NAS with automatic offline transcoding in background for Plex

Plex transcoding

Hi, Just watched your Dummies Guide to Plex video. I use Plex quite a bit, I have a HDHomeRun box which records TV – but it records enormous .TS files. Some things I record are not that important quality wise. I am a bit techie and I have created a batch file which runs a command line version of ffmpeg which uses an input and output folder and converts my .TS files to .mp4 that ‘uses’ H.265. As far as I am concerned the quality is no different and the files are 1/10 of the size. This makes the files far easier to move around and obviously require much less storage space to store. I would be keen to get advice on any easier methods of achieving this result, for example (and this is too big an ask) if I could view a TV season in Plex and select individual episodes to hardware transcode to a smaller size – or, similarly if I could get a NAS/PC which connected to my NAS Plex folders and ran a program which could perform the same thing. My knowledge of file types, video containers, transcoding is scant and I think it would probably require a device with an Intel Celeron low (TDP) power CPU that could trundle away in the background. I don’t think a RPi would be suitable but it would be such a neat solution, even if it took a week to transcode an entire folder. I hope this has all made sense.
Further to what I have said, yesterday I watched 2 episodes of a BBC programme made in 2009 called Yellowstone, I have a bluray disc and used MakeMKV to make 3 11Gb files – the quality is amazing, I am more than happy to keep those files as 11Gb files – although I am currently running them through ffmpeg and so far the 600Mb versions are pretty amazing too – some things need the original quality – some don’t!

Yes, Qnap is a best for multimedia. It will not only allow you to transcode on the fly but also offline. If you were using Video Station app for streaming the videos you would not notice any problems. But Plex is very power demanding app and will require i5 or i7 based NAS to transcode 4K on the fly. But if you have much cheaper Celeron based NAS then you can set up automatically to transcode certain folders. This will save your NAS resources which can be used for other things. This way you can stream a video in bespoke format so that receiving device can easily play it.

Here is some old demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7071ASspPo

And post: https://docs.qnap.com/nas/4.1/SMB/en/index.html?transcode_management.htm

 

 

TS-453Be would be fast enough to convert 4K videos fairly quickly.

[su_az_ts453be]
Find regulary updated NAS offers here
Of course I would prefer you choose AMAZON UK AMAZON USA to buy your perfect solution, however, if you would rather buy locally, please use the links used above to take you to your local Amazon store and help support this free advice service with ad revenue. More ways of supporting the blog are described HERE  
Home: https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html#af9rgr Business: https://www.backblaze.com/business-backup.html#af9rgr Comparison with other service providers: https://www.backblaze.com/best-online-backup-service.html#af9rgr