Weekly Advice / No Stupid Questions Post

This is part of a weekly series of Plex Advice threads for novices and pros alike to ask questions, give advice, troubleshoot, and share knowledge and resources! Please be polite and helpful to beginners just getting started out, and we want to be as welcoming as we can to newcomers to this community.

Common subjects can include:

  • Plex Media Server setup
  • System requirements and advice buying components
  • Advice choosing the operating system that’s right for you
    • Getting started with a new operating system (eg. Linux, macOS, etc.)
  • Advanced setup and configuration
  • Help with PMS add-ons:
    • Docker
    • VPN advice
    • Setup / configuration of the *arr family of apps (Sonarr, Radarr, etc.)

Anyone who posts good starter guides, FAQs, and/or wikis may get their links added to the sidebar so the rest of the community can benefit!

Cheers!

Useful Resources

  • @SiriusCybernetics@lemmy.caEnglish
    3•9 months ago

    Does Plex need users to install / setup security things for streaming safely over the internet? I see this discussed a lot on Jellyfin forums. But the setup is too complicated for me.

    I’ve also just started using Plexamp. Am considering the lifetime subscription to get bit perfect playback.

    • @Sharmat@beehaw.orgEnglish
      2•9 months ago

      No, you don’t need a VPN If you open the port that plex uses. Then users can just log on their accounts and it should pull everything!

      Edit for accuracy.

        • @Sharmat@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1•9 months ago

          Nvm, I misread your question. Using a VPN is only necessary if your server is behind a CGNAT or your ISP disallows you to open ports manually.

          • @SiriusCybernetics@lemmy.caEnglish
            1•9 months ago

            I mean, Jellyfin people are always talking about reverse proxies and whatnot. That’s what I’ve been assuming isn’t necessary for Plex. I’m under the impression Plex is safer by default.

  • BlxterEnglish
    1•9 months ago

    If you encrypted a folder or drice that Plex currently plays off of will it continue to be able to play everything in that folder after you encrypted it. Do some encryption methods work better than others? Thanks.

    • BrooklynManOPMEnglish
      2•9 months ago

      Plex access and reads files like any other app would. If your, say, file browser can see/read the files, Plex can. So, if your encrypted drive is mounted and accessible to the rest of the system, Plex will be able to access it just fine.

  • @DonnieDarkmode@lemm.eeEnglish
    1•9 months ago

    So I’m looking to finally build a dedicated plex server, instead of using my personal desktop, but I’m having a hard time deciding on components (for a tower). I would say 3 simultaneous 4k remote transcodes would be the goal.

    There are some 12/13600k and Arc A380 bundles on Newegg that have caught my eye; at the very least I think I’d like an A380 to ensure AV1 10-bit support for the future. Am I missing out by not hunting for the perfect deal on an old Xeon or something off of eBay? I’m not really familiar with server components, and I don’t know to what extent I would benefit from ECC RAM.

    I also figure that a hard drive array (RAID or Unraid) would be best, because it’ll be more than enough speed for my application and give me some data protection. But I could use some guidance on the exact best combo for video streaming.

    Finally, OS; I’m most familiar with Windows, but the I’m willing to try something Linux if there’s enough of a benefit

    • Faceman🇦🇺English
      1•2 months ago

      Or you could wait for meteor lake CPUs which will have a HW AV1 encoder too.

      Plex haven’t even enabled transcode to H265 so it might not happen, but Jellyfin currently supports H265 encode and is previewing AV1 streaming. Perhaps that will spur Plex on to open up the FFMPEG encoder options a bit more and let us tune it to our needs and capabilities, but given the shift away from the piracy focused home media server they might not be prioritising it much.