You can also stream 4K content. Most Macs will clear these hurdles easily my 2012 Mac mini runs Plex like a champ.Hey everyone, just thought I'd put this up here after reading a syslog by another forum member and realizing a repeating pattern I've seen here where folks decide to let Plex create temporary files for transcoding on an array or cache device instead of in RAM.Plex includes built-in tools that convert non-natively supported files, such as DTS, to a usable format. To set Plex up as a basic media server, you'll need: An always-on, Internet-connected Mac running Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks or later, with an Intel Core i3 processor or faster, and 2GB of RAM or more. How to install Plex on a Mac.
Optimize Video Format Size For Plex Software Provides SystemMany write operations occur to the storage medium used for transcoding, and when using an SSD specifically, this can cause unnecessary wear and tear that would lead to SSD burnouts happening more quickly than is necessary. Screen resolution, 1280 x 1024 with 24-bit true-color mode.In short, transcoding is both CPU and IO intensive. In some cases it can be a few GB.Why should I move transcoding into RAM? What do I gain?Bio-Plex Manager software provides system control, validation, calibration, data acquisition. For Blu Ray, HD audio takes a lot of space. If Plex dropped it down to 2 or 3GB, you'd see a big difference. A 17GB video is pretty high quality as far as I am concerned so likely hard to tell the difference.Bottom line: If you have 4GB or less of total RAM on your system, you may have to tweak settings based on how many different streams you intend on transcoding simultaneously. In addition, there are other settings you can tweak to transcoding that would impact this number including how many second of transcoding should occur in advance of being played. The quality of the source content shouldn't matter, only the bitrate to which you are transcoding. RAM isn't subject to "burn out" from usage like an SSD would be, and transcoding doesn't need nearly as much space in memory to perform as some would think.A single stream of video content transcoded to 12mbps on my test system took up 430MB on the root ram filesystem. From there, click the wrench in the top right corner of the interface to get to settings. From here, add a new volume mapping:Click "Apply" and the container will be started with the new mapping.Step 2: Changing the Plex Media Server to use the new transcode directoryConnect to the Plex web interface from a browser (e.g. One is to the Docker Container you are running and the other is a setting from within the Plex web client itself.Step 1: Changing your Plex Container PropertiesFrom within the webGui, click on "Docker" and click on the name of the PlexMediaServer container. By your own stats you're only looking at writing 430mb to the SSD. I can certainly see the benefits in some cases, but I would disagree that SSD wear is of any real concern. You can tweak some of the other settings if desired to see if that improves your media streaming experience.Hmmm an interesting think piece. Type "/transcode" in there and click apply and you're all set. On the left, you should see a setting called "Transcoder." Clicking on that and then clicking the "Show Advanced" button will reveal the magical setting that let's you redirect the transcoding directory. Soundboard software for macAll I can say is that I personally have yet to have an issue from doing it this way and I've been doing this pretty much since Docker was implemented in beta 6. I'll concede that this may or may not be a big deal, but no one can dispute the fact that cells on flash memory do suffer from endurance wear and will eventually burn out whereas RAM does not.As far as people having issues, I haven't researched anything on Plex forums or otherwise regarding that. This is just the first link I found in a google search of "plex /tmp ram" Good write up. But based on 1PB = 104,8576GB that means we can push a 127GB stream, non-stop, for 8256 days, or 22.6 years.I mean sure, there are other write operations going on our SSD's but I think it is fair to say even if we doubled, or tripled our daily SSD write throughput we're still safe from hitting the endurance limits.My real concern with transcoding to RAM is that pushing three or four simultaneous transcoded streams might stretch the memory limits of some people, though it is unlikely for most.I will add that even in the Plex forums there are discussions about dealing with /tmp (iirc?) writing to ram instead of disc and being a problem. Guess it depends on the size of your family. I don't know how many folks out there ever have 4 concurrent streams in their home. If you don't have enough RAM, don't do this, or try tweaking settings. Also, the recommendation in there about "making it as large as your largest piece of media" is just nonsense. I don't think that was a statement against using /tmp in general, but just one guys issue. I also have 16-32GB of RAM in every system I own, so I'm "RAM rich" and don't worry about the # of streams.Oh, and you should probably read through that link you posted. You'll also see discussions about using ramfs vs tmpfs (iirc) and the possibility of rollover into swap if you run out of ram etc etc. For sure, I'm glad to see you posting the method, regardless of use case, because it means Limetech is "on it" with regards to plexArchdraft: if you look at the link / search term I posted you'll see that it does indeed apply as an alternative method for general linux install. Change for change sake and all that. I just don't know that it is enough to matter or to drive change absent other benefits. Others, like yours, had success though they generally admitted to not finding much benefit (usually related to stream initiation speed which was their goal).Its not a horrible idea, and you are right flash does eventually wear out. While you'd have to be doing some pretty intense stuff, it is possible.And at the end of the day, flash based memory will always eventually suffer burnouts. In any case, it doesn't hurt to have options so I can't argue with that.If you don't have an SSD or want to limit IO contention to the device used for transcoding, this tweak could help.Even on an SSD, if you have a bunch of VMs or containers all running on the same device and if they are doing lots of IO work, this could impact performance in those instances. They were also usually failures due to poor firmware and not wear of the actual chips. Sure there were some models known for having problems OCZ but even those were over blown anecdotes versus actual data.
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