Plex Stress Test: How Many Streams Can I Run at the Same Time on Quick Sync?
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- Опубликовано: 28 май 2024
- In this video, I try to run as many 1080p videos from a Plex Media Server as possible to see how well Plex's hardware accelerated transcoding performs on Intel's Quick Sync. The Plex Media Server resides on a machine with Linux Ubuntu Desktop version 20.04, running on a ninth-generation Intel Core i5-9400 mounted on a Gigabyte B365M DS3H motherboard. I will be monitoring the dashboard statistics such as the CPU, memory and network usage, and Plex's Now Playing section.
I'll start off by running a Plex web player in a Brave browser window. But I won't stop at just one window - I'll have 18 instances of Brave on one screen, each playing a unique video from the Plex server. Since hardware transcoding is a paid feature of Plex, you will need Plex Pass if you'd like to replicate the testing on your end. #Plex #MediaServer #QuickSync
00:00 Introduction
00:25 The Plan
00:45 The Hardware
01:37 A Note about Hardware Transcodes
02:05 Setting Up the Test
03:35 Let's Start!
07:33 Houston, We Have a Problem
09:38 Final Thoughts
10:24 Epilogue: What Manner of Sorcery Be This?
Video References:
Plex Playlist ► • How to Move / Migrate ...
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I could see how much effort you have made into the video.
Thank you 🙏. This one was quite technically challenging.
thanks for uploading this, i really appreciate all the work it may costed to u
You're welcome, and thank you 🙏.
Nice video, thanks for sharing. Very impressive what igpu can do, would be interesting to see how the new intel 750 that comes on the 11gen intels or the 940 that comes with the tigerlake mobile cpus. Hope we see more videos like this.
Thank you. I'd love to test the newer generation CPUs.
Will test how the UHD730/750 (depending on which I can get my hands on) performs in Jellyfin, transcoding 1080p H.265 10bit to H.264 8bit with HDR tone-mapping. Let's hope I remember to come back to this comment to add my results...
I'd love a follow-up to this video that goes into actual detail about the transcoding process and BENCHMARKS that show the limitations of Software transcoding (What Codecs can be transcoded by just a CPU? How many streams? What bitrates? How does ARM compare with AMD and Xeon?), as well as a head to head showing the differences between Quicksync and NVDEC. Can you edit Plex's built-in transcoder to get different outputs? How does Plex decide when AND HOW to transcode a file? There's so much we don't know!
Thanks for the suggestions! I would love to set up an experiment like that in the future.
This was awesome.
I just built a replacement Plex server running an i7-12700k to replace my old i5-4460. Needless to say I'm able to transcode a LOT more simultaneous streams, and 4k transcodes are a real thing now.
How many 1080p streams can you run
I can run at least 6 simultaneous transcodes from 4k to 1080p, and probably more.
@iamamish if it was just 1080p files how many do you think you could transcode then. I don't have 4k files just 1080p files
@@tauntonlad oh tons - I cannot imagine it is fewer than 20 but I haven't tested it. Unless you plan on having a LOT of users (hundreds) then I wouldn't even worry about it.
Yup just looked and the consensus is "at least 20" 1080p transcodes on the 12700k.
I'm really happy with my TrueNAS scale box, and the hardware is a good fit.
@@iamamish awesome thank you for giving me that information
kudos for those video editing skills 👏Nice video
What about 4K bluray to 1080p hardware transcoding?
Looking at getting an 11th gen CPU to replace my Threadripper 1900X that is quite power hungry and currently is doing software transcoding in Jellyfin which caps out at around 2-4 1080p transcodes (H.265 10bit to H.264 8bit). I hope QuickSync will give me a nice boost, especially when it comes to HDR color mapping. The 11400, 11500, and 11600 aren't that different in price with 110-150€.
Very very well explained. I'm planning on building a plex server myself, either with an i5-12400(UHD 730) or i5-12600k(UHD 770). My question is, because these chips have better iGPU(730 and 770 compared to i5-9400's 630), will the quick sync also perform better? As in, will I be able to transcode more videos with hw simultaneously?
Honestly, I don't think I'll ever surpass 10 simultaneous playbacks, but it's nice to have extra legroom.
Thank you. The sweet spot was the 6th to 7th generation Intel CPUs because they dramatically improved the quality with QuickSync around then - above that, there have been incremental improvements. With that said, a slower CPU can artificially limit the number of transcodes a GPU is capable of, so with the 12th gens you will probably see the ability to transcode more videos. To be honest, I'm not sure how the UHD 730 would compare with the 770 within the same generation.
Hi! Thank you for the effort, however, this is very obsolete review. Today where 4K TVs are standard, and our media libraries are full of new 4K Movies & TV Shows you should redo the review showing how many 4K & 4K HDR videos can transcode at the same time. Also, you should sort it in 3 phases, each three with 4K and another three with 4K HDR. Phases should be somewhere near to real-time scenario transcoding to a) 4K - Original quality (for example 4K x265 to 4K x264), b) 1080p@20Mbps, c) 1080@10Mpbs. You can do additional with 720p@3-6Mbps. I have basically bought i5-1135G7 because of your video and I was able to transcode 4K to 1080p@10Mbps only 6 times. I wasn't able to transcoded 4K HDR to 4K. Therefore, guys, if you have a lot of 4K materials, and you want to be able to transcode it to 4K or 1080p, be careful.
Finally a new video..
Can you test with 4K? Especially 4K HEVC? Nowadays more HEVC 4K videos that we need to transcode.
I would love to, but I'm afraid I'd probably need to move to the latest gen Intels as my ninth-gen i5 doesn't have enough horsepower. In general, I think the consensus is to avoid transcoding 4K if at all possible (serverbuilds has some good posts on the subject).
@@accessrandom It should work, it's the GPU doing decode + encoding, even my Celeron J4125 was able to transcode 4K HEVC 140Mbps bitrate (well, just 1), not sure if the UHD 630 with a bit better display core can provide more concurrency.
My idea for the "puffering with many streams" investigation is to just simply ping the server from the client(s) during the test. Maybe the download is doable, but the "pocket arrived" messages are increasing to the limit (raw idea)...
Thanks so much for the suggestion - that would definitely tell me if it's a network issue. I've created a network diagram for my next test, but it may be a while before I can get to it - I'm really curious what the limits of the hardware accelerated transcoding are...
Extremely well organized and valuable video, thank you! I think I'm sold on Quick Sync. I think I'll probably go with one of the 12th gen i5s from the current line-up.
Does anyone have a stress test with how many Direct Play users can play 1080p at the same time, with a standard PC? I've had 8 playing remotely at the same time and my Intel 11700k had no issues...
Hi I got one question if the ram on my pc is dual channel and the base clock speed for both are 2400, when in dual channel i get 2400 per ram or 1200 per ram.
The reported speed is halved since you are running in dual channel, with data transmitted twice per data clock cycle.
@@accessrandom I see thats why my ram was running lower than its clock speed, Thanks.
I would try multiple clients . And or try a more Powerful client than this one might work better ? Just my thoughts, no experience in using plex or things like this so im just pulling out some simple thoughts . Interesting test and would like to see more .. cures my curiosity . Cheers
Thank you for the suggestion. Yes, I think that will be my next step - maybe use three or four clients with 6 to 10 streams on each. I was actually able to get 25 streams running (in the Plex Now Playing stats) by opening - then minimizing - 25 browser windows on the server itself. The server can handle the hw transcoding on the back-end - the question is whether the bottleneck is on the front-end.
@@accessrandom Thats what im curious about. the Client and Its abilities / Bottlenecks etc etc . I am sure others would like to get some type of baseline, if you will, knowing what can do what and what Cant do what is always great to know . Looking fwd to finding out :) Even an older system used as a Client would be pretty cool to know how good/bad that can be . Ah so many unanswered questions !!! I must know these answers . Please help a guy out would ya lol . Cheers
wowser!
Wow, would've been great if you ran the stress test on one machine.
I was hoping I could - it looks like I'll need to beef up the client machine to do so...
that many would probably too much for 1 client to run, I'd think that if you have multiple clients Phones/tablets tv's added in the mix, you may find it works fine.
Looks like the bottleneck here is the client since CPU is only averaging at 60%
I'd say you can probably max a total of 30 transcodes excluding 4k, 3 4k with hdr tone mapping transcodes with your 9th gen CPU
Thanks for the analysis. I hope to try with a stronger client machine (or at least multiple clients) soon.
0:18 Or you could just use Jellyfin ;)
Is your read/write on your disk max out?
That's a good observation/question. The videos sit on a hard drive with a SATA 3 interface (theoretical maximum of 6 Gbps), so even at 18 streams forced to 4Mbps, it shouldn't come close to maxing it out.
@@accessrandom but you are doing transcoding, it stream + writing the transcoded playback 18 different place somewehre.
Where is the test of 4K down to 1080p?
Try it with the UHD 770 stock and then overclocked