Plex transcoding was once the issue, now it may well prevent terabytes of storage
Back within the day, we did all the pieces we may to keep away from transcoding in our Plex libraries. The typical residence server’s {hardware} was very weak, so transcoding turned a easy playback request right into a unending buffering nightmare. But now that even low-cost PCs can transcode video with ease, it is develop into a surprisingly helpful trick for saving storage with out having to purchase extra storage drives.
Weak CPUs made real-time video transcoding painfully sluggish
The outdated Plex downside
Back when proudly owning a Plex server was nonetheless a comparatively area of interest passion, transcoding was an costly course of. Plex Media Server’s hardware-transcoding assist arrived as a preview in late 2016 and was launched in a restricted launch in early 2017, so for a very long time, we needed to depend on software program transcoding to deal with all the pieces. This was a particularly hardware-taxing course of; a single 1080p stream may eat a considerable amount of processing energy on a modest server.
To offer you a tough concept of simply how tough transcoding was, Plex recommends a CPU with a minimum 2,000 PassMark score to transcode a single 1080p 10 Mbps H.264 stream. The Intel Core i3-3210 roughly corresponds to that requirement with its 2,230 PassMark score, nevertheless it wasn’t precisely an ultra-budget client processor, because it launched in 2013 at an MSRP of $117, which is round $168 at this time after inflation.
Many folks did not even run this processor of their Plex server, although. Low-power client NAS {hardware} and price range PCs used for servers have been usually fairly low-cost and easily could not deal with transcoding on the fly.
So, to bypass the fixed buffering points, particularly in case your Plex server was being utilized by a number of customers concurrently, the overall recommendation was to pre-transcode the content material earlier than it was served. A superb goal that supported Direct Play for a lot of shopper units was a mix of an MP4 container, H.264 video, and AAC audio.
To transcode the video, you had just a few choices: you may use HandBrake or FFmpeg manually, or, later, the Media Optimizer characteristic that Plex added straight to bypass on-the-fly transcoding points, although the characteristic had some limitations of its personal.
The downside with this complete pre-transcoding course of was that it was type of sluggish and induced excessive energy draw and warmth till the transcode completed.
If you saved the unique file together with the pre-transcoded one, you would be losing a little bit of area. But since storage was comparatively low-cost, it made sense, and for those who had sluggish {hardware}, it was essentially the most viable answer.
But for individuals who had highly effective i7 and Xeon processors that have been able to doubtlessly transcoding a number of video streams on the fly, re-encoding was generally seen as a waste of time and energy.
Cheap {hardware} made transcoding virtually trivial, whereas storage acquired drastically costlier
The system acquired flipped on its head
Transcoding video on the fly hasn’t been a lot of a difficulty in years. Ever since Plex added hardware-accelerated transcoding, Intel processors with Quick Sync Video (QSV) assist have been making quick work of it.
In case you’ve got by no means heard of Intel Quick Sync Video, it is a devoted video-processing engine that Intel began including to its processors with the second-generation Sandy Bridge processors in 2011. It’s closely optimized for video transcoding, and offloads a lot of the work from the processor’s CPU cores, making transcoding a lot much less demanding.
Like all the pieces else in expertise, Quick Sync improved over time, making on-the-fly transcoding work even higher on newer processors. Today, a easy Intel N100 chip that is optimized for low energy draw and does not have a lot uncooked energy can deal with widespread 4K HEVC transcoding workloads with ease, all because of Quick Sync Video.
To offer you a real-world instance of this Quick Sync magic, earlier than I upgraded my media server to a mini PC with an Intel Core 3 304 (which itself is comparatively low-cost and blasts via transcodes), I ran an old laptop with an Intel Core i3-7200U and was capable of transcode 4K video on the fly.
It wasn’t as quick as my new mini PC, nevertheless it did not truly stutter or drop frames till I attempted skipping via the video, and even that solely occurred at a better bitrate.
Unfortunately, whereas this highly effective transcoding-capable {hardware} has gotten cheaper with time, the identical cannot be stated for storage. Hard drives have gone up considerably in worth from their historic lows, making the outdated recommendation to easily purchase extra storage more and more costly.
This huge enhance in storage prices has made Plex customers look to re-encoding as soon as once more, however this time with a totally completely different aim in thoughts: decreasing the file dimension of the content material itself.
Re-encoding is not nearly avoiding transcoding; it may well save terabytes of storage
Modern compression makes library-wide re-encoding well worth the effort
Pre-transcoding was once a crutch for underpowered server {hardware}; at this time, re-encoding could be an effective way to shave hundreds of gigabytes off your information with out drastically hurting the visuals.
The method it really works is surprisingly easy: Loads of content material from the 2000s and 2010s was encoded utilizing older, much less environment friendly codecs, like H.262 (MPEG-2) or H.264 (AVC). These codecs usually require a better bitrate to realize related visible high quality to extra fashionable codecs like H.265 and, extra lately, AV1.
So, a straightforward option to minimize the file dimension by 20 to 80%, relying on the precise video content material, bitrate, and numerous different properties, is to re-encode it to H.265.
I re-encoded my library just a few days in the past and squeezed an extra terabyte from my storage, simply by establishing a move in Tdarr and operating it for a day on my mini PC, barely utilizing any electrical energy within the course of because of Quick Sync. Loads of my content material was compressed by 50–70%, and I could not discover any visible variations between the unique and newly re-encoded content material.
You’d assume that you simply would possibly wish to maintain H.264 round for compatibility causes, however many fashionable shopper units, together with laptops, good TVs, and smartphones, support H.265 (HEVC) playback via {hardware} decoding. So, by re-encoding your library, you are doubtlessly releasing up an enormous quantity of space for storing for $0 and some hours of processing energy.
Your Plex library does not should be optimized for each possible customer
It’s 2026, and numerous units now assist H.265 playback with out problem, so there aren’t many drawbacks to re-encoding your whole library to the extra environment friendly format.
However, must you ever come throughout a playback problem on a shopper gadget, like an older streaming field that lacks H.265 assist, your server can often do the heavy lifting for you and transcode it right into a format that the gadget can use, successfully flipping the outdated recommendation on its head.
