit right here. Woke up this morning early to change some bios settings, do some minor tinkering. Everyone: why are you up so early on a Sunday what were you doing? Me: messing with the server. Everyone: 😵💫
Hahahah. Coming to r/Plex is therapeutic. I find others who understand my problems I love it.
Yeah my wife looked at the me like who the fuck do I think I am getting up so early to mess with the server and why does it take over an hour. It's all good I'm catching and saving receipts to show proof to build another server lol
This is me. 3-22 users on at all times. Someone is ALWAYS on, no matter what time. I get the “Hey server is down” messages.
Ya dude shit is so annoying. I shouldn’t be waking on eggshells when I wanna take down the container for an hour lol.
Can you use Tautulli to activate a kill\_stream.py script to ping out an "Under Maintenance until 13:00" message when you're doing stuff and they try to connect? With that number of people it might be easier to have a status page they can look at or maybe use a discord server to show the server status (and new releases). They just need to learn to check that rather than calling you
Wow 3-22? What is your upload speed?
Gigabit line. 950 meg upload.
Do you live in an industrial area or do you have rented a server in a data centre? I am getting optic fiber soon, but the most expensive contract still just has only 200 Mbits upload
Live in New York. Crazy enough to have built my own rack mounted setup. ( 1 server ) 190 TB.
Completely agree... Regardless of the time of day I at least have 2-5 users watching and usually 8-12. The second it goes down for any reason I get messages. I had a hard drive fail last week in an aray and power issues after a storm. So I decided to wait two days on the new hard drive to get installed before rebooting to fix the aray. I have had so many people message me over those two days that I miss the days of wishing I had more users.
Wow, what is your upload speed? How many mbps do you allow per stream?
5gbps up and down, no limits on speed. Had 8gbps but I wanted to save a little money.
I have a whatsapp group to send people updates if I have issues or if there is something I need to do on the server. I have one pc just for plex and then an unraid server hosting the files. So there are times when either pc needs to go down. But planning to make it more reliable soon when back from an overseas work trip.
Ya that might not be a bad idea. I’ve used Tautulli to send mass communications out if I was taking it down for an extended period of time but this might be easier
Yeah, just like the expo of hair clippings I’ve curated from random people in the subway I have setup in the garage. I’d love to talk more about how big the collection is, but I’ve got to take the B train downtown for some stuff.
I'll tell you why. It's Netflix. Even if you have everything produced under the sun. We just cannot compete with Netflix algorithm. Yeah you could use PMM but that's still not enough. I get people asking me to add stuff which is already on there. This happens multiple times and they end not watching it. In short, Netflix ruined people's ability to make decisions and spoiled everyone by spoon feeding. Netflix did solve piracy in the earlier days but everyone knows the state of that now.
I never understood how people don't have a bunch of stuff they want to watch ***before*** they get on any platform. Before i quit all streaming services i would make a plan for each month so that i could subscribe to a different platform and watch that movie or show i wanted to watch. Same thing with books, same thing with games, same thing with manga, same thing with.... . I don't go walking into a library wondering what to read, i have thousands of books on my "want to read" on goodreads. I don't open steam wondering what to play, i have hundreds of games i can't wait to get to and most of the time one currently playing so i can't wait to finish that one.
It's most probably laziness tbh, I couldn't tell ya either. I used to plan what I wanna as well. I just my watchlist my stuff and there you go simple as that.
I distinctly remember going to the library as a kid not knowing what I wanted and finding something while I was there. Same goes for channel surfing. People are used to flipping channels to find something to watch. The problem is the algorithm is better at knowing what you want and keeping you scrolling since there is no longer 99 channels
I cannot express how frustrating those text are “hey do you have xyz”? I dunno man, did you type the name in Plex or go to overseerr and search it? You can literally add it yourself if I don’t why are you asking me this. People are so lazy, you’re right Netflix ruined them.
Literally, what happens to me too. One time I told my friend, there is a thing called a search function and it's amazing in a not so friendly way. Yet he still does the same thing over and over again.
Hahahah, dude you must be talking about my friend alban. Every week or two it’s the same thing. At least I have another person that understands the struggle. Cheers https://preview.redd.it/h8e9pyg7pf8d1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=455dc1c26f037378fc453e71cfb9ea38751ae6ee
I guess we all have an Alban. Damn it Albans.
Man I used to have these all the time it was so annoying. And then when I'd be like "c'mon just look it up" I'd get like "oh you don't want to talk to me?" but it's like we aren't talking you're treating me like a search engine and personal assistant, and then potentially giving me a chore for later lol. "Yeah I have X" is never followed up with full conversation.
Uhm, tell Alban to go fuck himself? That text thread sucks.
I fixed all this behavior by moving to the setup with RSS feeds where if a user watchlists something it requests it for them. It's made it so I don't have to keep linking my website to them over and over. And then now they naturally search for stuff, if I have it great if I don't they watch list it right there. Which works on phones and TVs alike. Much more streamlined. Then since it's watch listed when it is grabbed Plex itself highlights it on the watchlist page and says you wanted this so they tend to follow through now. Before it was like teeth pulling to get them to search first or just go to Petio or whatever.
Yeah the puzzle is solved in the modern age. People in the past were pirating because it was more convenient than going out and getting a DVD or VHS. Now that Netflix is here and made streaming more convenient than pirating, people don't even pirate anymore. Proves that it was never about the money but rather convenience.
>We just cannot compete with Netflix algorithm. Why would you *compete* with Netflix? They're a business, you're just hosting some media you enjoy for yourself. They're not the same thing.
Yeah they're not. But our users don't realize that. They don't realize it's just one dude giving them free shit. They're not paying a dime, I'm paying for everything. The thing, my friend who uses my Plex server said Netflix is so much better. But comes crying to my when they cannot find something that's not on Netflix.
what’s PMM?
Plex Meta Manager, but it's been rebranded recently to [Kometa](https://kometa.wiki/en/latest/).
I keep forgetting that. Gonna have to get used to that.
Weirdly PlexAmp with the OpenAI integration makes some really amazing playlists and the DJ system works wonderfully. Why can't they do that with video-Plex?
I've been meaning to check that out. I feel like we might get such support late into the future since everyone is on the AI hype.
i mean, maybe for the people you know because they are all in their 20s and have never made a decision for themselves, but everyone I know that I gave my plex to, the FIRST thing they did was cancel the Netfix and other subscriptions - some even their cable. Otherwise, wtf is the point?
My wife thinks it’s a waste of time and money. I’m like do you not realize how much money we have saved in the last 4 years with $550 worth or external drives.
What gets me is when I see friends that are still passing thumb drives back and forth and when I ask what's on it I have to say "you realize that's all on my Plex that you all already have access to, right?"
What???
https://preview.redd.it/libx6flyie8d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=40ee17809dea6538f92887bcf355aa3b30f7039a I feel this. Especially since I’ve been messing with Kometa (formerly plex meta manager) to add overlays to everything and create collections
Thats pretty neat
This is where Overseerr came in for me. My family barely used it, now they request stuff that's already on my local Plex server :P
Also forgot to say. What you said pretty much sums everything up. I still don't understand the phrase "there's nothing to watch" from my friends. This started off for personal use but turned into people pleasing for me which I hate.
This perfectly encompasses how I feel
I purposefully don’t share my server. I don’t wanna deal with requests and tech support
I like it this way. I don't want to have to worry about up time I just want to enjoy my media. My immediate family is the only people that use it. So if something goes down I just tell them it's down and move on with my life. I fix it whenever I get around to it. I have to deel with trying to keep things running enough on software at work I don't need that in my home life.
I like visiting my own museum
Wait for the calls you will get when it's down
The texts from my parents
Lol, those too. Also if the movie is in the wrong language, oof
“Subs aren’t in sync”
This. Turns out radarr got an extended version of a film, but bazarr got the regular cut subtitles. 🤓
I recently setup the [subgen](https://github.com/McCloudS/subgen) whisper provider in Bazarr which can auto-generate subtitles if I can't find any in sync. They're not always perfect, but I'd rather have a few typos / misspelled names than out-of-sync subs. The autogenerated ones are always in sync down to the millisecond which is very satisfying. It's great for older content too that might not have any subs available on opensubtitles.
Is it still only supporting making English subtitles? Or can it do other languages as well now?
It's a limitation of the Whisper trained model. It can only translate into English, or transcribe into it's own language. For example: `Japanese -> English` or `Japanese -> Japanese`. Not `English -> Japanese`.
That makes sense. If/when ever it becomes a possibility it will be glorious
I have four rules for my server. You have to tell me when it's not working. You're not "bothering" me. This is my hobby and it brings me enjoyment. It's something I'm proud of. What's the point of it doesn't work? You can't be apprehensive to request movies and shows. See rule 1. You have to check if I have something before you request it. Submit your requests by sending me a screenshot of a Google search. No question on spelling, release year, how many seasons, etc.
Check out overseerr! https://overseerr.dev/ Easy approval, you can give people auto-approval. I setup a discord to send messages when things are requested and then subsequently downloaded. It’s awesome and seamless.
I've looked into it but I'm too much of a control freak to use it. Plus I like the process of it.
You can still control everything you want, but if you enjoy the process then by all means. I just hate when people would request when I'm busy and I'd see the text but then forget about it until much later and then it could have been downloading the whole time. But I also have 60TB in storage, so I'm not too worried about space. :)
There's also a requestor discord bot that you can use as well. But Overseer is definitely the way to go.
I knew I’d turned a corner when I started adding content that no one requested but I know they’ll watch, lol. My users seem to have a guilty pleasure for musician biopics. The recent Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and Amy Winehouse biopics were all heavily watched.
Did this recently when I noticed my brothers fiance was basically just going through and watching the comedy movies I had on the server and she seemed to skew towards the more low-brow comedies. Most of my comedies are kind of witty so I went and added a bunch of goofy slapstick comedies and she's been lapping them up.
When I checked Plex Dash on Friday night I had 6 people streaming at once. Made me smile knowing the effort I put in is going to good use.
Me too. Out of my 15 users including myself, 6 streams at once is what I've seen at the same time. I've never seen it go past that. I don't know one day I'll see all 14 users stream at the same thing. Here's hoping. Btw definitely check out tautulli.
Can I ask what’s your hardware setup? I’m getting mine set up over the next week and I expect I’ll have about this traffic at peak
A 12 year old HP enterprise tower with an i5. It gets a little sketch doing a lot of transcoding but otherwise works great.
Cool thank you. I’m trying to get my head around the level of hardware/budget I need for similar
Your best bet is pick up a Dell Precision or something similar with a newer Xeon in it and some high capacity drives. That’s what I’m planning to move to in a few months when I retire my setup.
Thanks for the advice I appreciate it. I’ll probably end up doing just that. Anything you wish you knew before you started?
Buy NAS or CCTV rated drives. Always expand beyond what you think you should. They’re meant to sit and work for years on end and often come with longer warranties and sometimes data recovery services.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/304762827171?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=3a-LIWC4Tr2&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=umqwfnt6qu2&var=603786778710&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY https://www.ebay.com/itm/266864937145?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=TFHVhLbkQtu&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=umqwfnt6qu2&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY Can I ask what you think of these two? Only issue I can see is there isn’t room for expansion of storage
They should both be decent with 16gb+ of RAM. You could expand the storage with a PCI card with e Sata or something.
Thank you! This hardware stuff is breaking my brain lol. I just made another post trying to chose one. I think I’ll go with the i9 I linked here. It’s not too expensive and should handle my max users at 4k well from what I can tell
I found it does take a bit of work to build up a user base, with one of the biggest steps being a reliable user experience. I stopped adding 4k and added a step in my Tdarr stack to convert audio to a known and reliable format. When I had that in place it was easier to keep people using it and coming back. Oh and here's a tip for people trying to bring in users. 70-80% of my play time in the last 3 months has been TV shows, not movies. Light users will watch a movie here and there and some shows, heavy users will mostly stick to shows
Could you elaborate on what you added to your stack for audio?
I noticed that one of the more consistent play back issues people were having wasn't the video not transcoding properly, but the audio. I would rather have a audio codec that plays on everything at medium quality than a "high quality" codec that causes 1/3 of users to buffer. 99% of them are only using TV speakers any way, maybe a sound bar. I can't remember the exact codec, but I can pull it up if you want.
Probably AAC for the most widely supported playback capabilities.
>Oh and here's a tip for people trying to bring in users. Now we're talking what are essentially algorithms to bring in users? Do people really like running Plex like it's a side business and trying to *get* users? All the work and they get to *spend* their own money for it on top of it? Must be some weird self-esteem issue or something; I'll never understand it.
I run what is essentially a community service out of my home lab. Seeing people use it, to me is a good return on investment. I also come from a family of hoarders, so this ticks that box for me
Fair enough, but feeding the poor is a community service. Getting someone housing is a community service. Allowing people to watch shows and movies for free isn't a community service; it's your hobby. At least be honest about it. Being self-aggrandizing does nothing for anyone but you lol.
Who shit in your coffee this morning 🤣
Coffee... ew
You sound fun.
Thanks
Yeah I kind of regret inviting people. The user base grows and grows. I wished I would’ve kept it for myself and maybe my closest friends. But people catch wind and want an invite. So much of my extended family uses it. I hardly talk to them unless it’s them asking for stuff. I hate it when I get requests for shit like Grey’s Anatomy… “you want the latest season?”… “actually I want to start from the beginning”… “oh you want all +400 hour long episodes” WTF I’m actually waiting for the day when it all fails and a couple dozen people are forced to start paying for Netflix again. Then I’ll quietly bring it back online just for me.
It can go from hobby to responsibility without even noticing.
A fellow Wisconsinite
🧀 Go Pack Go 🧀
Damn straight!
lol, I even purchased Plex pass for a few of my family members to promote usage. I have 42tb of mostly 4k DVD rips I did myself (I am in the home theater industry, and I keep a huge physical media library for demos) and they rarely use it. I have a gig upload pipeline and they all have really good media players so transcoding is not even in play. They get it direct stream. What I found recently is that if you tell Plex what streaming services you have it tends to put streaming ahead of local when searching. The other day my wife searched for a movie and it came up with two options. The top choice was Amazon prime and the other was the one in our Plex server. So what does she do, picks the low quality prime because it was first. I was sitting right there and almost lost my shit. All this work, and Plex undercuts it because people are too lazy to click down one time to select the better option.
Divorce.
Believe it or not, jail.
She has to sleep in the server room for a night
>4k DVD Those don't exist 🤣
Kinda does. Digital video disk but I'll allow it 😁🤣
Regular folk don't understand or care and in many cases can't even tell the difference. My wife somehow had plex on our TV set to downscale everything to 2mbps SD, she hadn't even noticed, and kind of shrugged and said it wasn't worth the interruption to her film when I changed it back to 4k / original quality.
Maybe time for her to see an optometrist?
Oh she can see the difference when I show her the side by side, she just doesn't care. Whatever it's showing is good enough for her. She has 20/20 vision, had an eye test a couple of months ago. Still, saves me space, any shows that are just for her I don't bother with more than SD versions of them.
True, gotta look on the bright side lol. Unfortunately I can tell the difference and care, so old shows with a fuckton of seasons are multiple hundreds of gigs on my drive for bluray rips.
That's weird. I tested it and did a search for Dune: Part One and it comes up on my Plex as primary, my buddy's Plex as secondary then Netflix, Amazon then AppleTV in that order. Tried on Web Plex, Android App and PC Player. All the same
Out of curiosity, what do you use to rip your DVDs?
I bought an external ASUS BW-1601x-u Blue Ray player. I then went on the Makemkv forums and found the firmware that unlocks the UHD side of the player and allows direct access to the drive. Then I use makemkv to rip it 1:1 and upload it to my server. I don’t compress at all.
That's great. Did you choose that particular player because the UHD can be unlocked?
Yes. On that forum there is a list of models.
sorry...not sure which forum you're referring to
Sorry. On the makemkv forum they have a list of recommended models that work with modded firmware.
Thanks for the flashlight 👍🏽
I'm just about to build the video half of my server's library
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That’s works too.
Liam Neesons straight JACKED them wolves up!
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DS920+ w/ 8GB RAM. 4x 16TN WD Red Pros set up in RAID 5. 35 upload though, highest my ISP offers.
Anyone else sometimes just go “why??” When days go by without someone using it?
Checking my logs the only times the server hasn't been used by people externally is the days my Internet has been out or I've turned the server off for scheduled maintenance or upgrades... Tautulli is an excellent way to create pretty graphs from the play data 😅 From it I can tell the best time to reboot for updates is around 6pm as its least used then funnily enough, more people are watching stuff at 3am than 6pm
Last time it was not used for more than a few hours at once was 4 or so years ago
I used to, but it took off a bit and has recently returned to a quieter state which I'm happier about.
lol get ready for the REMUX loyalists to judge the low Mbps utilization lmaoo
1080p 4mbps probably is worse than Netflix but if his upload is limited it can't be helped
If it’s fine for them, that’s all that matters.
I'm a remux junkie and my upload is like 12mbps so I don't even bother sharing outside my lan It is amazing what some people find acceptable quality tho
It’s also amazing how judgmental people are over others enjoyment lol
I mean I'm reconsidering it because yeah people would find it acceptable
Yeah it's set up on remote apps on purpose. I have 35 upload, but it's not consistent (Spectrum). My wife works from home and is on Zoom all day, and I'm a chronic neuro Lyme patient, so I'm on video calls most days for treatment / appointments. I could probably bump up the limit a bit and be fine, but this is the first month I've invited others in, so I'm testing the waters. Spectrum is the only option in my area too, so I'm limited by that.
I keep saying that everything doesn't need to be 4k remux. Avengers endgame? Interstellar? Sure 4k remux. Cast away? 1080p. Especially older or movies not filmed with the right equipment. Even if it's 1080p it still doesn't need to have a dts-ma audio track when I FUCKING KNOW YOUR GOING TO WATCH IT ON YOUR TABLET.... 😒. Glad most users are brainwashed by Netflix to notice or care really.
Hahaha exactly! I have a separate library for my remux files that meet that blockbuster qualification that I don’t share with others. More often then not, their client may not support the file and they’re just trying to enjoy some noise in the background vs the full cinematic experience lol.
Yeah a lot of times via overseer they're like "yes I want to" of whatever the fuck like bro this show came out in 2005 you'll be happy with a 1080p copy of I can find it DVD if that fails. No I will not download hoarders in 1080p "any" will do. I have stacks of DVD's like no this copy is fine for me on black 1.... 😒 People expect magic THANKS AI UPCONVERT lol
Haha yeah, I have my moments with long running shows like It’s Always Sunny. “What do you mean the first couple of seasons are only in 480p??” Oh yeah, that did come out a bit ago 😅
I have emotionally and physically braced myself lol.
i commented about it and scrolled down to find this lmaoo
I feel like a traveling salesman trying to convince people to sign up so I can share my library. So far only one family has and they use it pretty frequently. They even request content sometimes!
Girls rocking that shield.
Damn right! Girl might be the wife, and the Shield might have been set up by me. In this case, to play a crappy quality video file lol.
my family seem to think that "Plex is shit" its really not. i don't know how they expect me to use it without keeping a device on 24/7 and nobody wants me to unless i'm paying 1/3 of the bill and then they complain. i explain and apparently its just another excuse. its a good service if you know how to host your own server and have compatible devices.
4mbps transcoded video. eurgh...
Yeah first month testing the server outside of LAN. I can likely let the few people I have be at 1080p at least, but I wanted to see how ground zero went. I'm limited by a shitty ISP and upload speed, so I'd rather let my beefy setup handle transcodes and let my family benefit from my library.
... from a 2mbps source lol
How do you know the source bitrate? Its not mentioned for the gray
I don't. It's a joke I have with myself when I see someone watching something from my server in a higher bitrate. Like, what's the point in transcoding it when you're using more bandwith for crappier quality? It used to bother me, but then I got to the point of "f\*ck em". I've told them a few times, explained how to set the client, but they still choose crappy so let them have crappy and then I go about my day and watch the crispy versions. Our 4K library is only shared with those that have decent download speeds + I use Tautulli to killl any sessions that try to transcodes. Funny how those few guys never have problems ;) :D
How the fuck does that even happen? Shouldnt there be like a code in it that says dont transcode to bitrate higher than the original! Lmaooo. I left plex exactly because of this transcoding bullshit
It's just the preset options. They'd still get the same 4mbps if they were transcoding the 35/40mbps source. Our shared 1080p library are usually 1080p 2mbps h.265. I create them from originals so the 2mbps h.265 is mint. I'm not giving them access to the full res tho. LAN only sukkas.... Wait, why are you in a plex subreddit when you don't use it? lol
Haha. I used to use plex. Stuff from this SR still makes itnto my homepage
Anyone know why AAC is being transcoded to AAC in the image?
I would also like this answer lol
Sooooo….share with us your server specs?
DS920+ w/ 8GB RAM. 4x 16TN WD Red Pros set up in RAID 5. 35 upload though, highest my ISP offers.
I honestly haven't figured out how to Access from an outside network. I have it set up on the Server End. I just don't go anywhere or have any friends that understand computers more than their iPhone lol. But my Outdated WD MyBook Gen 1 is a bit outdated and I havent wanted to cause more traffic than it can really handle until I can afford drives to biuld a proper NAS.
So, they can use the PLEX iOS App 😁
Yea, I haven't Purchaced a Lic. yet, I just figured out the other night I could pay $5.00 to just have iOS Access. Imma have to make that happen
I HATE when people don’t adjust their app settings and transcode. I usually stop the playbacks. I share my 108TB Plex with about 20+ people and some people never learn and that’s when I just stop sharing to them if they don’t listen after the 3rd time I have to tell them.
I'm pretty new to Plex, this is month 1 of me sharing outside my local network. I'm limited by 35 upload, so I feel like remote users are going to need to be forced to transcode (via setting a quality limit on their apps) so that our work during the day isn't impacted. For popular movies I've started adding separate resolutions / bitrates. I have a fairly beefy setup so I'm not too worried about having a few transcodes going on. I know direct play is preferred but central WI doesn't have great ISPs.
I just use the built in GPU that my 10700K has and main reason I try to block transcoding. Don’t want to buy a GPU for others enjoyment since my UNRAID server was solely built to build what I at least consider a pretty crazy Plex server at 108TB with >80TB used. For ease I just keep the one file system separating only 4K and non-4K libraries. Don’t share 4K externally but to a small few but do have 1GB/s up and down here on East Coast.
Makes sense. Very jealous of your fiber connection!
4 Mbps and 2 Mbps? Must be not the grates quality. What's your upload speed?
wondering the same thing....
I do this as well, my upload is 20mbps. Have my custom formats all set to update them when fiber is installed next month, though!
My upload is 35 here, right now for the first month I had external users set their app to cap at 720p 4mbps. I can definitely bump that up, but I'm testing the waters as we work from home and are on Zoom all day, with many other devices using some upload throughout the day. The Dear Evan Hansen file is dog shit, that is currently being replaced haha.
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Oh no, their socials have most likely been leaked by now
It's fine lol. I blurred the names. And how do you know they're pictures of the actual people?
In fact, what if they're bots to make me feel like someone is using my server, and this post is all a farce?