FreeNAS and Plex

[OneSlickGlide]

Hello everyone.

I'm very very new to all this. I have not done any networking in a very long time (10+ years). I'm looking to run Plex to stream all my pictures and videos (DVD and Blu-Ray) to my TV's throughout my house. Could possibly stream to 4 different TV's simultaneously. Mostly on Apple platform (iPhones, iPads, Apple TV's) so I would assume not a ton of transcoding but possibly some.

On top of storing all my media and being a media server, I also want to use my NAS as file backup with redundancy and I want to use it as my families personal cloud storage system.

I guess my main concern is... Will FreeNAS handle all of these task appropriately? I have read many threads in FreeNAS having issues with the Plex plug in. What's the truth with this?

Thanks for your input everyone. Just want to get my info in order and a good understanding before I build my system and start squiring hardware.

-OSG-

 

[RemyZ]

I am going the same route. My system is not fully built at the moment. I get the gist of what you are asking.FreeNas wont handle these tasks it will be the Plex Media Server backend plugin that is in a jail that will handle the tasks. The front end would be the Apple TV, iPhones and iPads asking PMS for the data. As long as you are following general guidelines for the build you should be fine. What I mean by that is hardwired connection for the NAS/Plex Server to the Router/Switch. Great Wifi Coverage throughout the house etc.
I have read those same forums and I think the bugs have been worked out since for new FreeNas/Plex builds.
If the source file on the FreeNas is compatible with the iPhones, IPads and apple TV's then no transcoding is needed. If not then your NAS/Plex Media Server will have to transcode to that device. Typically, the rule of thumb is a PassMark score of 2000 is good for 1 1080P stream to a device. So for example the Core i3 I bought will handle at least 2 simultaneous streams if it has to transcode.
So with that said just make sure your collection ( DVD's & Blurays) is encoded in a format that is compatible with all devices and you should be fine. Other than that my build wont be done until Mid January so I have no experience in the matter. Maybe someone else will chime in on that

 

[pirateghost]

I don't know what threads you are reading where people are having trouble with Plex. 99.99% of the time people have issues with Plex, it's because they are trying to change something that they don't understand our something that shouldn't be changed. I feel Plex is probably the most stable of all the plugins. Lol.

 

[RemyZ]

I don't know what threads you are reading where people are having trouble with Plex. 99.99% of the time people have issues with Plex, it's because they are trying to change something that they don't understand our something that shouldn't be changed. I feel Plex is probably the most stable of all the plugins. Lol.

To elaborate maybe those issues have to deal with permissions not being setup correctly. Or people trying to run FreeNas in a virtualization setup where Freenas doesnt have direct access to hardware. If you setup FreeNas as an OS which has direct access to hardware then you should be fine.

 

[mattbbpl]

I can't speak to Plex, but I'm using Emby (which is basically the same thing) to great effect and FreeNAS handles it like a champ.

 

[pirateghost]

I don't know why there would be permissions issues with Plex. It literally only needs read access to your media. The metadata is handled in its own database.

Plex is probably the most simple thing to get working in freenas and I have never seen issues with it that I didn't cause myself by trying things that it wasn't supposed to do.

 

[OneSlickGlide]

That's why I was inquiring. I didn't want to build a system, load everything up for my particular reason and then find out that it doesn't fully do what I need it to do.

Like I said. I'm very new to FreeNAS and I still have a lot of reading to do even for basic networking and storage as I've been out of it for so long.

Thanks for everyone's input.

 

[pirateghost]

I've been using freenas for years. The only plugin that gives me hiccups is crashplan. It takes me about 5 minutes to fix the issues after a crashplan update.

I have been running Plex for a long time and never had issues with it.

 

[danb35]

In the past, Plex was an enormous memory hog, at least for some of us. I've seen it exhaust my 32 GB of RAM, all the swap on the pool, and crash my server several times. Updates in the last year seem to have fixed this; I haven't had trouble with it for a year or more that I can recall.

As @pirateghost says, permissions for Plex as such shouldn't be a problem--it only needs to read your media. Where permissions become more of an issue is when dealing with CouchPotato/Sonarr/Headphones/SABNZBd/Transmission to grab all the media you want and process it.

 

[depasseg]

I haven't had any issues with the plex plugin. The only concern with plex (in general, not freenas specific), is the ability of the host to handle the transcoding load. If everything is streamed direct/original, then it's not an issue. But if you need to do some conversions, CPU performance is a big concern. Make sure you plan properly.

 

[OneSlickGlide]

Will do. Thanks everyone for the input.

I will definitely be doing some more research. I downloaded the FreeNAS user guide so I can read it through before I start.

I appreciate all the advice

 

[Raiz]

Is there any way to force Plex to transcode on my server rather than at the destination? I've got a pretty hefty processor and should be able to handle several streams at once on my FreeNAS server.

 

[pirateghost]

Is there any way to force Plex to transcode on my server rather than at the destination? I've got a pretty hefty processor and should be able to handle several streams at once on my FreeNAS server.

But that's what it does by default. That's why everyone recommends a good CPU on your server.

 

[depasseg]

Is there any way to force Plex to transcode on my server rather than at the destination?

That is the only way it works. The only way the server doesn't transcode is if you enable directstream and the network bandwidth setting is adequate.

 

[Raiz]

If directstream is enabled, how is the decision made which side transcodes?

 

[pirateghost]

If directstream is enabled, how is the decision made which side transcodes?

The client doesn't transcode.

 

[RemyZ]

cant seem to find a list.Does anyone know if any clients support h.265 compression in addition to the older h.264. I have both Amazon firestick and Version 1 Google chrome stick but doesnt look like they support it.

Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk

 

[Jailer]

H.265 is complicated but it's moot, Plex doesn't support direct streaming of h.265 video yet and there is no idea when it will be supported.

 

[nightshade00013]

I actually have a couple h265 video's and they seem to work ok with plex so far. Will play in a browser, in the Plex app on my LG smart tv and my cell phone plex app. The two movies I have are mp4 containers but 265 codec. Seems to work fine with transcoding as well.

 

[RemyZ]

Yea plex has added support for h.265.Details listed here
http://www.techhive.com/article/299...overhauls-plexs-home-theater-pc-software.html

Just need to know what clients support it without having me having to buy a front end htpc

Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk