I agree with JDM, you would be better off obtaining proper 1080p copies of your media versus “optimizing” the 4K files. But to answer your permissions question, if you followed JDM’s guide above to the letter, the NFS exports from unraid are exported in read only mode.
It is possible to update the unraid export settings to give your Plex server read/write access on a share by share basis. When you set the NFS security to Private, a new setting, Rules showed up. If you enter the IP address of the Plex server, followed by (rw), the server will be able to write to the share, example 192.168.1.10(rw). You can add additional IPs separated by spaces, example 192.168.1.10(rw) 192.168.1.20(rw). One last note, when you specify IPs in this way, they are the only IPs that can access that NFS export. If you want other systems to be able to access the NFS exports, you will need to add *(ro) after the last IP.
Thanks for the comments and recommendations. I’ll seek out 1080p content. I suppose the best bet is to create a new 4K only share that doesn’t get shared to outside folks.
Snagged a HP Pavilion 590-p0033w with the i3-8100. I’m not planning on using this for anything else besides Plex Media Server. Do I need to install unraid or can I just install Ubuntu?
Before looking at this guide I added an open box Nvidia Geforce 1660 6 GB to my Windows box with a 4th gen I5 and 32 GB of ram that doubles as a Hyper-V box with a few light Windows and Linux VMs. This either works and has 100% HW transcoding, or it has tons of issues, way to finicky for the amount of us on my Plex server.
I don’t currently want to swap that box to a different hypervisor/core OS so I plan on transferring my Plex server data and running to Microcenter, returning the 1660 and picking up an I3-9100 and an open box Gigabyte Z390I ITX motherboard and using some extra 16 GB sticks of DDR4 and an SSD I have laying around to setup Ubuntu with IQS according to your post.
Is there anything I need to be wary of with a 9th gen I3 4 core? I saw that you mentioned that the IGU in say a 9th gen I3 vs the top end 9th gen I7 is either none or minimal and it only changes the CPU power that comes into play. I’d imagine 4 cores at 4.2 Ghz should be plenty on a dedicated Ubuntu Plex box.
Thanks for this awesome guide! I’ve been running a Plex server for 6+ years and every iteration has worked but compared to how well it could be running based off your guide, they’ve been running very poorly, excited to have a snappy Plex server!
After getting my media library permissions resetup for NFS/Linux from Windows/NTFS/SMB I’ve got things running great, but I’m not sure if I’m actually using Intel Quick Sync or not. despite all videos showing (HW) next to both Encode and Decode. As a note I am running Ubuntu 19.04 SERVER version, rather than Desktop with the GUI.
Below is a screenshot of some random 4k > 1080P transcodes and a single 1080 > 480 on my cell phone WAN. It looks like my CPU is getting pretty higher there and I notice that in the Process Command that it shows -hwaccel: 0, does this look like it’s working correctly? Again the performance is amazing, 0 sutters/buffering pauses, buffers super quickly and video looks very good.
So I have a huge 4k library, no possible to get 1080p replacement. What would b my best build for a plex server? Currently im running docker in unraid with 1050ti passthrough for he recode. I use emby more than plex btw.
Your’re transcoding multiple 4K streams, which strips HDR in Plex and does not tone map correctly.
Transcoding 4K not only looks awful, but it is a huge resource hog.
Stop sharing out your 4K content, only share out 1080p.
Got Ubuntu installed on the HP 590 (i3 8100, 500GB NVME). Getting plex functioning properly on Ubuntu wasn’t that hard but I still have a lot to learn about this. I’m having so many issues with my Win10 PC and sharing the drvies with my media across the network. I followed multiple guides and can’t get access on other PC’s. Probably just going to do a NAS Killer build and hopefully I’ll have more luck with FreeNAS/ZFS.
I could get 14 1080p ~10MB/s hardware transcodes to my gaming PC before maxing out on gigabit ethernet. The i3-8100 was sitting at around 40% usage. I used a sample x264 1080p 10-bit 55MB/s video as my test.
Thanks for the reply, I don’t have much of a 4k library, I mainly just wanted to see if it could be done. But if a better way of testing capacity is 1080p to 720p transcodes, I’ll try that and see what I can get to.
I use 4k transcodes to test, but they are mainly just limited by the videoram which isnt really stressing the encoder. I think that I have seen reports that quicksync can handle 4 4k->1080P transcodes on the HD530 with most of the recommendations here are better than that.
I’m looking to upgrade my current Plex server to one of the listed QuickSync options in this post (very helpful guide by the way!), and have a few questions.
I am fairly new at this, and plan on buying one of the 8th generation desktops in the recommendations, probably the i3-8100 HP Pavillion 590-p0033w. My media collection is fairly small currently (around 1.25TB, almost all 1080p content, no 4k with no plans for any) and stored on an older Western Digital external hard drive. Based on the guide, it seems like it would be worthwhile to invest in building a NAS to store my media, and using the HP Pavillion 590-p0033w solely as a server. I don’t expect my media collection to grow beyond 4TB any time in the next two years or more, so would it still make sense/be necessary for me to build a NAS in addition to the QuickSync server, or would I be better off swapping out the included HDD in the QuickSync server with a larger one with an accompanying SSD for Plex metadata and whatnot and consider building a NAS in a couple of years as I need it?
The 290 looks like a better proposition for my use case, thanks for the recommendation.
Still, would I be better off building a NAS to serve the media, or would I be okay to store my library on a larger HDD in the 290 for a library of my size?
I ordered my 290 the other day and tossed around a few ideas. Ended up settling on getting a nvme m.2 1tb and plan to use a good deal of that for “new releases” on plex and have the unraid nas housing older stuff. I would think that would aid in performance for the content that will be played more.
In your case if you don’t feel you need a NAS then maybe just table that for another project down the line. I’ve tried out a good many nas solutions over the last few months and found that UNRAID was well worth the money for a basic setup. FreeNAS is a great system but I got to a point where I just wanted something that works that I don’t have to overthink. OpenMediaVault I do believe has some potential that could be further developed in the coming years.
with the media you have at that size it easily fits on a single drive. I would get the nvme module for the OS and boot and put the large HD with media in the box.
NAS is great for redundancy and expansion, but it seems like overkill for what you have.
That makes sense. I think I’ll go down that route for now, and table the NAS per @Jhunter844’s suggestion until my use case requires it. Thanks for the advice!
I was seeing some cheap HBA Fiber Channel 4 & 8-Gbps cards on ebay. I assume that is meant to setup like iSCSI or something? Not sure how Linux friendly they are for the ones I was seeing when searching for network cards.
I guess what I’m getting at is if these would be a cheaper alternative to 10Gbps setups or ultimately more complex/expensive? I was thinking of a short run between my Unraid machine to my soon to be Plex Server.
