H.264 VS H.265 - Plex Transcoding Performance
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- I tried to compare H.264 to H.265 and see what the performance differences would be with the Plex Transcoder....I think I did it right...
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Get it... HandBREAK... your hand.... clever!
I encode all my media with H.265 10-bit and I've had no performance issues at all while streaming on my ROKU devices or smart TV's but I'm also running my Plex server on a Windows 10 box with an i7 7700K chip which natively supports encoding / decoding of HVEC in the hardware.
As long as your running a older OS like Win7 /8.1 and an older chipset your going to have issues with H.265
That said, if H.264 works for you and your system awesome keep using it, if your system can handle H.265 without any issues then go for it.
At the end of the day it all depends which works best for you and your needs.
On a serious note, I use H265 for SOME source files - but I almost exclusively use direct stream, so I haven't really had any issues.
I use 265 only for anime. I can get really small files with a really good quality. My nvidia shield can direct play it
On a serious note, I use H265 for SOME source files - but I almost exclusively use direct stream, so I haven't really had any issues.
You are absolutely correct in your testing of HEVC. I implemented it a year, or so, ago for storage reasons. And you're very right about the resources needed to handle the media. I had to upgrade my system to meet the demands of changing my movies to that format and for streaming the media using Plex. Now, I don't have any problems handling multiple streams since my system has dual Xeon E5-2630 V4.
I see the same thing. My server CPU has benchmarks similar to i7, but transcoding a single HEVC file kills my CPU
In my experience, HEVC (H.265) is great just as long as each client has the hardware that can support it as you are essentially a "direct play" host with no transcoding involved. Either way, transcoding will always be AVC (H.264) until Plex releases an update that will allow for H.265 transcoding. What a weird time to be in the video hosting hobby.
On a side note: Netflix utilizes actually HEVC transcoding btw.
I've been testing h265 also. I love the compression and the quality is great. It also cuts my server's performance in half. I'm looking to try hardware supported h265.
You need at least Kaby Lake for H.265.
Still, even on my i7-7700K, the processor goes at least twice higher when transcoding as opposed to H.264
Comparing JUST direct streams, so clients that can handle 265, then 265 should work better since it saves bandwidth
Is there an updated video on this?
Hey I really love your videos. Thank You,
here are my experiences about h265 - hevc.
I recently build my new Plex Server based on a Xeon E3-1245v6 Kabby Lake CPU with a Passmark Score of about 9955. I chose that High Passmark cpu based on the consideration of being able to transcode at least one 4k stream, my calculation was 2000Passmark = 1 x 1080p Stream, should result in 4x 2000Passmark = 8000Passmark = 1 x 4k Stream...
In Conclusion:
The CPU is handling a "mkv - 70550 kbps - hevc - 4k - 24p - dca-ma - 8 ch - 61.4 GiB" just fine, but at a every second alternating CPU load of 46% to 96 %.
A mkv - 73345 kbps - hevc - 4k - 60p - dca-ma - 6 ch - 57.8 GiB Stream is more problematic, it is utilizing my cpu just alternating between 30% and 40% but isn't starting 1 Stream at all.
So CPU isn't the bottleneck here!?
I think Plex is struggling with 60p content, other 24p 4k streams are running great and on lower bitrates, sometimes there are even 2 transcoded streams possible.
I have no GPU acceleration enabled on my CPU hence my Mainboard doesn't support iGPU. Im running on latest UnRaid and the latest LinuxServer Plex Docker container.
I haven't tested 1080p - hevc Streams because all my 1080p content is coded in h264, but I can tell that even multiple 1080p h264 streams doesn't bothers the CPU very much.
I would appreciate any infos or comments about PLEX - 4K - h265 and even more about transcoding 4k at 60p and why it isn't utilizing my CPU???
H.265 has higher quality and a much smaller file size, the trade off was always going to be performance. 👍 a good test would be to also compare the quality of the video, you'd have to freshly encode both from a blu ray though.
doesnt x265 have the same quality at lower memory space? it just has better support for 4k. id like to know more
It has a better quality per bitrate at any resolution you'd care to watch. The difference is greater with higher resolutions than lower. If you want to maximize your benefits with 4k though I hope you have a lot of patience. Just start it, minimize the program and forget about it until it notifies you that it's done. Just remember to leave the computer on.
I found performance to be a deal breaker for me when moving to H.265. That's unfortunate because it was saving me about 40% in storage space vs. H.264.
Is anyone using proxy files to help with this?
Honestly, this encompasses the problem with Plex performance review.
Most plex users are not supporting 20+ users.
But, like in my case, we might have limited upload speed with home (non-commercial/non-apartment) internet and max quality for limited bandwidth is imo way more important to determine performance.
Just a thought here... I feel like a better topic to discuss here regarding h.264 vs h.265 should be something based around size vs quality. H.265 has superior max resolution, max FPS, image quality, better dynamic range, and better color space. All of these intangibles can be matched with H.264, but at a smaller file size and bitrate. I feel like H.265, if utilized to it's maximum efficiency, could render a better outcome, with similar numbers. Though the 3 would represent number of concurrent transcodes, and 7 could represent the number of concurrent direct streams (assuming direct stream is referring to a file that is being played at it's original quality). You should share the file specs. If they are the same in terms of size and bitrate, that is part of the problem. the H.265 file should have a lower bitrate and size, but still provide similar if not better image quality. Again, these are just some thoughts. :D
Hi, I can have up to 8 or 9 users streaming and the cpu is running from 8 to 25% and one user starts a H265 steam and the cpu jumps and sits on 99-100%. So yeah H265 kills performance. Hope that an optimized H265 transcoder is implemented for plex in the near future. I have to monitor series that users use and replace them with H264 versions to keep the server running optimal. my 2 cents :D
Consider your system’s bottlenecks, GPU transcoding > CPU, disk IO and upload speed are also limiting factors, Direct stream where possible by setting server and client to play original. Transcode your video to h.265 if you have the cpu/gpu hardware, (look at Intel, NVIDIA and amd specs for encoding) transcoded h.265 10bit (better for dark scenes) is indistinguishable from original h.264 at 1/10th the size using handbrake. Comparison was made on Bravia 4K tv.
You need a beast CPU to decode h.265 let alone transcode it. I have a poweredge 2950 with dual xeon x5450s and it cant even transcode one in realtime but I can get 6-7 transcoding x264. I have switched to x.265 to save space though since my server is limited to 12TB and I direct play the content. A roku Premiere or higher will play it without transcoding as well as an xbox one s, not sure about the original or the playstation 4.
Getting the same quality at 5mbps vs 8mbps is worth it imo. If you need transcoding to enjoy your media remotely sticking with x.264 is better though.
my i7 3770 handles at least 2 at the same time. and it's kinda dated...but yeah, def a decrease in performance
i think i have a couple tv shows in h265 format but i've never noticed any issues with them. my plex server is similar but i have a 3770k. its even delided but i haven't even bothered to overclock it XD. also i don't think my server has even seen more than 3 streams at once. the streams are also local 90% of the time as well.
I was abot to handle 3 x 1080p streams on my rig with a old i7 990x, howewver when i threw 4k x265 at it CPU went to 90-100% with a singel stream
Enraged Bacon Dual E5-2670's I've done 5 x265 transcodes at the same time without issue. That's with 5 VMs doing stuff and countless containers running
MrTVintro there is quite a difference between e5-2670s and my aging x5450s lol
I have moved all of my files to X265. I used MCEBuddy and a profile I made that doesn't use comskip to accomplish the task. My Movie and TV Show collection is just under 1/3 its previous size, I went from about 10 TB of used space down to about 7. Some files were over 1/2 their original size, but others did not get down to more than 3/4 their original size. It depends on the resolution and the bitrate of the original files, and just the movie or show itself. Some just compress better. But to get there, I also cut my streaming ability in roughly half. With a Dell R710 and two L5640s I'm looking to upgrade to X5690s to fix the problem. This is about 50% faster in passmark than my current setup. Sure I will have to throw more money at the CPUs but in the long run I think a 200 CPU purchase on eBay will be cheaper than my growing storage needs. I've already saved 3TB and the savings will only grow with time.
I tend to stick with H.264 on my old 8370 liquid cooled build.. and it holds up extremely well. I am however holding out for AV1.
I had the same results. I had probably 6-8 TB of H.265 that I have re encoded to H.264 simply because the CPU usage was so high and my "server" is a desktop with a 6 core 5820k that is used for many tasks. Plex runs in the background for various users and with H.264 i never even know it. The files are located on my 50TB UnRaid server which does not have the horsepower to transcode.
Did I understand the comments right? With H.265 you save money on storage space with 25% smaller files, and then you have to direct stream to your small screen devices at 5 to 15 times the resolution you can actually see on your small screens costing more monthly for data? Did I miss something here?
I have several entire TV shows encoded in H.265 from bluray. They are at 2000 kbps. While I am not doing your types of tests on my server, I can play them without any issues on FireTV stick, Roku 3 and nvidia shield however the nvidia shield does a direct play so it doesn't transcode anything. I do like the significantly smaller file size of H.265 though and anything I add to the media library is in H.265 depending on the source.
My media server is an old Dell Optiplex 7010 with Core i7 3770, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB DDR3, 20TB storage. I just recently started storing media as h.265, but not replacing. The quality seems really good for smaller file sizes and plays well on my iPhone 6S, Android TV Box, Dell XPS 9650, Sony VAIO SVS15 and whatever device I try. Just doesn't play well with Chrome, so I have resorted to using the Plex App on all devices.
What is your best setting on HandBrake to set so I can get DVD movies in 1080p resolution, 5.1 surround with closed caption enable? I try all setting but keep getting SD resolution and no caption file missing.
Re-test in 2022??
My Plex server is only x265 for TV Shows. I don't really have an issue ; Yesterday, I had 3 transcoded file playing, with 4 direct stream with 0 buffer.
I think the problem is that you test the streams with a single machine ; x265 is decoded mainly throught graphic cards ; The CPU struggles a lot.
Take the conversion : For a 20 mn file in H264, you will take about 20 min to convert it to H265 with a 3770k (with hyperthreading). With a GPU (1070 for exemple), it will take you 1.5 mn.
The H265 is still a bit young, but conversion are more and more reliable, and I do see an increase in space, without the drop in performances on my setup.
Untill all equipments are fully compatible thought, it will be a risk to take.
I only use Nvidia Shield or TV with HDR and 10 bit support, so there's mainly direct streams. For me : it's a win/win :)
If its true that its gpu based, then this is a game changer for me.
I'd consider GPU transcoding to be probably limited to previews while editing or trying filters with the recode. AFAIK, still no card's onboard encoder can come anywhere near quality per bitrate vs x265 on cpu and a CUDA encoder that can still isn't any faster.
So running tests yesterday two videos files both approximately the same run time, both 4k, both 5.1 with one being x265 and one being x264. I was running both from the NAS through Plex as that is the end goal. Using Plex client that is the most current and resident on Vizio TV's. The x265 file was half the size of the x264 but when trying to direct stream it, it was unwatchable due to constant buffering issues. x264 no buffering issues ran smoothly.
I'm no pro, but I did just read some specs and details on 264 vs 265 and one thing was very obvious. H.265 uses more math (as in mathematics, not at acronym) to generate pixel values at the client, allowing the file (stream bitrate) to be smaller, whereas 264 send more pixel values so that the file (stream bitrate) is larger but requires less number crunching power. That's the tradeoff: Storage size (bitstream rate) vs number crunching horsepower.
I use MakeMKV to rip Bluray- and DVD-content to my server, and never transcode anything - that will only reduce the quality.
You must have a lot of storage. 25-30 Gigs uncompressed vs. 6-10 GB's. What is your hardware on the server and what clients are you using?
I have an Ubuntu server with an old AMD Phenom II X6 1055t, 16 GB RAM and 6x4TB storage space (set up using ZFS raidz2, so 16 TB usable disk space). Clients are mainly Chromecast, Windows 10 (Plex-app, not browser) and Xbox One.
By the way, 25-30 Gigs (average size of copy from Blu-ray) are not uncompressed, I just don't want to recompress it - that's why I'm just copying the already compressed video from the physical discs (usually H.264 on Blu-ray, MPEG2 on DVD).
How much of a difference does it make? I guess I should try it to see what a difference it is. I have 8 4-TB drives running ZFS, so I have plenty of space.
I am the same way. I do not like to trans code anything so i use MakeMKV too.
Not much (if possible to see at all) if you use "good enough" settings when you recompress the video (using HandBrake or any other such tool). What's "good enough" varies, though, if you want to be sure you're always getting no visual loss in quality the file size won't be that much smaller. I don't want to use much time on this, I rather choose to keep the original quality and use a bit more money on storage space.
I use h.265 because i dont have that much hdd storage. I think h265 is the future. The problem with it right now is lots of systems don't support it (like my phone).
Fuzzy Lobster how does the optimization feature work with this? Does it store a 2nd file? So would defeat that purpose?
JD Fields when i sync it with my phone it encodes it again and saves it only to the phone. I have it set so it doesnt save the h264 version it created
Fuzzy Lobster I'm not referring to sync but the "optimization" as he shows in this video
i would assume it would do 264
im using h.265 and can play it with no lags in my phone in vlc player same as my pc i can encode a movie directly from bluray on slow tune and crf 16...still no errors or problem
I'm running an 80% H.265 Plex server and just upgraded to an i3 7100 Kaby Lake. I can confirm I'm able to get 2 stable Chrome transcoding, 3rd one can start after a few minutes but had slight hiccups during my 30minute test. Transcode speeds between 3-4x give or take I saw it drop under 3 for a bit and got as high as 5.8x. Again it's an i3 7100 which probably has half the horsepower of your 3770.
Did you injure your hand shucking a drive?
What happened to your hands. Hope you feel better
Matt Theman those hands went thru Handbreak. Looks bad and swollen.
severed a tendon while playing in a river drunk...broken beer bottle went through my wrist :) had surgery in attempt to fix it
Byte My Bits ouch
dang dude hope you get to feeling better and it heals up ok.
I have been told that H.265 performance requires more horsepower by the client. perhaps the problem is that you are streaming them all to the same client... I have not done the testing myself, but since I am currently converting all my files to H.265. I am now very concerned/interested in knowing the answer. Maybe I was hasty in my decision to convert...
have swapped over to x265 all my tv shows, i got 35,000 tv epesoides. i tried what you said on web and had issues, but not when i use my phones, and tablet. i turning movies over to x265 all my devices and tv boxs play x265, i'm not sticking with h264, cuts into my internet uploads.
I currently use H265 on my Plex server. PowerEdge R710 with 2 Xeon X5680 and Windows Server 2016. I have no problem direct playing on supported devices, nor do I have problems transcoding to a multitude of Roku, PlayStations, and apple devices! I do also use my gaming desktop to convert these rips from 264 to 265 as my 1070 supports hardware encoding
I have a NAS box with both H265 and H264 movies and TV shows on it. I normally use Kodi to stream my videos from my box. I recently set up a Plex server and tried streaming a H265 movie. It only took a few seconds to start buffering at original rates, I incrementally dropped down the rate until I could get a solid stream. Each time I dropped the rate down, I noticed and increase of streaming performance. When I switched over to my H264 videos, it played no problem at the original rate. Just a quick note though, I don't have an ideal setup to do extensive testing. Personally, I think a lot of the problem with transcoding H265 is in the hardware's ability to decode H265 and relying on software decoding
This is very interesting. Thank you!
I'm using H.265 for the smaller file sizes and looking towards the future when decoding H.265 is easier / more affordable. I'd rather not redo my media library to compact it with a more efficient codec in a year or two. looking at the wikipedia page for H.265, and if my understanding of what I'm reading is correct, you'd want a much newer processor (Skylake or Kaby Lake) to "take advantage" of it
"On August 5, 2015, Intel launched Skylake products with full fixed function Main/8bit decoding/encoding and hybrid/partial Main10/10bit decoding."
"On August 30, 2016, Intel officially announced 7th generation Core CPUs (Kaby Lake) products with full fixed function HEVC Main10 hardware decoding support."
On the integrated GPU. The raw CPU power required is still tremendous if using software decoding only.
Ah, ok. that makes sense, i always forget about the fact Intel has the integrated GPU on almost all processors. My current machine is a several years old AMD.
so a reason to buy a new cpu...hmmm, my wallet hates me alrdy lol
The majority of my media lib is 265, I too am looking forward to more optimisation. After all it was the same with 264 in the begining. The decoders ive tested have reduced load to around 40% of the original but as for encoding and transcoding brute force is still the way to go. I'd recommend a R5 1600 or R7 1700. The more cores the merrier
H.265 has been supported since M family 4th gen i-series, but software is a different matter. If no one writes software to take advantage of built-in features of the GPU and CPU there is no reason to throw Skylake at the problem. Being old hat to software development it's not always easy to write native calls to CPU but way easier to make calls to libraries supplied by application development IDE... and if the IDE does not have that library optimized and available then your are in the waiting game until your company is ready to upgrade or allow you to pull in 3rd party libraries. Most companies can't move that fast. I do see the MFT for HEVC on Microsoft has been available for over a year and lots of vendors like video lan are well in motion. The remaining will grab the libraries and include soon I would hope. Put it all together with 4th gen or greater, correct OS, and a software that supports HEVC and you'll likely see a difference without needing a new processor.
I recently got an Apple TV 4K, so I did a little experiment with 4K movies in Plex. I err. procured a movie in the following format: thinking it would direct play nicely, given that ATV4K supports H265. Sadly, no. Movie buffers within the first minute and CPU on the Plex server jumps straight to 100%. I am going to try transcoding to H264 and I'll report back on how it goes. There aren't a lot of answers around on the internet as to the correct format to be downloading content in for Direct Play 4K to ATV, so if anybody has suggestions, they would be appreciated.
EDIT - found some info here:
forums.plex.tv/discussion/289908/streaming-mkv-from-synology-plex-server-to-atv-5-plex-client
Can you update this video 4 years later :)
For those who have got some H.265 videos and intend to directly stream those H.265 files via Plex, you need to encode into a format that is more readily decodable, like H.264. To begin, you can get DumboFab Video Converter, a professional H.265 encoder, decoder and player. With it, you can fast convert H.265/HEVC video to H.264 MP4 for Plex seamlessly. What's more, this video converter severs as a wonderful H.265 video player for you.
Probably one of the biggest reasons I run a "sever" (If one could even call it that) as storage for the files and play everything through KODI directly onto the Tanix TX8 TV Boxes I bought.
The TX8 has Never 'not' played a x265 file and it does all the transcoding directly before outputting to the TV. I just could never understand why anyone would want to build a server for storage, add a program to the server to render the file to push it to another box to display that to a TV.
Apologies, I realise I might sound a bit densek here, but to me, a pc with 5 drives in it, which is connected to the network via Ethernet, and a TV Box connected to the same network, connected to a TV and playing everything I could possibly want, without any issues, just seems like a better solution (In my mind, it's eliminating one step and getting a better result).
Everything I have, and get lately is in x265, be it in 1080p or 4k and I have yet to experience buffering or a file not playing, even when all 3 TX8's are playing the same, or different 4k files simultaneously, so I guess this is why I never bothered with Plex 🤷🤷🤷
The real problem is Plex Transcoder even when Comcast ultra supports x265. You don't want any unneeded transcoding (it will reduce quality).
AFAIK the 265 was for storage and bandwidth purposes and requires more processing. A 264 vs 265 comparison should only really be done for quality at a given bitrate, or storage comparison. 264 is easier to encode and will therefore should always win the comparison for maximum number of streams.
I'm using a Liva mini PC but it direct streams x265 to my 4K Roku, The trick I've found is making sure you TV STB has native H256 and you are gold. The problem is transcoding will kill anything outside of a large PC but direct streams just ship the bits which has a lower bandwidth. So get a 4K STB like a roku 4k streaming stick and force it to direct stream.
A follow on to my previous comment I don't believe it's the nas as I stated because when I direct stream to my desktop box without using Plex no issues. The only time issues come into play is when introducing Plex into the equation.
H.264 over H.265 period! I have multiple devices having issues playing H.265 files remotely or even on local network. Movie is jittering and/or buffering all the time. My server is Synology DS920+ with 8GB ram.
i have a large 8 bay drobo with over 10tb of h.255 mkv files i use the h.265 to save space while retaining high quality. i also then make sure all of my clients ie roku tv mac iphone etc can directly playback h.265 mkv files. sometimes it has to transcode the audio but since im using a powerful mac mini running the plex media server i have no issues. i have been able to get atleast 5 direct streams at a time and thats even factoring in that drobo servers are not known for speed. so at this point the weak link is the drobos read speeds
The faster drive did fix 99% I wonder if having a native 265 video card would improve playback as well. I have a fresh windows 10 pro install and a i5 2500 as a media server. This test was a 32 gb full size movie in 264. Rocky 2
Don't know what happened to your hand, but hope it heals soon.
On a technical note, I would use VP9 over H.265 if only I could figure out the encoding.
I use Infuse.app to various clients including apple tv. The main OSs I use natively support h265 now. I’ve converted all my content to h265 now using on average 40% storage, everything is improved.
It's not Plex that has a problem. It's FFMPEG. That's what Plex uses. Hardware transcoding is still in beta. I installed it on my server running Intel Atom C2758 and I got some amazing results. Transcoding jumped from average 2x to 7x. This feature is a game changer. By the way hardware acceleration is by default disabled in FFMPEG. There is a way to enabled it and compile it FFMPEG yourself. But this is rather advanced topic.
Does Plex support H.266 native transcoding yet? Probably good idea to have a benchmark if this is supported.
HEVC requires much more processing. If you have the basic PLEX version, it won't support gpu hardware transcoding. So that makes it a no-go.
It'll be a few more years yet before h.265 appropriate hardware is mainstreamed. I'd really want a CPU with hw decode in my server for a start. I do love the efficiency, though.
Hey Jason, can we get an update on this video? H.265 is becoming more and more common. Yes I know H.266 just was announced. about a month ago.
My cpu supports h264 transcodes but when using a h265 file, it buffers every 5 seconds.
I have a handful of h.265 movies on my PMS but I'm mostly sticking to h.264 for now.
I haven't done any testing of my servers ability to transcode them, but I found that some of the devices that my friends/family use to view content from my PMS, can't handle h.265 :(
Your results make sense as h.265 is much more resource intensive to encode and view but as you mentioned, the benefit is the file size.
If I could get my PMS content directory from 12TB down to 5-6TB, that would be amazing :)
So I do see h.265 being a future option; we'll just have to batch convert our content one day :(
yeah it needs better support before I'll fully embrace it
Will you continue battle OS? I think you should try Xpenology I was able to get the same amount of transcoding streams as FreeNas 11, and Xpenology is much more simple and easy to use, I also wanted to try Rockstor but they don't support my Ryzen CPU :(
So h.265 saves on storage space, but takes far more power to transcode - and h.264 is the opposite? Man, that's like a no-win situation. I think I'll keep ripping my DVDs with h.264 for streaming, and I'll do my blurays (which probably won't be streamed) with h.265 to save on storage since h.264 bluray rips are pretty huge.
Any thoughts?
My understanding is that h.265 was designed around 4k and 10bit standards
there is a saying. if it isn't broken don't fix it. keep 264
Steve W Yes, but less visual artifacting, and smaller filesizes...
We could say that about VHS as well.
264 good for now. but i can easily see 265 taking over later
remember when 264 cant be decode because cpu power wasnt enough
@byte my bits Ye but for 1:1 rip from Blu ray takes like 20,30gb avg (excluding the audio tracks that are useless to most people + commecricals etc). That's 40 movies per terabyte which is not a lot. But converting to h265, you can get at least double that. With 80 movies per terabyte (1080P), you can build decent Plex media server. Get 4TB red WD for start or even less than that , and you have 300-400 movies to watch. And consider that you will be able to convert max 1 movie per day, you will up your drive in 1 year allowing you to watch one movie per day which is totally fine with me. Some will get deleted of course but you will always have something to watch when your friends come over. PLUS : huge bonus is cutting internet bandwidth which is still a problem in my country. Sometimes i can't stream full 1:1 BD mkv quality because plex doesnt buffer and i have to sacrifice quality. So, h264 is not worth a time even today without HEVC. If i can get today 8tb hdd for 100$-150$ because of popularity of ssd, i would sure consider it. Instead it cost at least 3x that
I just use .movie remuxes
First of all what happened with your hand?
An i3,5,7, consoles, pi, and many others have native H.264 hardware support therefore has no trouble encoding or decoding it.
H.265 however has a better but much more complicated algorithm to cut the bitrate in half with the same quality of H.264 but needs more power to make it all happen.
In short H.265 is great for long time storage of large video files but not great for daily use.
I haven't tested direct play on a native H.265 capable player tho. But I am using it for my storage files.
Get it?... "Hand-Brake"
On my quad core i7 quad core Mac mini when i play H265 the CPU Jump to 99° :(
u had cooler of stock that is the problem maybe
i just converted all my media to 'fast' quality in handbrake from stupid file sizes of 20-30GB down to 5GB and its been incredible.
You're CPU isn't compatible with h265. I think it only works natively with 7th gen and up Intel CPUs. My 4790K in my tower can't accept h265 but I can use some trickery to get it working with my GPU. My 2018 Razer Blade Stealth with an 8th gen CPU works flawlessly when playing back h265.
QUESTION: IF YOU HAD TO PICK ONE AMD CPU FOR A PLEX MEDIA SERVER WHICH ONE WOULD GIVE THE BEST RESULTS FOR TRANSCODING AND STREAMING 4K MOVIES? A RYZEN CPU MAYBE? I HAVE AN AMD APU NOW AND IT WILL NOT EVEN RUN PLEX AT ALL AS A SERVER. I'M ASSUMING APU'S SUCK FOR PLEX.
not sure. i need/want to test ryzen
Byte My Bits I have a 1700, 4K transcode from 265 to 264, transcodes 3-4x faster than play speed.
I don't think Ryzen has native H.265/X265 Decode/Encode support. I would go with Kaby or Coffeelake for Plex.
CPU with native H.265 support will produce hardware encoded quality streams. If you want the best quality then you need to go for software encoding. Kaby or Coffeelake for Hardware encoding = Faster transcoding (4x plus) with less quality. Ryzen 8 cores for software encoding = slower transcode (2x plus) with higher quality.
Three of us with seperate Plex servers tried. The results weren't great with 2160p. Often the audio was ever so slightly out of sync. My friends server handles h265 natively but it still wasn't prefect. It does however seem to work well with 1080 content.
From our test, the problem is mostly from the decoder, plex sucks at this point.(this is why I don't use it anymore). Hevc is very powerful(wiki will tell you why), we use vapoursynth to do the encode, it can use as many core as you have, but none of 264 encoders can use more than 16 threads.
Plex client need to support hardware decode and the server need to have hevc direct steaming in order to solve this issue.
good to know
Make sure your clients are all x265 /H265 capable so you don't transcode inside your home. Also New intel CPU's will support H265/X265 encode/decode in the hw.
i use format factory to convert to 480p HEVC(H265) non of us in the house are really bothered about high qality so advantage is we can get alot more films on the same size drive i have a 10tb in my gaming rig but now moving to a ds118 so i have more freedom on my gaming rig at 1080p the films where taking into the teens of gigs per file hdd was full at 970 films at moment i have 530 films taking up 381gb of space and still converting
Are you sure the h.264 files are actually transcoding? Most things (Chrome among them) can play h.264 natively, and I noticed that your setting was for "original"... so it seems like it was just playing the file, not transcoding on the h.264 files.
"What's H.265", you ask. "It's like '10' but it's one louder."
#h265gang space is my preference and everything looks good on all my devices with my setup.
My media will outlive my clients. My clients will come and go but my media will always be there.
What internet speed do you need to do 4k? Have Verizon 1gb and 500mb upload speed. realistically its more like 650mbps download & 150mbps upload
TRY USING A KABYLAKE CPU. H256 WORKS BETTER THAN H264 FOR ME . I USE A I7 7700 .
or just use FreeNAS or Linux XD
@@commodore256 I'm reading this from a Kaby Lake based Hackintosh, which works fine. I'm cool with Macbook Pro's, and I think iMac's are a waste of money ( it's almost like having a laptop without any of the benefits of having one). MacPro's cost to much, and the last time Apple released one was in 2013. Apple left the door open for Hack's. They should either release different versions of the MacPro, refreshing them yearly (because everyone doesn't need a duel Xeon), or just allow people to install MacOS on custom hardware. Linux is cool, Windows is needed for PC gaming, other then that I would rather be using MacOS.
Plex on the Samsung TV, does not communicate with the plex server that is installed on the remote server. Tell me please how to solve the problem.
I love how all of these videos and people talk about 20+ streams.
I have NO interest in turning into a streaming service for friends and family. I use my media server for in house use only. They can figure their own crap out lol
So at any given time I might have 2. Me and my wife. Thats it.
No matter what you do your sacrificing something. The more streams you need, then your sacrificing money, bandwidth and space. You have to use older codecs for compatibility, use a bunch of your internet bandwidth, and hardware to support that many.
By getting rid of the 'friends and family' need, and cutting my needed streams to 2-4, I instead used that money for better in house streamers and hard drives for Unraid, encoding everything in Av1 for max quality (while getting some decent space savings despite the large file sizes) or direct BD Remuxes.
Now I have max quality, playing it massive bitrate in house, no internet bandwidth drop, and if friends and family want to watch something, they can come over for a movie night.
I've recently started playing with Plex, I set up a tiny HTPC with a haswell intel atom CPU. It's plays ~ 7 streams of H264 perfectly, and won't stream 1 H265 with out buffering, I might consider changing to H265 if I had a AMD Thread Ripper or an i7 8700k lol.
HEVC 265 will be the standard very shortly. To quote medium.com
( medium.com/advanced-computer-vision/h-264-vs-h-265-a-technical-comparison-when-will-h-265-dominate-the-market-26659303171a )
*_To demonstrate the incredible power of this codec, a subjective video performance study was made between these two codecs to understand how intensely is this bit reduction. The study showed the bit reduction is inversely proportional to the video image quality, where HEVC/H.265 presented a bit reduction of 52% at 480p and 64% at 4K UHD when compared to H.264_*
So due to the vast movement towards streaming (especially 4k video) this codec will have to be implemented better in Plex (which I believe is already happening).
I just realized that this was 5 years ago XD
H265 IS more efficient. If I handbreak (heh) a constant bitrate of 200kb (total [vid+aud]) at 1080 source res and FR, it takes considerably longer to process (about four hours per pass) but the quality is astounding compared to same settings with H264 (streams are watchable on a throttled 256k connection). Plex also seems to be okay with Direct Play for these transcodes on Droid/iOs, but as you mentioned, the browser app falls short; transcode vid/direct aud.
My server just serves to my house and only one stream at a time. I use H265 exclusively and its FAR better quality and smaller size.
I encode on a 3090 GPU and can do a bluray in less than 20 minutes. For 4K 10 bit files you cant use a GPU (yet) so they can take 4 or 5 hours on my CPU (10900K).
I've never had a buffer, not once, and can stream 4K 10 bit with ease, I'm shocked you use such old equipment when you want multiple streams, so I'm not suprised you need to use an older and worse codec. To anyone with decent hardware who doesn't need multiple streams, I'd urge you to use H265 which is clearly superior in every way.
I started converting my blu-rays from h.264 to h.265. After seeing a couple of movies pause, I remembered that my Apple TV Gen 4 doesn't support h.265 yet. So my FreeNAS server has to convert to h.264 on the fly. Standard definition videos don't seem to have an issue, but the HD videos buffer big time. My FreeNAS server is running an ASRock C2740D4i CPU. Probably not enough horsepower to transcode quickly.
I think I'll hold off on changing the rest of my blu rays over to h.265 until there is a new Apple TV that supports h.265.
I use h265 you just need a card that actually can handle it. Also I found out that 4k roku handle the direct stream perfectly
Excuse my ignorance, but can you do a video on h.264 vs h.265? Wouldn't a newer format with a supposedly more efficient way to keep quality while lowering file sizes theoretically allow more streams at once? Is it the way older cpus handle the files? Because doesn't kaby lake actually use a lot less power to playback h.265 4k files? I'm just confused at the results.
By improving the efficiency of the codec you reverse the effect on the CPU. x.265 has a much more complicated compression algorithm.
The only way im going back to 264 is if its 1 to 1 which for me I think comes down to a faster hard drive.....Ill test and let you know.
windows 10 has a codec so in theory it will direct stream
So I want to do some testing as I run my Plex Server on QNAP Nas and if I map my desktop directly to the NAS and direct stream my 4k files to the desktop without using Plex they play fine. Mind you this box is also connected via hardwire. Now if I go to my Vizio TV in the guest which is on wifi and use Plex it chokes on the buffering as he mentioned. I even have an access point in the room in which I connected the TV to the Access point via cat 5 and you would think this would solve the problem but no again Plex was choking on the buffering. So I tend to agree that Plex does have issues with transcoding and buffering the funny part is it shouldnt be transcoding as my QNAP should be handling all the transcoding via hardware and that has a 1TB buffer via m2 SSDs.
Kaby Lake (7th gen) and later has hardware decoding for HEVC (h.265) 10-bit streams. Any 6th gen processor or older will choke on h.265.
I don't bother with those. I've moved on to H.266.
What cars are those in the background and where do you get them?
All my files are on an old workstation Xeon. ECC 12GB & Freenas 11. All media converted to x265 for a least 1 year now. No issues. Small household but transcoding two at once wasn't a problem, never really tried to push it. I try to avoid transcoding. Amazon Fire TV box has x265 support so doesn't transcode. Chromecast Ultra has x265 support but does transcoded!! My Samsung S7 doesn't transcode. I try to make good choices in my media players to take stress off my server. But I'd say avoid windows, use Freenas or Ubuntu Server for best performance.
I have a macbook pro that i use for my server, i don't know the cpu name, but its a 2,6ghz (turboboosted to 3,8ghz) intel i7. I have limited space, but i want to have as many movies as possible, so i use H.265, all my movies are stored on my mac, and my tv shows are on a hdd connected to my router. I share my server with friends, and i can have at least 4 streams ( i have never had more). It uses a lot of my cpu, but it never buffers, the only problems i'm having is with my tv-shows, but i don't know if it's a slow hdd or if the files are corrupted, or if it's the way it's connected.
What happened to your hand?
At a given quality setting H.264 encodes about 6 times faster (CPU) to 18 times faster (GPU) for me, bearing in mind that H.265 won't encode on the GPU while H.264 will.
Chrome do the decoding on the CPU, I think GPU upgrading not really help much. Unless the media player using the apps that decoding the video with help of GPU, or even Chrome would dare to use plugin that decoding video using GPU, it always be better to stay at H.264 for media server I guess.
I transcode all my movies to h.265 and use plex beta with hardware trancoding, on a win 10 machine with rx480 card. normaly i use shield to watch movies. But we allso have chromecast, but 5 transcode streams of h265 works great.