Hi there! I recieved an 8TB MyCloud EX2 as a gift, and I was very excited about the possibility of using it as a plex server. I was very saddened to discover that, while Plex WORKS, the device is unable to transcode–something that is pretty useful for those of you who know Plex. What gives? Is there any way to make this happen?
qmechan,
Congratulations on your new WD EX2.
In order to get hardware transcoding in PLEX, you must have an Intel CPU that supports Intel QSV.
So any non-Intel CPU will not support hardware transcoding, only software transcoding.
The WD PR series has a Pentium N3170 that supports it, but not the cheaper EX2.
That said, it still does a good job of running PLEX.
If you make sure that your Movies/TV Shows are:
- .MP4 (container format, super widely supported by clients)
- h.264 (video codec, super widely supported by clients)
You should be fine with very little, if any, transcoding required. Since most clients (Smart Phones, Tablets, Smart TV’s and such) fully support the playing of that pair.
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Hello,
and thank you very much for your contribute…
one question more…if my movies are: .MKV (container) and h.264 (codec), will I be able to play them?
or do I need to convert them? (we are talking about about 1000 titles …)
thank you.
The video encoding (h.264/AVC vs. h.265/HEVC) is more important than the container (.mkv vs .mp4).
If your clients can process the .MKV container, then it should be no problem.
Most clients (SmartPhones, SmartTV’s, etc) can handle it today.
Give me sometime and I’ll test it for you…
ok.
I actually found some h.264 encoded .MKV files as well as some h.265 encoded .MKV files.
I moved them over to my EX2 Ultra to test streaming to my Samsung UN55MU6300 4K HDTV.
Playing the h.265 .MKV ran fine, here is the CPU while playing it:
But … my Smart-TV can decode the h.265 and AAC in the.MKV container.
So it is being streamed via Direct Play which uses very little CPU:
Again, it all depends on the capabilities of the PLEX clients in your home.
As long as you aren’t transcoding anything, you’ll be fine.
Is the TV running PLEX, or simply streaming the files direct from the NAS?
I am not overly familiar with all the nuances. . . but I do know that running PLEX invokes an overhead that simply streaming the file does not. I occasionally have “issues” streaming simple files through plex within my home, whereas simply stream direct files to a tablet running VLC is flawless.
Not sure how much more help I can be. . . I simply transcode all my MKV’s to MP4’s (in a format PLEX likes) using Handbrake and have PLEX reference the directory with all the MP4’s for streaming. But my library is much smaller than yours. (although. . .“thousands” of titles on a 8TB drive? I may be missing something here. MKV is not exactly a compressed format.)
here for you…:
let me know how it play: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1g-i78qXiLx_NupllIQSiKmQPraqmp-kU
(it’s for my daughter…)
