I've been thinking on pre-processing my library to be able to serve it on a low level device, have you thought about that option?
In my case since I know what content I'll be watching the most in what devices and have the space to duplicate it (since I don't want to lose the original files)
I've honestly been considered going the other way. I have a bunch of h.264 files that I'd like to convert to h.265. I recently heard about Tdarr, and am considering that for a future weekend project to reclaim storage space.
I think directing my friends that can to move to players that don't suck would help with the transcoding bottleneck. But some of the other responses make me feel like I'm overly concerned about it.
I just did my entire movie and TV library. Was set and forget once I got it configured properly. Had each one of my proxmox hosts running a Tdarr lxc and it took a few months to process it all. Only encoded during what Plex says is the least played hours so I didn't try to copy a movie onto an already playing movie.
The best way to improve plex/jellyfin performance is to make sure your players support what you are trying to watch and transcoding should only be needed if you are sharing remotely to someone with either slow internet or a crappy old player.
Of course, with hardware encoding the chip in that little computer can do what you are asking, including doing it at 4K if needed.
Go for the second hand 1l pcs. They are better and cheaper (but less sexy) than the zimaboard. The ones with a i3-7100T should handle like 10 transcode, if 1080p. Chrapes I've seen on ebay was a prodesk 50bucks. But it's a rare deal
This says the CPU it comes with has quick sync so you should be good to go with hardware transcoding. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/95596/intel-celeron-processor-n3450-2m-cache-up-to-2-20-ghz/specifications.html
Plex quick sync: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/hrpuhf/wow_quicksync_on_newer_gen_intels_are_transcode by/
If you look on this plex support page, they say you need around 8000 passmark points, if I were you, I will look a cpu which a bare minimum of 10000 passmark points to be fine.
Thats a pretty old calculation that doesn't take into account hardware acceleration, which modern chips can do very, very well.
So you can get away with a celeron class intel chip (or whatever they are calling them these days) and mange multiple 4k to 1080 transcode streams without issue.
I have a mini PC with an Intel n95, which is around 5500 on the passmark chart, but can easily churn out 10+ 1080p to 1080p transcodes if needed, of course the ideal setup is to avoid transcoding wherever possible. that's not my main server, but it's nice to know that if I wanted to I could move my plex server onto it and it would be fine.
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