Thoughts on Threadripper in FreeNAS for Plex transcoding

[riccochet]

Hey everyone,
Apologies if this has been covered before, my searches yielded little. But has anyone thought about or tried to use threadripper in a FreeNAS box? I am looking to build something that will be used for media storage and as a plex server, 4k transcoding eventually. It seems this might be a good option for that at a reasonable price, as it looks like it supports ECC RAM.

 

[Ericloewe]

Support for the latest and greatest AMD stuff is still less than optimal. Be prepared to be a Guinea pig.

 

[riccochet]

Do not want.
Guess i'll stay away. 4k server transcoding seems like a pretty expensive proposition still... probably best to plan for direct play on the clients rather than the server. Might be waiting for a few years yet for affordable server side transcoding.

 

[nightshade00013]

A dual cpu setup can handle just as many threads if not more than a threadripper if you REALLY want to transcode. For the same cost for some used server hardware you can probably build a system out for a comparable feature set to a threadripper. Just because it's a little older doesn't mean it can't perform similarly. However it's always best to have your media in a format that devices support without transcoding.

Honestly I make sure EVERYTHING I have is in a h264 format with AAC audio so everything I have works. Phones, tablets, SmartTV, etc. The only time my system transcodes on the fly is if I am away from home on a poor connection and I just have to watch something.

 

[riccochet]

What do you use as clients that connect to the server then?

 

[Chris Moore]

What do you use as clients that connect to the server then?

I have the Plex plug-in installed on my TV and I play directly using my TV. Most of my media is already encoded when I rip it.

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[riccochet]

And your TV is able to handle a 4k direct stream from the server? without it looking like a slide show?

 

[Chris Moore]

And your TV is able to handle a 4k direct stream from the server? without it looking like a slide show?

Some of my videos are older and they're only at 420 others are newer and are at 720 or 1080 I don't really have much media that was encoded at 4K.
No matter what kind of media it is the TV handles that from Plex pretty well.

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[nightshade00013]

As far as Plex and 4k with smart tv's if it's not being handled well then the TV is unable to handle Plex at 4k and it is likely being transcoded to 1080p.

Some tv's can handle 4k but not the way we would like them to. Look up your tv model and see what it likes as a container/codec and make sure a small file is encoded that way and test if it is transcoding. If it is then your tv is one of the ones that just won't work correctly with the application and 4k.

 

[Chris Moore]

I have a separate computer that I use to transfer the DVD into a file and then I upload the file into the media directory of the Plex.
Most of the transcoding work is done at that point and the Plex doesn't need to do much more, at least for me.
I have an LG brand TV and most of the time when I play videos the Plex server says they are being 'direct streamed', not transcoded. The videos that are being transcoded are the very old ones in my library that were saved as AVI and are not really compatible in their present form. Then the server must process them before sending to the TV and the CPU utilization really kicks up, sometimes as high as 90% on the server, but the TV still plays the video nicely. For the videos that are direct streamed, the CPU utilization on the server is around 10% and often less.
You can see the specs for my server in my signature, it isn't new, and it is good enough that the kids can be watching a 1080 video on their TV and my wife and I can be watching a movie on the big TV at the same time and normally the CPU utilization is less than 10%.
Last month I was resilvering a drive in my FreeNAS and we had two streams going and everything still ran smoothly.
I don't think you will have a problem.

 

[riccochet]

I have a separate computer that I use to transfer the DVD into a file and then I upload the file into the media directory of the Plex.
Most of the transcoding work is done at that point and the Plex doesn't need to do much more, at least for me.
I have an LG brand TV and most of the time when I play videos the Plex server says they are being 'direct streamed', not transcoded. The videos that are being transcoded are the very old ones in my library that were saved as AVI and are not really compatible in their present form. Then the server must process them before sending to the TV and the CPU utilization really kicks up, sometimes as high as 90% on the server, but the TV still plays the video nicely. For the videos that are direct streamed, the CPU utilization on the server is around 10% and often less.
You can see the specs for my server in my signature, it isn't new, and it is good enough that the kids can be watching a 1080 video on their TV and my wife and I can be watching a movie on the big TV at the same time and normally the CPU utilization is less than 10%.
Last month I was resilvering a drive in my FreeNAS and we had two streams going and everything still ran smoothly.
I don't think you will have a problem.

I can already do full HD transcoding just fine. My current server has been doing that for years. Its 4K content that is not really all that easy. Its basically 4 HD transcodes happening all at once. The next server i build is going to be a plex server that needs to last for about 5 years, so i am trying to incorporate the ability to do 4K transcodes "just in case" but i don't know if thats feasible right now.

 

[Chris Moore]

I am really confused as to why you need to transcode to begin with. Most of the videos we play are Direct Stream.

Why do you need to Transcode?

 

[riccochet]

I am really confused as to why you need to transcode to begin with. Most of the videos we play are Direct Stream.
View attachment 21286
Why do you need to Transcode?

two reasons. but as i said, transcoding is more of a "nice to have" than a start/stop feature that i need. First of all, remote playing to a phone or mobile device. I don't really do a lot of this any more.
secondly, some of my clients are just raspberry pi's running rasplex. they can handle a HD stream, but 4k they choke on. I don't have many of these however as i was just experimenting with them and i will probably be getting rid of them eventually.

 

[nightshade00013]

Since there is still so little 4K content I treat it just like I do 3D content and have a separate area for it. When it becomes more prevalent and "everything" is released that way and everything I have supports it/cpu power can handle 4 streams at once without breaking the bank I won't mind so much.

It's simple enough to grab something that is 4K and then transcode it to be a 1080p stream and be done with it just have it in a different directory and separated in Plex.

 

[hippy1970]

I use the PS3Media server to transcode everything on the fly. Never tried 4K and as it's no longer maintained it may well not support it.
However, it relies on various other software to do the transcoding, ie VLC. So the fact that it's not maintained may not be relevant. It's java based so may run in FreeNAS. I'm running it on a second Ubuntu based server.

 

[Stux]

At the end of the day, the only problem with Thread Ripper is that it is so new that support has lagged... I imagine its an order of magnitude better in 11.1 Beta 1 than it was in 11.0