Plex & DS414 Streaming Issue

tylerdurden94

Hey folks quick question, started using Plex recently and thought it was super handy as I could share my catalogue with friends & vice versa, but I recently found out that Plex & Synology DS414 isn't very good when it comes to streaming.

One of my friends tried to stream from it but got an error message something all the lines of "this server isn't powerful enough" was down in his house on Saturday and was trying to see what would/wouldn't work, he did manage to get a DVD rip of a movie to play and I was messing around & some 720p movies would stream while others wouldn't, tv shows also would/wouldn't play Silicon Valley season 2 720p wouldn't but The Wire in HD would, any ideas why? Maybe the way things are encoded or something?

Could stream from the Plex app (Android) to a Chromecast in another friends house which seemed to work perfect with HD movies that wouldn't play from my NAS through the Plex web interface.

AndersLimpar

That NAS isn't powerful enough to encode much so anything that needs transcoding won't work unfortunately.

I have the same NAS myself and I ended up building a server PC and just using the NAS for storage.

tylerdurden94

AndersLimpar wrote: »

That NAS isn't powerful enough to encode much so anything that needs transcoding won't work unfortunately.

I have the same NAS myself and I ended up building a server PC and just using the NAS for storage.

How do I go about finding out what does/doesn't need transcoding? If I can do can just source suitable quality releases. Am thinking about maybe getting a HP Microserver and using that for media and using my NAS for main storage (16tb).

Ste-

tylerdurden94 wrote: »

How do I go about finding out what does/doesn't need transcoding? If I can do can just source suitable quality releases. Am thinking about maybe getting a HP Microserver and using that for media and using my NAS for main storage (16tb).

That depends on the client conencting to the server.
For example a smart tv may not play mkv and will need transacoding but an instance of Kodi will most likely play everything so no transcoding will be needed.

AndersLimpar

Ste- wrote: »

That depends on the client conencting to the server.
For example a smart tv may not play mkv and will need transacoding but an instance of Kodi will most likely play everything so no transcoding will be needed.

But with Kodi the media will need to be local and you will need it on every device whereas with Plex the server does all the grunt so your device can play it.

Plex also allows you to play your media anywhere whereas with Kodi it needs to be local.

Most media will require some kind of transcoding be it audio or video depending on the device you are trying to play it on. The micro server is a good idea. I built a HTPC for <€150 if you wanted to go down that route and it has a Pentium G3258 inside it. I got all the bits on adverts second hand and it can transcode at least 3 720p streams at the same time no bother.

Johnboy1951

AndersLimpar wrote: »

But with Kodi the media will need to be local and you will need it on every device whereas with Plex the server does all the grunt so your device can play it.

Kodi streams from a server.

Plex also allows you to play your media anywhere whereas with Kodi it needs to be local.

Most media will require some kind of transcoding be it audio or video depending on the device you are trying to play it on. The micro server is a good idea. I built a HTPC for <€150 if you wanted to go down that route and it has a Pentium G3258 inside it. I got all the bits on adverts second hand and it can transcode at least 3 720p streams at the same time no bother.

AndersLimpar

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Kodi streams from a server.

Locally

Johnboy1951

AndersLimpar wrote: »

Locally

Ta, I never had reason to try it

I see there is a PlexBMC plugin for Kodi.

Any comment on that?

AndersLimpar

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Ta, I never had reason to try it

I see there is a PlexBMC plugin for Kodi.

Any comment on that?

Nope!

I dont use Kodi at all, I find it too clunky

mass_debater

AndersLimpar wrote: »

But with Kodi the media will need to be local and you will need it on every device whereas with Plex the server does all the grunt so your device can play it.

Kodi will connect to and stream from network and remote shares (if you have decent bandwidth). Because there's no transcoding the bandwidth use will be a lot higher. Kodi will be much lighter on resources on the server delivering the content as it will be just file transfer barely using the CPU. Plex has the advantage of being lighter on the frontend but requires a hefty backend server setup. I have a HP Proliant N54L and I wasn't happy with the performance I was getting transcoding Plex to a HTPC so I use Kodi on the HTPC and samba shares (Windows network drives).

Dravokivich

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Ta, I never had reason to try it

I see there is a PlexBMC plugin for Kodi.

Any comment on that?

No point on it as it's very dependant on skins being compatible.

Was the same thing for MediaBrowser. But with their rebrand to Emby, they've also changed the way their Addon for Kodi works. It pretty much functions as a media management backend that'll update the database of the Kodi Client with the content of the Emby Server (TV Shows/Movies/Music).

Using the beta of that myself. I was initially using MYSQL to act as a database, but it's just handier with Emby. Less setup needed in the .xmls for Source and advanced settings.

I've been down the Plex route myself for a while and just didn't really see the point in it at all. The only usefull "apps" or "Addons" of any sort where in the Unsupported Appstore. Which were prone to breaking.