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Question about local cache


Cobalt503

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I'm currently using this for plex and my local cache is at 100gb. I'm under the assumption that when I hit play on a file in plex and it seeks the content out on the hard drive that cloud drive would then access the file from the cloud and start pulling the chunks. 

My question is does it pull the entire file or ONLY the chunks it needs? 
And is there a way to MAKE it pull the entire file immediately and leave it on local caches for whenever until something over writes it? like overwriting the oldest accessed file first with the newest accessed file chunks? 

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On 12/26/2020 at 8:41 PM, Cobalt503 said:

I'm currently using this for plex and my local cache is at 100gb. I'm under the assumption that when I hit play on a file in plex and it seeks the content out on the hard drive that cloud drive would then access the file from the cloud and start pulling the chunks. 

My question is does it pull the entire file or ONLY the chunks it needs? 
And is there a way to MAKE it pull the entire file immediately and leave it on local caches for whenever until something over writes it? like overwriting the oldest accessed file first with the newest accessed file chunks? 

You might have better luck asking this question in a Plex forum, if one exists. From my experience with Plex, I could never get it working good streaming a cloud based movie and my Amazon Fire TV Stick. My brother-in-law was a big fan of Plex and had me try it out. So I would log into his account and pull down a movie to watch. But what I got was constant buffering which really turned me off. His explanation was that the Amazon Fire TV Stick had limited memory and it was not able to buffer enough data to provide a good experience. At that time, he told me, there were game machines that allowed you to download, or preload, the entire movie file from the internet to your local device and play them back later when you wanted with no buffering. I did not have those game machines so I gave up on Plex.

Recently, after installing DrivePool on my local computer, I installed Plex and now Plex plays local DrivePool files on my Amazon Fire TV Stick without buffering. I don't know if Plex has improved downloading/streaming over the internet because my brother-in-law got frustrated with Plex's lack of customer support and moved on to other platforms.

If you are having buffering issues with Plex over the internet, then I think you would want to set up some kind of a preload option on your local computer if that option is available. Then, after the file(s) have completely downloaded from the internet, you can watch the movie from your local device and avoid the internet buffering. Again, I was told that was possible with certain game machines, but I did not have them so I never actually got to see this feature work.

FWIW, I mainly use Kodi as my media platform these days. Unless I am trying to play a movie file >15GB, I seldom experience any buffering on my home network Wifi with Kodi. But the weak point in my system is my Amazon Fire TV Stick streaming movies over WiFi. My next upgrade would be to get a device direct connected to my ethernet's 1 gigabit home network. 

I don't know if any of this was helpful, but I thought I would respond with what I know on this Plex issue since no one else has jumped in on your question. Good luck.

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On 12/26/2020 at 8:44 PM, Cobalt503 said:

I'm gonna test setting my prefetch forward to 5000mb that's about half the length of a movie right? 

I can remember when movies would fit on a CD ~700MB. Then the files were split on 2 CD's for ~1400MB. Then DVD's came in at 4.37GB and double sided DVDs at 9.4GB. Then BlueRay discs ~25GB but some BlueRay disc formats are up to 100GB. It's just a constant moving target, I guess. A 5000mb prefetch should be good for about half a 1080p movie these days.

Most of my current 1080p movies are between 8GB - 14GB. If I get a movie >15GB, I start to have buffering issues on my Amazon Fire TV stick. However, I have seen a number of new 4K movies uploaded at ~40GB to ~70GB. I don't have a 4K TV, so I don't even bother with those large 4K movie files. If I find a movie I really want only available in a large file, then I will run it through the free utility Shanna encoder and reduce it down to 1080p or 720p. I usually reduce to 720p. At 720p resolution, most files are reduced to ~3GB in size, so the entire file would fit on your prefetch forward to 5000mb.

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If your hardware supports the new x265 encoding, you can get a much higher quality picture at a much smaller file size. My system, unfortunately, does not support x265 so I have to convert them to x264. Storage is so much cheaper today than years ago, so I will save both the large original files for future use and my smaller converted files for use now. Given a choice, I usually opt to download a smaller file that I can play on current system. The Shana encoder I use does a good job, but it takes 1:1 processing time on my old computer. In other words, my computer will convert the files overnight and I can watch them the next day.

I would still encourage you to post your question on a Plex forum, if there is one, and maybe they would be able to help you more specifically with your local cache question for Plex streaming.

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  • 3 months later...

Plex would be dependent on the caching and throttling settings you have set in CloudDrive. Plex might influence the amount of data pulled based on your "Transcoder default throttle buffer" value and bandwidth limits in Plex Server settings. If I'm attempting to play cloud videos on Plex, I do notice an additional 1 to sometimes 5 second delay before the video starts, but I see similar latency in the cloud disk access times. Plex can't start playing the video until it buffers enough from CloudDrive. In my experience, Plex will fill the transcoder buffer to the limit specified, and request as many CloudDrive blocks that equates to. 

Edit: I am on 1Gbps fiber though with a decent server; I do limit remote users to 4k 40mbps.

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