I should have done more research before I bought my NAS. Though I wasn't planning on using it as a media server for movies (most pics and some music). I discovered Plex afterwards and found out the model I bought is not compatible with the media server. I thought there might be a work around, but its underpowered (I own a QNAP TS-231P). Otherwise, Plex is a great tool, I just have to have my laptop open and on when I want to use it. Anyone have success with a Raspberry PI hosting a Plex server?
Just to give a status report: I have three 8 TB hard drives in my Synology DS420+ NAS at the moment, let's call them A, B & C. I put two blank new ones. A & B, in to start, then copied all the material from C to those two configured as a RAID. I then wiped C, and added it to the RAID. That took several days. Now I've copied all the material from a 4th 8 TB hard drive (D) to the RAID and I'm running a free open source program called WinMerge comparing D to the RAID. It's found a few errors, which I am fixing. After it all checks out, I'll wipe D and add it to the RAID. When this is done, I should have a 24 TB RAID with 1 hard drive redundancy. IT professionals might have an issue with a RAID configuration that has less than 100% redundancy, but I am comfortable that I can lose one hard drive and recover. I'll probably upgrade the hard drives to 12 TB ones one at a time. Update: Winmerge is only in the Bs. This is going to take a while. One other thing about the DS-420+ is that I can add two M2 SSDs to the system to work as caches, so that is an upgrade path. The other upgrade path is to get a different switch and use both LAN ports on it to increase the speed.
Sorry, I didn't see this earlier. Unfortunately I have the same problem you as you do - I want to rip my DVDs yet keep the menu structure. I have not found a solution..
Love WinMerge, and use it all the time. It can be configured for quicker comparisons if you don't need to check the entire contents of each file. For content integrity I prefer generating folder lists with md5 or crc32 checksums, and then using WinMerge to compare the two hashed lists. I haven't used RAID much for a while now, but found your usage interesting. You are able to go from 50% redundancy with 2 drives to 33% with 3 drives then 25% with 4 drives, all in place? That's pretty slick. For my Plex setup I have a Synology DS718+ with one 8TB but will add more eventually. But I prefer keeping it all mirrored remotely instead of using RAID. The mirroring is is pretty much a manual process but hopefully will become more automated.
I figure I should let it do its thing as thoroughly as possible this first time. When I had two drives in there, both 8 terabyte hard drives only added up to the same storage space as a single one. When the third one was integrated, it was 14 terabytes. When the fourth one is integrated, it should be 24 terabytes. After I get everything set up, I'll probably get at least a 12 terabyte hard drive and backup the Synology to that - at least the movie folder.
No, they don't. Other players that don't support disc menus will just look for the largest file in the folder (which is almost always the movie itself) and play that. Plex just leaves those titles out of the database altogether.
I only recently found out that mp4 saves chapters. They can be accessed/referenced using Plex. But, yeah, no disc menus.
Figure I can boost this. I want to upgrade the performance of my Synology DS-420+. Which will be the best performance improvement, putting in more RAM or adding an SSD to one of the NVMe slots?
I have plex server installed on a PC in the basement that uses minimal power, so I leave it on all the time. I have a few classic films on it, but it's mostly music and spoken word. I can access it from my TV upstairs using a TIVO app, but I prefer streaming or a blu-ray for that sort of thing. On the other hand, the Android app on my phone is a game changer. It essentially puts every track I own on the phone. I probably have 50000 spoken word tracks (audio books, college lectures, OTR) on my server, and keep a Bluetooth ear bud in my pocket. So whenever I am doing some household task (walking the dog, dishes, or whatever) I just pop the bud in my ear and fire up Plex. It's not video, so it runs without a hitch even if I have used up my T-mobile high speed allotment for the month.
It was considerably less work than building shelves for all my DVDs. It takes a bit of time to start with, but after that it handles everything automatically.
I have tons of hours and couldn’t be happier with how it works. I’m running the Plex server on a QNAP NAS and accessing that through the Plex channel on Roku, so can only comment on that arrangement. I’ve ripped ALL my discs (BD and DVD) to the NAS using MakeMKV. This preserves the quality, chapter marks (but not names), alternate audio, etc. I then used MKV ToolNix to enter the chapter names. Everything is organized in folders by artist, along with one for TV and Movies which is the minority of my collection. If a disc contained special features, etc. I created a folder within the main folder for the “main feature” and the separate MKVs for each of the extras. I can navigate the folder structure from within the Roku Plex channel. Once I’ve started a video, clicking on the down arrow brings up all of the chapters, including their names, across the bottom of the screen and I can navigate directly to any of them. Audio selection can be made from the setup menu for the video. So even though the menu structure of the original disc isn’t preserved, I can easily access all of the same features in other ways.
I have had Lifetime Plex Pass for many years. I ripped all of my movies, shows and concerts using MakeMKV. In fact, I even have all of our home movies from when our children were little. I can watch them all through the Apple TV Plex App. It is really simple to operate.
I've just set up my Plex server to give me remote access to all my music. I figured it was part of the Plex Pass, something I wasn't going to pay extra for. But, I tried it anyway and it's working great! Not part of the paid tier. All I need to do is go to plex.tv on any browser and sign in. I've been using it to play my music at work. I might now trim down the number of files I have on my computer, but keep a small collection just in case I have issues streaming (like the other day when power was out at my apartment).
I'm in the process of upgrading my Synology NAS. Incredibly easy. I powered it down, popped out the hard drive I wanted to replace, popped the new one in, the software told me the RAID needed to be repaired and allowed me to select the hard drive I just put in, and now it's in the process of integrating it. And the Synology hardware works so well that I never had to stop my Plex! I had as many as five streams going at once, while it was integrating the new hard drive!
Plex added a very cool "universal search" tool to their interface where you can add all of streaming services you subscribe to and search all of them through one screen. As of yet, they can't directly access the other apps, like Netflix or HBO Max (they imply that they plan to) but it's a nice way to keep track of what's out there. The best part for me is that one of the options offered is Kanopy, a streaming service offered through your local library that allows a certain number of "rentals" per month. They have a huge amount of art house and obscure stuff, and in this way you'd be able to search and find everything. This is going to be a huge thing for a lot of our "secondary" services, the apps we never remember to look through, because we're not regular watchers of a series. It's not fully integrated into their search yet, but it literally just launched this morning.
Not sure if anyone uses Plex for their Podcast streaming but that is going away... along with the Web Series category. Plex will end podcast support on Friday
