Anyone try Plex yet?

Yes, finally got it on DL2100 after getting lots of install assit in another forum.  It appears redundant to the built in DLNA server of the NAS, just with more bells, whistles and graphics than I would want or need, but am trying out Plex to discover “how great” it might be.  So far, I feel if I had to install it again, I would not bother to do so, but jury is still out on final verdict…

I have just installed …

it would be funny at my music base @120.000mp3  :smiley:

BTW. Is there the possibillity to shut down the twonky server. At my Samsung TV it is shown both DLNA Server

Hi, I do not know on the DL series, I am talking from EX2 I have at home, you can go into settings and turn off the Twonky from the “media” section.

Thanks …

Now Plex is indexing for hours with no access to the device … as usual. 

There is already an update for PLEx, but I have to wait if PLEX is ready …

I am finding Plex more obnoxious than I would like.  My MyCloud NAS has been doing little tasks ever since I installed the app the other day, so I just turned OFF the app in the NAS.  If I want to fool with it again, I can just turn it back on.  Otherwise, I pretty much do not need Plex to use the NAS anyway I want to; either as a media server or network share device.

3Dscrewer wrote:

I have just installed …

it would be funny at my music base @120.000mp3  :smiley:

 

BTW. Is there the possibillity to shut down the twonky server. At my Samsung TV it is shown both DLNA Server

The Twonky can be disabled under Settings → Media in general or you deactivate the Media streaming option within a given share; second option will not disable the server in general but will remove the share from being used by the Twonky.

Plex Media Server is resource-hungry, best performance is on DL line but even EXx100 experience is great. EX2 will be lower end but still works; Plex an EX4? Better not, the CPU of the EX4 is too weak for Plex. My EX4 stops working after 48 hours due to 100% CPU load caused by Plex, my DL works great with no influence of Plex on the system.

Thank you …

even with disabled useless tasks i.e. .wdmc scan and Camera USB connect, it wasn’t ready after 7x24h and uses 500MB space on the first HD. I have stopped after the whole office was smelling for burned circuit board.

See comment at german board about the dumping price for EX4 … :smiley:

WD? Never ever again …:confounded:

Hi

I thought I’d share my experiences with trying to use Plex on the MyCloud EX4.

In summary, everything ‘works’, technically, but the system is unusable.

The installation, retrieval of stored media, and remote connectivity via web and apps etc all works.  Again, technically.

I have something like 500 movie files, something in the region of 1000 songs, and over 50,000 photographs.  The movie and music libraries took a few hours to index, the photo library took upwards of 3 days.  It did finally complete.  But, even after the indexing was complete, the onboard wdmcserver daemon stuck itself in a busy loop, indexing indefinitely.  I wasn’t able to kill it (nor should I have to, really), and even disabling the onboard DLNA functionality (twonky plus DLNA library update) via the GUI didn’t prevent this daemon running and eating the CPU.  Access to the GUI was painfully slow, and cloud connection was continually timing out because of resource contention.  Browsing photo albums through the Plex GUI was impossible, and invariably killed the device completely.  The same daemon processes restarted and the contention returned immediately after reboot.

So I started again, excluding the photo library.  This time, however, the Plex indexing daemon came to the fore and ate the CPU.  This rendered cloud access unusable again.  I tried disabling library auto-updates through Plex, but this didn’t prevent the daemon from running and taking up too much resource.

On top of all that, the ARM chip on the EX4 does not support any form of transcoding, so streaming to my iPhone only let me access a very limited set of media.  I decided, since I’d paid £3.50 for the Plex iPhone app, I might as well count my losses and use it only for music, since I don’t have that much.  As if that wasn’t frustrating enough, the Plex iPhone app seems to have a known bug where playback freezes at the end of a song, and I had to manually skip to the next track at the end of every song.

I’ve given up and completely deleted Plex from my EX4.  This is most frustrating, since I wanted a user-friendly (dare I say, Facebook-esque) way for my family to enjoy and share the photos that they are storing on the cloud (and, let’s face it, the MyCloud apps are a bit clunky in this regard), and the bundled Twonky server doesn’t work remotely as it resolves the domain to the LAN IP every time a link is clicked, and this can’t be changed without a manual firmware update.

The WD MyCloud is a good data store, but pretty much useless at anything else.  I’ve resolved to use it as a safe store, and nothing else, which is a real shame.  The hardware and the firmware doesn’t live up to the billing.

If anyone else has more success with the supported Plex app, particularly on the EX4, I’d love to hear.

Ben

benramadan:  Several of the things you’re describing actually have nothing to do with Plex.

The WDMCSERVER daemon has nothing to do with Plex — that’s the WD My Cloud Server – the mobile and desktop apps interface. 

I can’t imagine why a “kill -9 (pid)” would not have worked…  The only processes that won’t kill (usually) are zombie processes, but wdmcserver isn’t forked, so shouldn’t have zombies.

Disabling DLNA won’t disable the wdmcserver, as again, they’re not at all related.

I’m running Plex on my DL4100 and it works a treat.   It transcodes my MKV libraries just fine – but it does lag if trying to stream a native blu-ray rip with subtitles enabled.

I’ve not tried it with music or photos, though…

Hi TonyPh

Yes, I know the wdmcserver isn’t related to Plex, but the fact remains it runs busily whenever Plex is installed and running.  I have no idea why - I’d assumed it was trying to re-index at the same time as Plex, and conflicting in some way.  I’ve tried again today, from scratch, and it’s happened again.  Clean Plex install, no libraries set up, and wdmcserver is locking up the CPU again.

I’ll keep playing!

Thanks

Ben

Forget it, that is waisted time. The EX4 is a typical Example for Marketing Gags, WD has learned from chinese. Paper dosn’t blush. In principle there is a chance it may work, but in fact it doesn’t.
I have tried with 120.000mp3 and after 7x24h and EX4 was smelling like burned circuit board, I have stopped. Now the EX4 dont work at all and i have to fight for an rma, thats 2nd time the unit is going for repair.
I have build my own server with asrock qc-5000 itx and Chenbro Server Case 4x3,5 hotswap and2x2,5 internal. SOFTWARE and Apps for Cloud is Tonido and free. You have 4K HDMI output and Digital Toslink Audio, a quadcore amd apu and a lot of power for Kodi and Plex together AND it uses only one eurocent/day more than the EX4 … WD? Never again

3Dscrewer wrote:
I have tried with 120.000mp3 and after 7x24h and EX4 was smelling like burned circuit board,

Sorry, That’s just BS…  Blaming software for hardware problems is — well – just wrong.

Plex is an hardware sensitive software and i didnt say anything against plex, it was scanning the 120.000 music files in less than 2 days at my homebrew server. It is the combination plex vs EX4 with the cheap hardware and the huge marketing promises i am annoyed about.
The EX4 is usable as an NAS/Cloud device and even in this situation it is not a realy good choice because you cant switch of this .wdmc task and some more weird tasks.

By our country law b2b cant be returned, so that is the 2nd evil.

benramadan >>>>  the Plex iPhone app seems to have a known bug where playback freezes at the end of a song, and I had to manually skip to the next track at the end of every song.

This problem sounds similar to a known bug with the WD My Cloud iOS app.  it has to do with the Auto Lock feature of an iPhone and iPad.  if the auto lock is set to a short time (shorter than a music track’s length) phone/pad goes into auto lock, stalls at end of long track and must be manually restarted for next track.  My work-around is to set the auto lock to a longer time; even to “never”. One could think it is the iOS device having the issue, except that other music-playing apps I have do not have this problem.

Try this with the Plex app and see if it helps.

Thanks Mike - it isn’t in fact, it happens when I keep the phone unlocked completely.

http://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/32uyys/ios_app_consistently_crashes_at_the_end_of_a_song/

It hasn’t happened recently so it may have been fixed.

benramadan wrote:

It hasn’t happened recently so it may have been fixed.

Plex hasn’t released an update for either the server or the iOS app in ages, so nothing’s been “fixed” recently…

FYI.  I keep PLEX on my DL2100 turned off most of the time, but a week or two ago I turned it on and was greeted with a notice there was a new version of PLEX, and I downloaded it.  So, perhaps one isn’t imformed of new versions unless turned off/on periodically.  (??)

If you keep Plex turned on the Settings home page will tell you if your version is current or if there’s a new version available.  If there’s a new version available, then you can download it and and update your Plex as follows:

Updating Plex.

1.  Download the update for your WD NAS to your computer(a *.bin file).

2.  Open your My Cloud User Interface.

3.  Navigate to the Apps Page.

4.  Select “Add a new App” (the small box with a “+” on the lower left.)

5.  Select “Manually add a new App.”

6.  Navigate to where you downloaded the update file (*.bin).

7.  Select the *.bin update.

8.  Follow instructions from there.

I am running Plex on a DL4100 for 2 days now and it seems to work just fine so far.  Installation and configuring were relatively painless.  It took a bit longer to figure out how to update to the newest version.  I guess that the software bundled with the NAS is an earlier version so that it shouldn’t be a surprise that updating is required as soon as you’ve installed the bundled package.  See my note elsewhere in this thread for an updating protocol.

I have kept the Twonky Server running as well so that both DLNA servers appear as options on my televisions.  I may disable one or the other eventually.  Although, I seem to be liking the Plex server more than the Twonky.  But that may just be first blush.

I bought the Plex Premium option (Plex Pass).  It’s supposed to provide some premium content and options, e.g., free apps for mobile devices.  Will give it a try.

The first problem I encountered was when I attempted to create a Plex “Premium Music Library.”  YOu need an Internet connection to do this (which I have).  But the Plex application could not detect my Internet connection.  I contacted Plex and this is a known issue that they hope to correct in the next version.