Plex is a media server and streaming platform that allows users to organize, access, and stream their personal collection of movies, TV shows, music, photos, and other media files. It provides a centralized hub for managing and enjoying media content across various devices.
With Plex, users can set up a media server on their computer or NAS (Network Attached Storage) device, where they store their media files. The server software scans and organizes the files, fetching metadata, artwork, and other details to create a visually appealing library.
Once the media server is set up, users can access their content through the Plex app on different devices, such as smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, gaming consoles, and streaming devices. The app connects to the server over the network, allowing users to browse their media library and stream content to any supported device.
Plex also offers additional features like remote access, allowing users to access their media library from outside their home network, and sharing capabilities, enabling users to share their media with friends and family.
Furthermore, Plex supports various media formats and provides features like automatic transcoding, which adapts the video and audio quality to match the capabilities of the device being used to stream.
In summary, Plex is a media server and streaming platform that allows users to organize, access, and stream their personal media collection across different devices. It provides a convenient way to enjoy movies, TV shows, music, photos, and more, all from a centralized and user-friendly interface.
Create a Plex Account at: plex.tv
Send account email address to the Plex server administrator
Download and install the Plex app onto a device or access the web app
Upon receiving an email invite, accept and join the Plex server
Pick which libraries are seen on the home
Home users will have access to all libraries while Share users have access to libraries selected by the administrator
Notes: It is recommended to enable 2-Factor Authentication for all users. Especially users that are part of a Home as they will be able to access the Administrator account. Incase of Home account it is also recommended to ensure that users have a secure password (8 digits minimum).
1080p Local:
Raspberry Pi 2 or above. Must have connection to LAN with ethernet.
1080p Remote:
Nvidia Shield 4k or above. Must have connection to LAN and WAN with ethernet. 20mb/s Upload or above.
4K Local:
Intel i5 4000 series or above. Must have 8GB RAM or above. Must have 1GB connection to LAN with ethernet as minimum. A GPU is recommended, preferably a Quadro. Do not attempt to run any sort of Transcoding on a 4K stream, it will not work and will cause considerable stress to the system.
4K Remote:
Do not attempt. Any remote streaming will almost always require some form of transcoding which should not be done on 4K files.
Notes: These minimum requirements are for a single stream, as the number of streams increase the pressure on the system will increase. To reduce stress as much as possible try to have as little transcoding as possible this means that the faster the connection to the server the less work the server will have to do.
Create directories with the names of the libraries
Add media files to the directories
Download the Plex Server file
Run through the install wizard
Create a new library, select the type then select the directory(s)
Select a source from one or more folders
If remote access is desired then enable this in Plex settings
Plex is setup with libraries with presets of Movies, TV Shows, Music, Photos and Others.
Movies & TV Shows
The Movies and TV Shows are fairly similar and follow similar rules in terms of file format. .mkv is the preferred and recommended file type but .av4 and .mp4 are also acceptable formats. For live action bitrate is fairly important, more so than the resolution but for most the resolution should still be at minimum 1080p though 720p is acceptable for some older movies. Files with a 4K resolution should be tret with care as they can cause problems with streaming especially regarding transcoding. It is not recommended to mix 1080p and 4K files in the same library as a user may try playing a 4K file remotely on a slow connection which can bring the entire server to a stand still. As a general rule then, if a 4K library is created then it shouldn't be shared with users that are only going to use the server remotely. For bitrate, a minimum target should be 8,000kb/s for live action 1080p and 6,000kb/s for animated 1080p. For 4K a minimum should be at least 15,000kb/s for the video itself. Be careful to check that the video bitrate is high as sometimes the audio track can have a high bit rate of 1,000+kb/s which can mask the overall bitrate of the file. A recommended minimum file size for a 2hr movie is 9GB, this will likely have a video bitrate of 8,000-9,000kb/s and an audio bit rate of 1,000-1,500kb/s making a total of between 9,0000-10,500kb/s. A similar bit rate should be aimed with TV Shows. As the bitrate is measured in kb/s, the length of the media should be researched before deciding on how large a file should be chosen. Animated media like Anime or Cartoons can get away with a lower bitrate as there is often far less happening on the screen at one time meaning a lower bitrate will not decrease the picture quality. 6,000kb/s is the recommended rate for animated media. Subtitles are also a relatively important aspect, a lot of the time files will come with subtitles but incase of no subtitles then Plex has a feature that allows you to download subtitles that have been provided by the community but these are usually lower quality and can sometimes contain adverts. TV Shows in particular are less likely to have subtitles within the file.
Music
The Music library is built specifically for audio files. It's designed to stream your music but can be used to stream any and all audio files. This means that audio books, podcasts or any other form of audio can be streamed. As the library is designed for music, any other file types rely heavily on meta data. If a mixture of audio types are wanted to be streamed it is heavily recommended that they are set up in serperate libraries. This way one can be Named Music and one named Audio Books, for example. By default, audio books and podcasts will not get properformatting information, this can be fixed with third party add ons but the quality varies and they can often break due to the high update turnaround speed of Plex. As the audio files are stored locally it is recommended to try and get as large files as possible. A good target for music is 1000kbps but these can be hard to come by. The best file formats are lossless such as .flac but they take up a lot of space as compared to lossy such as .mp3.
Photos
The Photo library is very simple as it is simply allowing the view pictures saved on the server. Albums can be created and as always, higher qaulity pictures are recommended.
Others
The Other library is used as a catch all for all file types. This is best used for video files that do not have information in any of the online databases such as TVDB.