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Speeding up network access to DrivePool


RFOneWatt

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Hi,

 

I am looking for suggestions on increasing the network read/write speed for my DrivePool. 

 

I am currently using four 600GB 10k RPM drives as feeder drives - striped on a Highpoint 2720 controller. (2 drives per stripe set) Most of the rest of the pool is on a Highpoint 2740.

 

I'm not sure of the best way to approach this and am looking for suggestions.

 

I am thinking that NIC teaming might be somewhere to start?  Or maybe it's time to be looking at fiber?

 

At the moment I am using several cheap gigabit switches that I will be consolidating to a larger, more intelligent switch.

 

The motherboard has an Intel 82576 dual GB controller but I will be upgrading to a Supermicro X10DRI-O shortly.

 

Any suggestions / advice would be appreciated :)

 

Thanks!!

 

-Tony

 

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Or just use FileBot to rename your movies and TV Shows before adding them to Plex.

CouchPotato, Metabrowser (use the XBMC saver), Media Center Master, Etc. There are a half a dozen apps that will do this for you, and some can be configured to do it automatically. 

 

There are some shows that simply do not have any metadata available to them on the internet. Some, I have gone out to TMDb or thetvdb and set up my own entries, but it's a pain. Without the metadata, they don't show up in Plex. 

Ouch. :(

 

ANd yeah, if Plex can't fetch the data, it basically chokes. It's metadata editor is .... horrendous

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Hmmm.... 

 

Unmatched / weirdly named videos show up in my library thumbnailed but lacking metadata.

 

I wonder if it when adding a library you have to tick the setting below to generate the thumbnail? 

 

plex.gen.thumb.jpg

 

I find Plex's metadata editor to be great although I'm not comparing it to anything.  I didn't spend enough time with Emby to compare, just that I don't have any complaints about Plex's editor. (of course now I'm going to go check out Emby's in more detail haha)    

 

I'm pretty picky though, honestly...  maybe I need to up my standards.  :angry:

 

I find it funny that six months ago (maybe a bit more) I was constantly bashing Plex for being a resource beast.. now I'm defending it. 

 

~RF

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I use CouchPotato and MCEBuddy. For now, Emby still is the winner when it comes to programs with no data though. :)

CouchPotato, Sonarr (sickbeard till recently, thanks guys... :P), and MetaBrowser.

 

And yeah, Emby does handle it better.

 

Hmmm.... 

 

Unmatched / weirdly named videos show up in my library thumbnailed but lacking metadata.

 

I wonder if it when adding a library you have to tick the setting below to generate the thumbnail? 

 

plex.gen.thumb.jpg

 

I find Plex's metadata editor to be great although I'm not comparing it to anything.  I didn't spend enough time with Emby to compare, just that I don't have any complaints about Plex's editor. (of course now I'm going to go check out Emby's in more detail haha)    

 

I'm pretty picky though, honestly...  maybe I need to up my standards.  :angry:

 

I find it funny that six months ago (maybe a bit more) I was constantly bashing Plex for being a resource beast.. now I'm defending it. 

 

~RF

I don't know, Plex is still really resource intensive... Especially when it's scanning files. That's actually why I stopped use it. 

That, and Emby did a better job with quality, and user management.

 

But Plex also uses a heavily customized build of ffmpeg for the transcoding, IIRC. This allows for a lot better performance profiling, and control over the transcoding process.  Emby uses a stock version, which is part of the problem. That and the profile they use.... as Madsonic/Subsonic uses the same version of ffmpeg without the high CPU usage.

 

Now, if Emby just added support for GPU offloading... (intel QuickSync, Nvidia... whatever it's called), it works much better, when it doesn't hang....

 

And don't get me wrong, Plex's editor does work. But .... I'm spoiled with stuff that works better (metabrowser, and Emby). 

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It's more resource intensive, but it gets the job done quicker/faster during scanning which is more important to me with a big library.  But during scanning Plex gets done faster and doesn't put any hurt on my machines so I'd never consider this a reason to switch. I myself would say Emby is far more resource intensive overall when it doesn't need to be then Plex is.  read on

 

As a "power user", I too prefer the user management style of Emby over Plex.  To the "average" system op, this probably isn't as important as plex.tv gets the job done (I prefer the user control myself).

 

Not sure about your "quality comment".  Quality of what? ie Server, Clients, etc?   How do you quantify that?

 

Without core work, Emby isn't going to be able to take advantage of GPU offloading in a way to make a lot of difference across the board.  Plex could still serve up the videos to more clients even without using this offloading. Take for example the following:  In Plex land you can pre-transcode all your videos to MP4 using h.264 (4.0 comp) with an AAC audio track.  This will natively playback via Plex on every device assuming it has the bandwidth.  So if you aren't bandwidth bound (clients or server) you can direct play to many clients via Plex just by have pre-transcoded/remuxed your media to this "common/universal" format.

 

Now take this same media and playback from Emby and it's hit or miss.  For example if a user plays the same video back from Chrome web browser that they just direct played via Plex it will transcode via Emby as it will want to transcode to Webm format which isn't needed. It also needlessly downgraded the quality.  So there is really no such thing as a "universal" format for Emby as there can be for Plex.  This limits the amount of clients Emby can stream to compared to Plex with a well thought out library format.

 

This ALSO hinders the use off GPU offloading.  What good does it do to have the ability to offload up to 2 QS streams if not all clients can use 264?  The hardware offloading would be easier right now to incorporate into Plex then Emby.

 

Plex has a much better thought out "engine" for transcoding then Emby does.  You can really see the differences when you know what to look for and what are common problems.  For example how each handles transcoding when you have subtitles turned on (depends on device doing playback).  voice/audio sync problems are much more a problem with Emby than Plex, etc...  CPU use during transcoding, number of simultaneous transcodes, etc...

 

Emby right now can't compete with Plex in this department.  This to me is the "heart" of a media streaming solution.  I've got family/friends who have iPads, Androids, PS4, ChromeCasts, Samsung TVs, Xbox, Rokus, web browsers.   IMHO, when you get right down to it, you NEED to have the proper clients and a "transcode" engine that is well thought out and fully functional.  Everything else is "eye candy".

 

With that said there are other things I truly love about Emby and wish Plex would do.  I have a "love/hate" relationship both both programs!

 

Carlo

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Quality of transcoded video. Even on the lowest settings, Emby's video is higher quality. And that's probably part of the problem. 

 

As for core work, people have already done it.

http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/10723-gpu-transcoding-intel-quicksync-and-nvidia-nvenc/page-14

But it's not stable, and needs more work. In fact, it probably needs a dedicated team working on it. 

 

 

As for the re-encoding, I could do that. But I have ~30TBs of video files. It would take months to do that... and that's not counting the new stuff I'm downloading weekly. 

 

As for the "direct play", Emby's biggest issue is that it requires different encoding for different clients/browsers.  That makes the entire situation more confusing.

Though, Emby does have the "Sync" feature which could help with that by re-encoding files for specific devices/profiles. However, I've tried that out and it degrades the quality significantly (it's quite noticeable). 

 

Though, yes, it would be much easier for plex to implement that, as they're using a custom build of ffmpeg already, IIRC.

But as for needed, it doesn't really matter what the quality is, faster transcoding means better performance, overall.

 

 

As for the scanner, using a massive amount of CPU cycles... Emby does a better job, faster, with much less CPU usage. Additionally, I'm not a fan of the fact that Plex uses hard links to link the metadata files, as well. 

 

With that said there are other things I truly love about Emby and wish Plex would do.  I have a "love/hate" relationship both both programs!

Absolutely agree. 
And it would be nice if they merged, I think the result would be awesome. However, I think a lot of the reason both products are as good as they are (any issue aside) is specifically because of the competition. 

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