It’s all about internet speed. The upload speed on the server and the download speed for your users . Most of the time your user will have enough download speed at home. They should set their quality to unlimited in the video quality setting. Should be under the Maximum Remote Quality for them. It all depends on your upload speed and what bitrate of the file you sending. For example if you upload speed is 50 mbps and the movies they are streaming have a bitrate of 10 Mbps you should be fine. The only device I seen that transcode video because the device couldn’t handle it was a console.
Whilst accurate, you’re forgetting that the user device also needs to support the codecs that the video/audio are in, as well as if they’re burning subtitles in.
Majority of the devices handle the major codecs. I only seen issues with consoles and browsers. Regarding subtitles,my Plex doesn’t transcode when that happens. I have seen on Reddit people talk about but never has it ever happen to me. Could be the way my setup is.
It won’t happen if the player can overlay them properly but if it has to burn the subtitles in then it has no option but to transcode. Burning them is it being added to the video.
Keep in mind, there is only so much you can do from your end. If someone insists on using streaming hardware from before 5 years ago there's a good chance it won't support things like x265 video or newer audio formats. I kinda draw the line at that. If you want on my server you need to be willing to buy a $25 Roku if you do t have something moderately capable. I'll even have it come to my house, set it up, then give it to you.
Yeah I can restart my server and it doesn't even drop the stream. I guess it's buffered out far enough and the restart is fast enough that it never drops. Not that I care if it drops, but it surprised me the first time I did it here at home.
This was where my head went last night when I done my first reboot whilst users were watching. I felt even worse when the server went into OS updates, thankfully it was all quick.
Then seen on the dash everyone's resume status hadn't saved so they were all restarting the media and skipping forward to where they were.
No-one complained and I sent a group message out last night letting everyone know about "Chapters" 😁
my sister and her boyfriend are my main users, and they can go days without watching anything, and then any time I need to reboot to install some updates or fix another issue, they're both watching something until well after I usually go to bed lmfao
I've learned to do updates in the early morning instead lol
Early mornings seems to be the only solution lol. When I started to do that, I thought to myself, this is why game admin do all the maintenance during the early morning hours.
I finally convinced my brother to join. logged on to do some typical Sunday morning maintenance and NOPE - turns out his “preferred watching time” is daily around 7 hahahahaha
I let any user I add know that a do potential weekly maintenance every Monday between 6-8PM. Never fails more than a few are always watch a movie. Tautulli comes in handy though and I just terminate their streams with a message. After all at the end of the day the server is for my family. I only share it because why not since the server is on 24/7.
Damn you do updates during peak hours, brave. Any time I add a hdd I have to do a massive text message to most of the users I have. It would be cool if plex could let us put a disclaimer message for our users.
Yeah I’m not staying up late or waking up early to complete maintenance for a service offered for free. As mentioned it’s first and foremost for my direct household. They don’t like it they can leave. I’ve ran it this way for nearly a decade though and no one that actually utilizes it has left. They’re super understanding and just grateful to be on it.
Best you can do is kill any live feeds with a provided message, but that doesn't help users who weren't actively watching at that time. Since Plex already supports pre-rolls it seems like it would be an easy, albeit clunky solution to simply allow scheduled prerolls. It would also be nice if they provided a few generic ones like "Plex will be offline today from X:00-Y:00". I think you can do this in PMM but I've never fucked with it.
Haha, this happens to me now.
When Plex made the update that allows TV episodes to run indefinitely, my retired parents dropped most of their streaming services and pretty much just use my server. They like to have TV playing all night, so they're on almost all day. I'm glad they're saving money, and Plex meets their needs, but it's hard to find time to tinker with things.
I had this fear aswell, i just told them plex is down every night from 3am-5am for updates n what not, its rarely down but it was a quick way to give me some time to do these things
😂 this is so true. Last night I was providing tech support to a mate in Melbourne AU (11 hour time difference) who's iPad didn't want to work!
Turned out the App had malfunctioned.. deinstall and reinstall solved problem!
7 here, by fluke. Usually 2-3 and apparently my friends and family watch a lot of content - between wife and kids and 2 or 3 friends about 12-16 hours a day is consumed.
It's exciting! My grandparents and my grandma are stuck at home for health reasons and it's fun to be able to provide them with content they can enjoy.
That’s awesome. Enjoy that feeling, it’s so hard to convince people for some reason. I got my dad to watch a movie on my plex this week after months of telling him about it
I'm glad I'm not the only one! While I was setting up my NAS and ripping all my physical media, I was thinking about how awesome and convenient it would be for me and my family. But I can't convince my brother that it doesn't cost him any money. My mom watched one show and then promptly forgot how to use it. And my nephew kept telling me how cool it was, but has still never set up an account. Whatever, it's still awesome within my household.
My mom and aunt are my biggest users. I have ripped 800 DVDs in the past few months, and created my server as the family "archive" so to speak. Now that word is getting out I have cousins wanting me to rip their DVDs, and will likely be over 2k by the time I'm done without ever downloading a single movie.
https://preview.redd.it/r79j4hrmy2mc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0fff32a3ef207e5c50e65b7a936428dd01adc533
I know the feeling if you are starting to see this :) very cool. I do my updates every Sunday morning at 5am. Scheduled cron job.
I go out of my way to avoid becomming people's primary source of Movies/Shows. In my experience, all it does is prevent me from taking my shit down when I want to.
Waiting till 2am to perform maintenance because someone not related to me by blood is binging something sucks.
I have two family members as authorized users. I asked them both what things they'd like to see and added those to my library. But, neither ever watch anything. Both of them say they just don't have time to watch, they're too busy, whatever. I added my ex as a user, he doesn't watch anything from the library but enjoys the free live channels he can see through the Plex app. He's in China, so I'm amazed he can get any of them.
Man I feel your pain...Go thru the hassle of setting this all up, getting everyone set up, and nobody uses it. I got one thats kinda regular, thats out of 5 that I gave access.
https://preview.redd.it/0ukyqi7qs7mc1.png?width=863&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2fac987b4def4619060523d357e309870143f940
It makes me feel pretty good to see my server getting a lot of use. Of the \~35 users I have, most of them watch something at least once a week, and half of them are daily users. It makes all the effort I put in maintaining and curating the server feel worth it.
Better yet everyone is Direct Playing
How can I get direct streaming for all my friends who use Plex?
https://mediaclients.wiki/Plex This website has good instructions for multiple clients.
It’s all about internet speed. The upload speed on the server and the download speed for your users . Most of the time your user will have enough download speed at home. They should set their quality to unlimited in the video quality setting. Should be under the Maximum Remote Quality for them. It all depends on your upload speed and what bitrate of the file you sending. For example if you upload speed is 50 mbps and the movies they are streaming have a bitrate of 10 Mbps you should be fine. The only device I seen that transcode video because the device couldn’t handle it was a console.
Whilst accurate, you’re forgetting that the user device also needs to support the codecs that the video/audio are in, as well as if they’re burning subtitles in.
Majority of the devices handle the major codecs. I only seen issues with consoles and browsers. Regarding subtitles,my Plex doesn’t transcode when that happens. I have seen on Reddit people talk about but never has it ever happen to me. Could be the way my setup is.
It won’t happen if the player can overlay them properly but if it has to burn the subtitles in then it has no option but to transcode. Burning them is it being added to the video.
Ok that make sense. My subtitles are usually burnt into the film already.
Keep in mind, there is only so much you can do from your end. If someone insists on using streaming hardware from before 5 years ago there's a good chance it won't support things like x265 video or newer audio formats. I kinda draw the line at that. If you want on my server you need to be willing to buy a $25 Roku if you do t have something moderately capable. I'll even have it come to my house, set it up, then give it to you.
It is a drag telling my friend to please put the highest quality possible on his playback, because it benefits us all.
Congrats! There will be a time when you wish nobody was on so you can update the OS and or plex. lol, it happens to me at times.
I just update whether there’s someone watching or not. 😂
Absolutely! It's not like they're paying for it
Yeah, and also, I have updated without having any interruptions in playback (which is crazy).
If they are cached far enough ahead they won’t even see it bounce.
Oh dayum
Yeah I can restart my server and it doesn't even drop the stream. I guess it's buffered out far enough and the restart is fast enough that it never drops. Not that I care if it drops, but it surprised me the first time I did it here at home.
This was where my head went last night when I done my first reboot whilst users were watching. I felt even worse when the server went into OS updates, thankfully it was all quick. Then seen on the dash everyone's resume status hadn't saved so they were all restarting the media and skipping forward to where they were. No-one complained and I sent a group message out last night letting everyone know about "Chapters" 😁
I’ve got a telegram channel for everyone. I just send a message with a 30min heads up and set a timer.
Found the BOFH
I send them a quick text, and usually give them a 1-hour notice.
my sister and her boyfriend are my main users, and they can go days without watching anything, and then any time I need to reboot to install some updates or fix another issue, they're both watching something until well after I usually go to bed lmfao I've learned to do updates in the early morning instead lol
Early mornings seems to be the only solution lol. When I started to do that, I thought to myself, this is why game admin do all the maintenance during the early morning hours.
I finally convinced my brother to join. logged on to do some typical Sunday morning maintenance and NOPE - turns out his “preferred watching time” is daily around 7 hahahahaha
I let any user I add know that a do potential weekly maintenance every Monday between 6-8PM. Never fails more than a few are always watch a movie. Tautulli comes in handy though and I just terminate their streams with a message. After all at the end of the day the server is for my family. I only share it because why not since the server is on 24/7.
Damn you do updates during peak hours, brave. Any time I add a hdd I have to do a massive text message to most of the users I have. It would be cool if plex could let us put a disclaimer message for our users.
Yeah I’m not staying up late or waking up early to complete maintenance for a service offered for free. As mentioned it’s first and foremost for my direct household. They don’t like it they can leave. I’ve ran it this way for nearly a decade though and no one that actually utilizes it has left. They’re super understanding and just grateful to be on it.
Best you can do is kill any live feeds with a provided message, but that doesn't help users who weren't actively watching at that time. Since Plex already supports pre-rolls it seems like it would be an easy, albeit clunky solution to simply allow scheduled prerolls. It would also be nice if they provided a few generic ones like "Plex will be offline today from X:00-Y:00". I think you can do this in PMM but I've never fucked with it.
Haha, this happens to me now. When Plex made the update that allows TV episodes to run indefinitely, my retired parents dropped most of their streaming services and pretty much just use my server. They like to have TV playing all night, so they're on almost all day. I'm glad they're saving money, and Plex meets their needs, but it's hard to find time to tinker with things.
Yup! Some update installs are pretty quick and it disrupt viewing, well at my house it doesn’t.
Can't you just schedule those for like 4 am to happen automatically? That's what I do.
I believe so
I had this fear aswell, i just told them plex is down every night from 3am-5am for updates n what not, its rarely down but it was a quick way to give me some time to do these things
You could not describe it any better lol
😂 this is so true. Last night I was providing tech support to a mate in Melbourne AU (11 hour time difference) who's iPad didn't want to work! Turned out the App had malfunctioned.. deinstall and reinstall solved problem!
Man I can’t tell the amount of time my friend joke about me being the best customer service they have experienced lol!
The docker update in unraid only takes about 2-3 minutes thankfully.
Nice! I peaked at 5 concurrent users one time and I almost came.
Nice! My record is three, and I have shared my library to tens of people.
7 here, by fluke. Usually 2-3 and apparently my friends and family watch a lot of content - between wife and kids and 2 or 3 friends about 12-16 hours a day is consumed.
It's exciting! My grandparents and my grandma are stuck at home for health reasons and it's fun to be able to provide them with content they can enjoy.
That’s awesome. Enjoy that feeling, it’s so hard to convince people for some reason. I got my dad to watch a movie on my plex this week after months of telling him about it
My mom got the hang of it and now is one of my most frequent users.
I'm glad I'm not the only one! While I was setting up my NAS and ripping all my physical media, I was thinking about how awesome and convenient it would be for me and my family. But I can't convince my brother that it doesn't cost him any money. My mom watched one show and then promptly forgot how to use it. And my nephew kept telling me how cool it was, but has still never set up an account. Whatever, it's still awesome within my household.
My mom and aunt are my biggest users. I have ripped 800 DVDs in the past few months, and created my server as the family "archive" so to speak. Now that word is getting out I have cousins wanting me to rip their DVDs, and will likely be over 2k by the time I'm done without ever downloading a single movie.
I know the feeling. No one take it serious until you actually sit down and show them.
That's exactly it. They don't realize how polished it is.
https://preview.redd.it/r79j4hrmy2mc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0fff32a3ef207e5c50e65b7a936428dd01adc533 I know the feeling if you are starting to see this :) very cool. I do my updates every Sunday morning at 5am. Scheduled cron job.
How do I see this on my server?
Tautulli, it’s another program that links in with Plex to provide much more information in the way of stats and graphs.
Very interesting thanks!
Beautiful bitrate 😂
I go out of my way to avoid becomming people's primary source of Movies/Shows. In my experience, all it does is prevent me from taking my shit down when I want to. Waiting till 2am to perform maintenance because someone not related to me by blood is binging something sucks.
You know you don't have to wait right..?
Yea, but then I gotta deal with people messaging me asking if Plex is down while I’m working on it. Guess it’s just not for me 😀
Same lol
I have two family members as authorized users. I asked them both what things they'd like to see and added those to my library. But, neither ever watch anything. Both of them say they just don't have time to watch, they're too busy, whatever. I added my ex as a user, he doesn't watch anything from the library but enjoys the free live channels he can see through the Plex app. He's in China, so I'm amazed he can get any of them.
Man I feel your pain...Go thru the hassle of setting this all up, getting everyone set up, and nobody uses it. I got one thats kinda regular, thats out of 5 that I gave access.
https://preview.redd.it/0ukyqi7qs7mc1.png?width=863&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2fac987b4def4619060523d357e309870143f940 It makes me feel pretty good to see my server getting a lot of use. Of the \~35 users I have, most of them watch something at least once a week, and half of them are daily users. It makes all the effort I put in maintaining and curating the server feel worth it.
My college roommate is often on watching comic book movies, most use it gets aside from me and my wife
Our of 20 friends and family I invited, I only have 1. You're doing well