Octopus Overlords

I've just started playing around with Plex. Really like it so far... Anyone else using it here? I've got it hosted off my Ubuntu server and it works very smoothly.

I like the interface, and it seems just to work. I do have some little questions, like it doesn't always catch changes I make to meta-tags (in MP3s) despite running the overnight library refresh. Kind of irritating but I expect that might be user error. I'm mostly using the software for audio files, which seems to be the minority use case (but I'm not complaining - the feature set for music users is kind of spartan but all the essentials are there.)

Anybody have thoughts on Plex? Tips they'd want to share for a music-streaming (mostly) user? I don't hear much talk about this sort of app, but it is really wicked cool to carry my whole music collection with me everywhere I go.

I've been using Plex for a couple of years. I don't know much about the meta-data changing, though.

I like it enough that I pay for the monthly plex pass. I have an hdhomerun on my network and use plex to dvr shows. With a Roku on each TV and plex on the kids' Kindles, it gives us a lot of options. The kids also use it quite a bit to listen to music.

It works pretty slick to have plex record a show in one folder. I then use mcebuddy to patrol that folder, rip the commercials out, and put it into another folder on the plex server. It doesn't always work perfectly, but most of the time it works out.

I use it for tv and movies. The only frustrating thing is adding DVD extras for a tv show sucks. Amazing how much functionality you get for free. I'll probably evenutally plunk down for the lifetime plex pass, but still haven't rule out switching to Kodi.

I use it for movies and TV as well. It streams to my Roku locally. I should get my old PC running an external drive to do a local video server, but never bothered to.

I have Plex installed on a fairly decent Win10 PC (64-bit i3 with 8 gigs RAM and a 1 TB HDD) and use it to stream .mp3s to my new TiVo Bolt. I went this route because the new Tivo doesn't connect to the TiVo Desktop software that I have running on my Windows Home Server box that my Tivo Premier was happy to stream.

So far it's OK. I'm only so far using it for music. The Bolt has a nice zippy interface so that helps a lot. I most likely am going to pay the $5 a month to see if the extended features are worth it. Mostly I just need a QUICK way to get .mp3s to play from the basement to my upstairs entertainment system when we cook dinner.


I just last night downloaded a few homebrew TiVo apps to install on this box that may or may not do the job as well as Plex. I've been looking for a new project lately and this has become it...

I cranked up my Plex server again a few weeks ago. Put a 4 TB external drive on my PC and just started ripping blu-rays and DVDs and putting them up for my various iDevices and the AppleTV. Works great.

Not a big fan of the music features if you don't pay the monthly fee. The fact that it's not automatically giving me artist images and backgrounds makes me angry. My music has all the metadata in it so the albums are all good, but I don't like having to add the artist cover and background images manually.

I got a few Blu-rays for my birthday, but I don't have a stand alone blu-ray player. I do, however, have a blu-ray player on my desktop and have a Roku attached to my TV. So would this work? I have never tried any of this, so I'm including the links I would use for downloading.

Install Plex on my external HD.
Rip the Blu-ray to the HD using Handbrake (assuming this is self explanatory, haven't tried yet).
I have the Netgear Nighthawk 6400 wireless router. I attach the external HD to the USB port on the router.
Use the Plex app on the Roku 3 to stream from the HD to my TV.

If all that seems right, a few other questions:

How much space does a ripped Blu-ray take?
What at the advantages of paying for Plex? Can I stream to multiple devices at one using the free version?

Some thoughts....

stessier wrote:Install Plex on my external HD.

Not sure what you mean here. You don't install Plex to a hard drive like that. You would install the Plex server on your desktop, and most sensibly the external drive would be attached to that desktop (so that the server isn't fetching the files off the network to stream them back onto the network.

stessier wrote:Rip the Blu-ray to the HD using Handbrake (assuming this is self explanatory, haven't tried yet).

I don't believe that Handbrake will let you rip the Blu-ray to the HD. Blu-ray is *heavily* copy-protected, and breaking that isn't cheap. To rip the blu-ray and decode it properly, you'll need something like MakeMKV. That will rip DVDs fo' free, and will rip blu-ray's fo' free for 30 days, after which it will want you to pay them $50.

stessier wrote:I attach the external HD to the USB port on the router.

As noted, you have to have the Plex server software running somewhere, and since that will most likely have to run on our desktop, I see no advantage to connecting the HD to the router.

stessier wrote:Use the Plex app on the Roku 3 to stream from the HD to my TV.

Once you rip the movies with MakeMKV and encode them with Handbrake, and install the Plex server on your desktop - yes, then you will just need to use the Plex app on the Roku 3 to stream from the HD to your TV (through your desktop).

And for what it's worth, folks can share plex servers as well, so it's possible for me to stream from your Plex server, and you to stream from my Plex server and stuff like that. There's some router magic to that, but it's fairly straightforward.

stessier wrote:How much space does a ripped Blu-ray take?

In it's native 1080p? Generally 30-50 GB. I've found that the most sensible compromise to make is to rip the blu-ray, and then use Handbrake to drop it down to 720p using the "Apple TV 720p 30fps" setting. I am pretty sure there are Roku settings as well that you can use in Handbrake. Those files tend to be between 3 and 7 GB.

stessier wrote:What at the advantages of paying for Plex? Can I stream to multiple devices at one using the free version?

I don't pay for the Plex Pass. You get access to new features faster, and there are some music related features that they won't give you for free. But for Movies and TV Shows, it seems to work well enough for me. I believe you can stream to multiple devices at one time without paying - but that might depend on the network connection and the desktop the server is running (if it has to transcode multiple streams that might slow things down).

I use it all the time on my TV (through the Apple TV box) and my iPad, and it works fantastic. I've got about 200 movies in it, and about 500 TV show episodes (and counting).

And once you have your pipeline setup, friends and others with discs (say...your public library?) can become solid sources of new content.

Ditto what RunningMn9 said.

Plex is for a home server, i.e. a PC you leave on all day and acts as media server.

And FWIW, MakeMKV is FREE while in Beta. You can find the key in the forum and it's good until May 2017 at least. By then they should post another key (until they go for release)

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053

Kasey Chang wrote:And FWIW, MakeMKV is FREE while in Beta. You can find the key in the forum and it's good until May 2017 at least. By then they should post another key (until they go for release)

Information that would have helped me 9 days ago.

But the reality was that I find the software incredibly useful, and I don't mind rewarding that. So I paid the $50.

Has anyone had any issues with movies being "stuttery" in Plex where it seems to have trouble keeping a smooth picture?

I have my media on a Synology DS413J NAS and Plex running on a MacMini and I'm using a current-gen AppleTV to steam it to the TV. Some files that play just fine using"computer" app on the AppleTV pulling from iTunes on the MacMini steam horribly using Plex on the same hardware.

I assume it's something with the file itself or perhaps Plex is trying to re-encode it but I haven't bothered to dig in since the iTunes route is working just fine - but iTunes is terrible so it would be nice to move everything to Plex.

Exodor wrote:Has anyone had any issues with movies being "stuttery" in Plex where it seems to have trouble keeping a smooth picture?

Most everything I have streams fine, as long as you have a direct connection. Sometimes there are issues where it has to do a remote connection, at which point there is transcoding and both machines are going over the internet rather than the local network.

I have one movie that has some glitches (Goodfellas), but I think that's the movie. I figure occasional streaming artifacts is the cost of doing business. Having access to everything, on all of my devices at all times makes me pretty lenient.

Thanks for taking the time to step through it! Clearly, I don't know what I'm talking about, so please excuse the further crazy questions.

RunningMn9 wrote:

stessier wrote:Rip the Blu-ray to the HD using Handbrake (assuming this is self explanatory, haven't tried yet).

I don't believe that Handbrake will let you rip the Blu-ray to the HD. Blu-ray is *heavily* copy-protected, and breaking that isn't cheap. To rip the blu-ray and decode it properly, you'll need something like MakeMKV. That will rip DVDs fo' free, and will rip blu-ray's fo' free for 30 days, after which it will want you to pay them $50.

I had looked at Handbrake and seen Blu-ray listed under the ripping options. I didn't notice the note next to it saying "without copy protection." That would seem to be a very small subset.

stessier wrote:I attach the external HD to the USB port on the router.

As noted, you have to have the Plex server software running somewhere, and since that will most likely have to run on our desktop, I see no advantage to connecting the HD to the router.

The router claimed that attaching to the USB ports, I would be able to stream from any device. I understand now why that means any device would be able to see the drive, but Plex would not recognize that as a server. So is there anyway to stream from a Roku straight from a drive like that and skip Plex entirely? Not that I object to Plex - I'd just prefer not to leave my computer on all the time if I can avoid it.

And for what it's worth, folks can share plex servers as well, so it's possible for me to stream from your Plex server, and you to stream from my Plex server and stuff like that. There's some router magic to that, but it's fairly straightforward.

That could be useful.

stessier wrote:How much space does a ripped Blu-ray take?

In it's native 1080p? Generally 30-50 GB. I've found that the most sensible compromise to make is to rip the blu-ray, and then use Handbrake to drop it down to 720p using the "Apple TV 720p 30fps" setting. I am pretty sure there are Roku settings as well that you can use in Handbrake. Those files tend to be between 3 and 7 GB.

But..but...I just got a 4k TV! I'm gonna need a bigger HD.

I have no idea if Roku has an app that can just run video files that you can point too over a USB drive on the network. Even if that is possible, that's likely going to be a terrible user experience (short of the app duplicating all of the metadata fun that Plex does).

I don't care what kind of TV I had, I'd be loathe to encode above 720p. It's just so much data.

The "connect HD to router" thing just makes the content viewable across the network (i.e. a tiny file server). Plex actually intelligently transcode data on the fly and thus it's automatically adaptable to mobile, desktop, or any other solution you may have.

Roku does NOT stream any local files that I know, but then I have one of the earlier Rokus.

There are some NAS boxes on which you can install Plex if you want to have it on a box on your network and not on a full PC/server.

Z-Corn wrote:There are some NAS boxes on which you can install Plex if you want to have it on a box on your network and not on a full PC/server.

True - my old Synology has a Plex app available and I'm sure any of the more modern offerings by them, QNAP or a few other vendors can do the same.

The MacMini works well as a media server since it's small, silent and useless for much of anything else.

A little more help please.

I ripped a movie using MKV and have it in a folder. I then downloaded Plex and added a library that points to the folder. When I look in Plex, it says there are no items in the library, however on the activity screen, it said

2:08 PM Library scan complete: Extra information may still be downloading from the Internet
2:08 PM Scanning SUICIDE_SQUAD_EXTENDED_CUT\CERTIFICATE\BACKUP
2:08 PM Scanning SUICIDE_SQUAD_EXTENDED_CUT\CERTIFICATE
2:08 PM Scanning SUICIDE_SQUAD_EXTENDED_CUT\MAKEMKV\AACS\DUPLICATE
2:08 PM Scanning SUICIDE_SQUAD_EXTENDED_CUT\MAKEMKV\AACS
2:08 PM Scanning SUICIDE_SQUAD_EXTENDED_CUT\MAKEMKV\CMAP
2:08 PM Scanning SUICIDE_SQUAD_EXTENDED_CUT\MAKEMKV
2:08 PM Scanning SUICIDE_SQUAD_EXTENDED_CUT
2:08 PM Scanning the "Movies" section

Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? I don't see it downloading anything from the internet.

You know what, I think I figured it out. I think all I did was back up the Blu ray rather than making an MKV. Ooops.

Yep, that was the issue.

So after ripping the disc, these are all saved with the movie name and then Cut_000, Cut_001, Cut_002, etc. Will it play them in order or do I get to choose the order? I didn't see anything that would let it play a menu like on the blu-ray itself. Did I do something wrong, or is that just the way it is? Not complaining, just trying to understand.

Not sure what you are doing.

When I Rip a blu-ray with MakeMKV, it produces a single file with the .mkv extension. I then take that file and give it to Handbrake which I convert for Apple TV 720p - generating a single file of the same name with the .mp4 extension.

I then have a third utility called MyMeta which I give the .mp4 file too and it goes out on the internets and gets all the relevant metadata and saves it into the .mp4 file.

I copy that .mp4 file into my Plex Movies or TV Shows file.

Assuming you named the file the way that Plex wants you to name it, it will pick it up when you update the library. With Plex I should note that it's not necessary to add the metadata, I just do that so I can switch to something else someday that might need it. But you should name the files and organize them the way Plex tells you (Google "preparing media for Plex").

I should note that I only rip the movie track and the 5.1 English audio track to go with it. I don't bother with other audio tracks or captions. And I never bother with extras or any of that.

If you just ripped everything, then you've got way more than just the movie.

RunningMn9 wrote:I then have a third utility called MyMeta which I give the .mp4 file too and it goes out on the internets and gets all the relevant metadata and saves it into the .mp4 file.

Nice - I've been looking for a MetaData fetcher for Windows. I'm still using MetaZ on the MacMini but it hasn't been updated since 2013 and I'm fearful of the day a macOS update breaks it.

Thanks!

I really do wish Plex supported .iso or other formats that allowed for still using the menu system of DVD and Blu-Ray. A lot of what I rip is musical and like to be able to go right to certain tracks. I use another streaming box for those files so it all works out but that one has an internal HDD with finite space...unless...UNLESS I can add more...


New Project.

RunningMn9 wrote:Not sure what you are doing.

Isn't it obvious - neither do I!

When I Rip a blu-ray with MakeMKV, it produces a single file with the .mkv extension. I then take that file and give it to Handbrake which I convert for Apple TV 720p - generating a single file of the same name with the .mp4 extension.

I then have a third utility called MyMeta which I give the .mp4 file too and it goes out on the internets and gets all the relevant metadata and saves it into the .mp4 file.

I copy that .mp4 file into my Plex Movies or TV Shows file.

Assuming you named the file the way that Plex wants you to name it, it will pick it up when you update the library. With Plex I should note that it's not necessary to add the metadata, I just do that so I can switch to something else someday that might need it. But you should name the files and organize them the way Plex tells you (Google "preparing media for Plex").

Interesting. Yeah, I just ripped the whole disk because I had no idea what I was doing. The first track is 5 minutes of FBI warnings in a whole slew of languages. Good to know I can delete that one. The second track looks to be the movie and the rest appear to be some type of special features. I guess I thought I was going to get the menu like the Blu-ray, but I see that ain't happening.

Since it's only one movie, I'm going to just try streaming the mkv tonight and see how it looks. Maybe tomorrow I'll do your Handbrake thing and see if I can tell the difference.

FWIW, I investigated the NAS that can use Plex and it looks like the cheapest version that Plex says can stream 1080 without issue is about $300. Don't think I have to go there just yet, but if I ever hit the lottery...

One more question - what do you need the metadata for?

With Plex you don't need the metadata. Plex will go get it all again anyway. But since I'm using an Apple TV, it's not inconceivable to use iTunes for this, in which case it will want the metadata.

Z-Corn wrote:I really do wish Plex supported .iso or other formats that allowed for still using the menu system of DVD and Blu-Ray. A lot of what I rip is musical and like to be able to go right to certain tracks.

Why not rip the tracks?

Plex is pretty forgiving about file names for movies. TV shows have to be named more carefully, at least the start of the name (i.e. Show Name s01e01 ....). What's really a nightmare is dealing with specials and DVD extras. Plex wants all that in a season 0, (s00) which is pretty inconvenient for something like Doctor Who with so many seasons. Still haven't really figured out how to get my extras on there in an acceptable way.

I don't bother with traditional "extras" but specials seem to work out ok. Usually it's easy to figure out how to name those by going straight to thetvdb.org or whatever the main site Plex uses is and looking up the show. It will tell you how to name the specials.

It occasionally makes mistakes (the Office UK vs US). And shows like Firefly where you want the DVD order rather than the aired order require a little extra work, but most of the time it works perfectly.

Kasey Chang wrote:

Z-Corn wrote:I really do wish Plex supported .iso or other formats that allowed for still using the menu system of DVD and Blu-Ray. A lot of what I rip is musical and like to be able to go right to certain tracks.

Why not rip the tracks?

I could and have but then I don't like the way Plex jumbles them all together in one folder.

Z-Corn wrote:

Kasey Chang wrote:

Z-Corn wrote:I really do wish Plex supported .iso or other formats that allowed for still using the menu system of DVD and Blu-Ray. A lot of what I rip is musical and like to be able to go right to certain tracks.

Why not rip the tracks?

I could and have but then I don't like the way Plex jumbles them all together in one folder.

So manually rename them so they sort properly.

RunningMn9 wrote:I have no idea if Roku has an app that can just run video files that you can point too over a USB drive on the network. Even if that is possible, that's likely going to be a terrible user experience (short of the app duplicating all of the metadata fun that Plex does).

I don't care what kind of TV I had, I'd be loathe to encode above 720p. It's just so much data.

I just encode over night... I queue everything up and by the time I wake up, it's done.

Roku has a media player app built in. It's not as convenient as Plex though.

naednek wrote:I just encode over night... I queue everything up and by the time I wake up, it's done.

It's not the time to encode, it's the size of the encoded file that had me go with 720p. If I had a 4K TV, it might be different, but I don't. The difference between 1080p and 720p when streaming isn't worth the jump in footprint for the file.

A co-worked just dropped off a giant tub of DVDs for me to convert, mostly TV shows. This will take me weeks to rip and encode!

stessier wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:Not sure what you are doing.

Isn't it obvious - neither do I!

When I Rip a blu-ray with MakeMKV, it produces a single file with the .mkv extension. I then take that file and give it to Handbrake which I convert for Apple TV 720p - generating a single file of the same name with the .mp4 extension.

I then have a third utility called MyMeta which I give the .mp4 file too and it goes out on the internets and gets all the relevant metadata and saves it into the .mp4 file.

I copy that .mp4 file into my Plex Movies or TV Shows file.

Assuming you named the file the way that Plex wants you to name it, it will pick it up when you update the library. With Plex I should note that it's not necessary to add the metadata, I just do that so I can switch to something else someday that might need it. But you should name the files and organize them the way Plex tells you (Google "preparing media for Plex").

Interesting. Yeah, I just ripped the whole disk because I had no idea what I was doing. The first track is 5 minutes of FBI warnings in a whole slew of languages. Good to know I can delete that one. The second track looks to be the movie and the rest appear to be some type of special features. I guess I thought I was going to get the menu like the Blu-ray, but I see that ain't happening.

Since it's only one movie, I'm going to just try streaming the mkv tonight and see how it looks. Maybe tomorrow I'll do your Handbrake thing and see if I can tell the difference.

FWIW, I investigated the NAS that can use Plex and it looks like the cheapest version that Plex says can stream 1080 without issue is about $300. Don't think I have to go there just yet, but if I ever hit the lottery...

One more question - what do you need the metadata for?

This very cheap Seagate consumer NAS supports Plex:

http://www.techhive.com/article/3143649 ... -buck.html

But looking at Plex's support page, there are a lot of users with problem:

https://forums.plex.tv/categories/seagate

Western Digital's My Cloud NAS also has plex media server app:

http://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/an ... x?ID=12949

Haven't checked if it also has a lot of users with problem like the seagate one.

Price for WD My Cloud should be about the same as Seagate Personal Cloud.

But if you need transcoding, I don't think they're powerful enough to do it. If you rip your media from DVD/bluray and reencode yourself, you probably don't need Plex's transcoding feature.

EDITED to ADD:

Single bay WD My Cloud doesn't support installing Plex Media Server. So only the more expensive model are supported. This means the price will not be as cheap as Seagate Personal Cloud (single bay).

Frankly, I'd send the old PC, the ones too old for normal use, and send those off to act as Plex and Media servers. Hide them near your router and whatnot.