Sounds great but I cant find out what it does or can do?
Can you please explain so idiots like me can understand what your system do? 
Ex step by step?
I tried using the plex optimizer and still ended up with a lot people transcoding. I optimize parts of my library using the mp4 automator, but itās a pain because you need to perform some analysis.
- What are all the devices connecting ( gotta knew what the clients can do )
- What profile and level do all devices have in common ( Can everything support high 4.1 )
- What do the audio configurations look like ( do you need to add aac stereo )
- What does the bandwith of your users look like ( this impacts bit rate )
Usually I would say start by reaching out to users and make sure that Direct Play is enable and video as well as audio are both set at play at original. I think Andriod devices hide this under network, make sure theyāre set at original. Once thatās done see whoās transcoding at that point. I suspect android and Roku devices will be fine and apple will be a thorn in your side.
I do this as well. I have tautulli stats so whenever I see someone transcoding I burn their ass publicly and tell them to switch quality to maximum, that works most of the time.
but in theory,if you were to do it ā¦ youād probably want to get a preemptible nvidia tesla 100 ( should be about 3,000 cores and runs about .50 per hour ) and compile ffmpeg to use that card. This use case would be only used if youāre truly re-encoding and not just copying and or adding an audio track.
The bottleneck would be trying to write the converted file back to the cloud drive
I use this as a CPU:
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz
I also have hardware encoding setup on my server and youāll see the HW on the end of the item playing.
At that point, I barely ever crack 15% CPU usage with many streams transcoding so I havenāt ever felt the need to convert my media as the effort to do that isnāt needed in my current setup.
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I made the list and then tried to encode but had an error, what could it be?
plexus encode -l list.txt --verbole
Downloading: MOVIE_NAME.mkv
/usr/bin/plexus: line 414: /usr/bin/rclone: No such file or directory
This should be plexus encode -l list.txt --verbose
What operating system are you using? RCloneās install script installs the binary to /usr/bin/rclone (same as Plexus), however, yours must be somewhere else (most likely due to your OS/system architecture).
Admittedly I do need to add better handling of external applications. Due to how Shell handles certain types of loops, you have to include the full path of the desired program. The new Go rewrite doesnāt have this issue
Iām using ubuntu 16.04
About rclone i didnāt use install script but just copied rclone bin and made my own configuration.
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Ah, I see. Iāll add a config option for custom setups then Should be done soon. Once itās updated, just run the update command from plexus install and then run plexus config to specify your locations
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@fbrassin Iāve just released an update I had to rewrite a few things to get things to work. To update, either do follow the install instructions on the repo again or just run plexus install, 2.
Youāll need to specify your RClone binary location by running plexus config, 2, 3, then your absolute path. The encode function now supports local directories by default, so to use RClone youāll need to specify the -r flag like this: plexus encode -l list.txt -r YourRemote:. Let me know if you run into any issues!
OK, worked 'till 100% but then an error:
2018/11/22 10:28:50 NOTICE:
Transferred: 2.551G / 2.551 GBytes, 100%, 10.869 MBytes/s, ETA 0s
Errors: 0
Checks: 0 / 0, -
Transferred: 1 / 1, 100%
Elapsed time: 4m0.3s
File downloaded./usr/bin/plexus: line 514: -v: command not found
Looks like that was caused by the change in binary handling. Iāve just released an update which should resolve the issue
Updated.
Now the error has changed
/usr/bin/plexus: line 557: ffmpeg_error\nAn unknown error occurred with FFmpeg.\nConsider installing the custom build of FFmpeg via the install command.\n: command not found
Since I have a custom build of FFmpeg on my machine, I missed the lack of a equals operator for that variable declaration. Fixed, updated Sorry about the hassle!
OK, now it worked fine.
I see that program is overwriting original file. Isnāt it better to let user choose if keep original file or overwrite it?
Maybe with a config option
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Glad to hear that it worked!
I agree that an option should exist. Iāll add a config option and flag.
Iāve just implemented a -f flag (which doesnāt require an input) which sets the new force_overwrite variable to true. You can set this to false via the config function or by manually modifying the config file directly. Iāve also added a --bwlimit flag (bandwidth limit flag), reorganised the config function and rewritten the primary component of the encode function to be technically more efficient but primarily easier to maintain.
Let me know if you have any other requests or feedback
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Iāve just found out that my converted movie is beening transcoded from my ATV4, so i think i set something wrong in plexus.
Can you please help me to understand how should i set plexus to work fine with ATV4.
In think container should be mp4, not mkv.
MKV shouldnāt be the issue, but I was planning on adding extended container support in the future anyway so Iāve just implemented it. You can can configure it the same way as everything else Thereās no flag for it as it wouldnāt make much sense.
Are the media clients set to play remote files at original quality? And do they actually have direct play enabled? Itās not necessarily the serverās fault for the transcode.
I set original quality.
On reddit i found this:
When I transcode videos for max direct play compatibility, I usually do something along these lines:
H.264 video
2 channel AAC audio (although audio transcoding isnāt so bad so I sometimes opt to keep the DTS audio for surround systems, or add it as a second audio track)
MP4 container
Level 4.1 or lower (ATV4 supports level 4.2, but many of the devices I use max out at 4.1) More on levels here
Same frame rate as the source
Around 10Mbps bit rate. This is a personal preference, you can choose the quality that you think looks best. Going higher than the source will just waste disk space.
Iād say there is a decent chance many of your videos are in H.264. If they are H.264, but in a different container, you can remux the file into an MP4 container without transcoding. This will save you a lot of time (itās insanely faster than transcoding the video) and prevent the quality loss that can come with transcoding. I donāt know if Handbrake can do this; I havenāt used it in a while.
As for what formats the ATV4 can direct play, the ATV4 has hardware decoding for H.264 video up to 1080p at 60 fps, level 4.2 or lower, in an MP4 container. Audio should be AAC at 160 kbps per channel. Hereās Appleās official info on this.
Itās possible in the future the Plex app will be able to leverage the ATV4ās CPU to play other formats, but for now this is what works for direct playback.
NOTE: Plex can āDirect Streamā video in a different container, effectively negating the difference between streaming an MKV and MP4, as long as the video stream in the container is able to be played on the device. You mentioned this in your post, Iām including it here for completionās sake only.
Maybe it can help.