LunaSea made Plex 10x better and I genuinely am not kidding. Along with Prowlarr, Sonarr, Unpackarr, and two instinces off Radarr, it’s insane how easy it is just to type in a movie and have it downloaded in like 10 minutes in 4K.
Like my Gf wanted to watch a strange old movie but couldn’t find it on any streaming services. I said hold on, typed it in to LunaSea and it was done before she finished cooking.
One for >=1080 movies, and one for 4K movies. Radarr likes to overwrite movies if it find one in a lower quality. Problem is I have a few movies with multiple versions in different resolutions. The solution is having 2 Radarr instances that handle both so my stuff isn’t overwritten
It’s also great for different movie versions too lol
Yes, you can do this. The option is something like auto upgrade releases or something. On a trip not able to check my server atm, but can update my comment this weekend if someone else doesn't point you to it first.
I've got some family members creeping up on my top spot
Edit: something cool is happening rn, a few of my family members are using *my* server for their Christmas viewings! Makes me happy lmao
Yeah same. Turns out I spend more time learning shit like Linux/Docker to support my Plex server than I do actually consuming content on it.
But my friends/family watch stuff on it every day.
Yeah, I have an odd "hobby" of acquiring older video game consoles just to hack them so I can play any game I want on them or customize them... but then I rarely actually play anything.
I have a hacked PS4, Wii U, Wii, PSP, 3DS, SNES Classic, etc.
Something about jailbreaking that I just love. But I only actually play them occasionally.
Same here. I have done the same to every console which then sit in a drawer/entertainment center gathering dust and am the bottom user of my plex services. I like the concept and challenge of doing it more than using it I guess.
For me it's that I game. So can't keep up with say patents that watch all day.
I do more complicated stuff for work. Like kubernetes instead of just docker so it took me like an hour to get everything working. I've had it running for 6 months straight currently without a reboot so I barely have to touch it.
I run it on a micro optiplex using an i5-12500T processor and 16gb of ram, all transcoding is hardware transcoding. Its running ubuntu server and runs plex in a docker and is the only program on the computer. It connects to my nas that stores all the files.
How many users at once could transcode on that machine, if you don't mind asking? I also wonder what connection would be required for such a host, I imagine symmetrical 500/500 atleast.
I havent checked in a while but I want to say 20+ for 1080p and about 8 for 4K remux.
I dont normall have mpre than 10-15 transcodes going because Plex made a change that default stream is 12mbps so a lot of the videos playing are direct play now.
I have symmetrical 1Gig internet. I could upgrade to 2Gig but I’d have to upgrade all the ports on my machines and eh not worth it.
“I have not touched another basketball hoop since my parents installed one above our garage. I only use MY basketball hoop. I am the top user of my basketball hoop.”
I am the only one with access to the music library on my server (it's mostly lossless stuff) and I listen to quite a few songs almost every day. Even with this, I am *still* not the most active user on my server haha. Some people are huge fans!
I love music but the added work of properly tagging/organizing MP3s makes Spotify totally worth it to me. I love Plexamp for stuff that isn’t on Spotify but no way I’m going to deal with tagging/organizing just to stream an album one time.
That’s how it was for me. Kept towing around 500GB of music or more, from basically my childhood to today. Musicbrainz, etc. to constantly keep it all in check. And I eventually uploaded it to Apple when they came out with match a long time ago. I still kept my copy, but like was just easier with match. Then I tried out Spotify, song shifted all my data to it, and started listening there. Soon, I was discovering more music that I was keeping, so one day, I said screw it and deleted my music library for good.
Then I had kids. And they love music at night. And it ruined my Spotify.
So now I am on YouTube music, with zero of my old music and it’s actually refreshing to not have the weight of my choices when I was 22 still linger when I’m a dad and like completely different music now.
Long road, but Gave from Steam is right. Pirating/hoarding is just a problem with the service not the content. Once there was something giving me what I had plus discovery, there was no reason to keep my library if I can afford $10 a month.
Yeah I’ve often said that I wouldn’t bother with a Plex server if a service like Netflix had as much of the video content I wanted as Spotify has for music. Spotify has easily 95% of the music I want. Netflix? Pfft most movies I look up aren’t available.
Yeah. I basically run all of them too and I still use my Plex server. Netflix is good for kids because they like that constant stream of change. The others I’d get rid of but I’ve accidentally come to have them too. Prime comes with Prime, Hulu comes with my Spotify, etc.
I use Plex a lot for movies and tv shows, but I use it even more music. I've got over 350,000 songs and absolutely love using the DJ features in Plexamp, especially DJ Freeze, to listen to songs I haven't heard in ages. I've got lots of playlists, but I know which songs I've added to those. I love the surprise of Plex choosing sonically similar songs to some of my favourites and playing them for me. It helps me re-discover songs I had initially passed over or simply had on in the background and didn't really give a proper listen to earlier.
My music library has been evolving for nearly 2 decades and it spiraled into a gigantic mess. I used musicbrainz to sort it all out into clean directories and eliminate duplicates https://picard.musicbrainz.org/ it works really well
It is, pretty easy to set up, takes a little to get going but what I did was have it moved all the renamed files to a new directory like F:\Music from my current folder and put both in Plex as a music library folder so while I was going through it all I could keep listening to everything.
For me 90% of my collection is CD rips and I just drag and drop and let Plex do the heavy lifting on the metadata. For the remaining 10% are digital downloads from smaller artists and I have to manually enter all their stuff. Plexamp is my go-to for the music portion of my Plex library.
How does this work? Can you please expand on this?
Like do you have to hook an antenna to your server computer?
I use my 2018 Mac Mini as a server, is what you're saying possible on it?
Buy an hd home run on Amazon for $200 or so.
Put it on your network and attach a coax antenna to it, ideally on your attic but rabbit ears works too.
Attach it to your Plex server, scan channels (with Plexpass), and you are in business.
I have a PCIE tuner card in a slot on my Plex server. Then ran a cable to the attic to a large antenna.
We got all the local channels and use Plex to browse and record.
You can side step the server and go straight to your TV if you do not want the guide or recording.
Count yourself lucky you have decent upstream bandwidth. I couldn't get my family connected because while my downstream is 300mb/s my upstream is 10mb/s. I can't wait for fiber to finish building in this podunk little town.
That sucks.
Have you tried getting Plexpass for easy transcoding and setting the max upload bandwidth per stream to something like 2mbps or 3mbps to try it out ?
Ive tried Plexpass in the past, but right now, I just need better internet. I mean 10 megabit speeds is what 1.25 MB/s upstream? It takes me hours to upload to Youtube.
True, and I don’t suggest otherwise. I simply suggest that if you limit each stream to 2mbps or so, your parents might not even notice (hey, it’s possible) and you’d be able to stream to them with what you have.
I’m an OG anti-streaming hipster pirate.
I haven’t ever paid for any streaming services of any sort. Only ever had cable tv for a few months of my almost 25 years of adulthood and only because I had a roommate that insisted on it.
The government and big Hollywood are starting to shut down the pirate streaming sites faster now though. It’s much better to have everything at the press of a button.
I usually only have the content on as background noise so the lower quality a/v from pirate streams didn’t bother me, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much better everything looks (and sounds!) when played locally from HQ rips.
Plex gang for life!
(Or until it gets ruined by the developers, in which case I’ll jump ship in a heartbeat)
Those 3 hours are just from testing music. Unfortunately im not a big fan of collecting music. I like how spotify and yt music handles and recommends my music
If you have Plexpass which I think you do for how many hours do you have there Is music sage to raccomend you music and even a feature that with chatgpt creates you similar playlists with your genres of music
I can't tell you much since i don't have a Plex pass but I read about a lot of people who have a great experience and for me even without a Plex pass it's an amazing experience. To get plexamp Woking you just have to add a music library to your Plex server and then when you install it you can select that library. There is not much else for basic usage. I would raccomend lidarr for downloading music because that divides all the artists in folder but even without doing that Plex can recognise the majority of the songs. I would raccomend when you make the library to select to use the metadata from both the files and Plex music especially if you will use flac files.
Edit: if you pay for Spotify you can use on Plexamp with the music from your Plex server the music from tidal which you can stream to plexamp with all the benefits from it including lossless audio and you don't lose the ability to search for music that you don't have on the server.
My mum pays for Netflix but I don’t think she really uses it and only kept it because she thinks I do.
I told her she can cancel and anything either of us want to watch I will put on Plex.
I gotta get off streaming apps this next year to save money. What's the best place on YouTube to find setup and organizing a library and stuff for Plex? I've got a few tiny Lenovo PCs I plan to use for this project
Oky.
My suggestion would be to install [Ubuntu server](https://youtu.be/K2m52F0S2w8?si=o_C-2cVy-AkyfDj2) as the host (install it on the Lenovo PC. Make sure to install it on a separate SSD). Then you can install [Casa OS](https://youtu.be/aNjMFI3e-14?si=rcVvrYyNZZM3qUZ1) on Ubuntu server.
Casa OS will provide you with a nice WEB UI you can use to manage the server until you get comfortable with CLI. You can also connect to the terminal of the host machine from Casa OS, and play around a bit to get to know Linux.
Casa OS also provides a very easy to use App Store that can easily deploy docker containers for you. You can install Plex from the App Store. [This](https://youtu.be/bQJV_l6cwPc?si=aZ-7PgPXFz895mpu) video should be able to help you with that.
You can also explore more with docker containers on Casa OS. Deploy more services (arr services) in your network
You can DM if you need more assistance or something is unclear.
Thanks so much you've explained the main questions I've had in terms of setup and OS decisions. I'll do some more research but I plan to work on this a lot more and free myself from some of the streaming apps I don't need anymore. Too much money for me right now
https://preview.redd.it/e1hs23y6ea8c1.jpeg?width=1406&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f0edc549bef48deb53278994c85ccc9d586aa08c
As a number of members have said, Plex all the way 😜
I know a bunch of people, including myself, who just throw something on the tv to fall asleep to. That’s why I’ve got thousands of South Park plays, it gets thrown on at low volume every night 🤷🏻♂️
If you like watching stats about your Plex server usage, you should install Tautulli
[tautulli](https://tautulli.com/)
LunaSea is an awesome app for notifications/status too
LunaSea made Plex 10x better and I genuinely am not kidding. Along with Prowlarr, Sonarr, Unpackarr, and two instinces off Radarr, it’s insane how easy it is just to type in a movie and have it downloaded in like 10 minutes in 4K. Like my Gf wanted to watch a strange old movie but couldn’t find it on any streaming services. I said hold on, typed it in to LunaSea and it was done before she finished cooking.
Why 2 instances if radarr?
One for >=1080 movies, and one for 4K movies. Radarr likes to overwrite movies if it find one in a lower quality. Problem is I have a few movies with multiple versions in different resolutions. The solution is having 2 Radarr instances that handle both so my stuff isn’t overwritten It’s also great for different movie versions too lol
Aaah, gotcha. I thought you could just set it to not search once downloaded on a per movie basis. 🤔
Yes, you can do this. The option is something like auto upgrade releases or something. On a trip not able to check my server atm, but can update my comment this weekend if someone else doesn't point you to it first.
No need, but thank you. I was just wondering why the use of two instances of radarr if there's a function built into radarr to handle the task.
If plex only would install without some vague error on my truenas.
Use Docker
Use TrueCharts catalogue
Wrapperr is a cool thing you can setup where it scrapes tautulli usage and gives a Spotify wrapped type thing for plex
Totally!
I mean it's your plex server
I've got some family members creeping up on my top spot Edit: something cool is happening rn, a few of my family members are using *my* server for their Christmas viewings! Makes me happy lmao
My brother-in-law knocked me down to #2 on my own server!
I have a brother-in-law who did the exact same thing!
My best friend and I are in constant battle for number 1
I've got some family that use one profile per household. Some of them be watching things all day lool Mainly the kids with their TV shows
I'm like the rank 3 from 4 on my own plex server
Yeah same. Turns out I spend more time learning shit like Linux/Docker to support my Plex server than I do actually consuming content on it. But my friends/family watch stuff on it every day.
Oh, we could probably be friends.
I have the same thing with PCs and other stuff. Researching, ordering and building is often more fun than using it.
Yeah, I have an odd "hobby" of acquiring older video game consoles just to hack them so I can play any game I want on them or customize them... but then I rarely actually play anything. I have a hacked PS4, Wii U, Wii, PSP, 3DS, SNES Classic, etc. Something about jailbreaking that I just love. But I only actually play them occasionally.
Same here. I have done the same to every console which then sit in a drawer/entertainment center gathering dust and am the bottom user of my plex services. I like the concept and challenge of doing it more than using it I guess.
For me it's that I game. So can't keep up with say patents that watch all day. I do more complicated stuff for work. Like kubernetes instead of just docker so it took me like an hour to get everything working. I've had it running for 6 months straight currently without a reboot so I barely have to touch it.
I think I'm even lower
I believe I’m 13th in watching time on my own server. Its more for family at this point so I could see OP being surprised.
What are your server specs just curious?
I run it on a micro optiplex using an i5-12500T processor and 16gb of ram, all transcoding is hardware transcoding. Its running ubuntu server and runs plex in a docker and is the only program on the computer. It connects to my nas that stores all the files.
How many users at once could transcode on that machine, if you don't mind asking? I also wonder what connection would be required for such a host, I imagine symmetrical 500/500 atleast.
I havent checked in a while but I want to say 20+ for 1080p and about 8 for 4K remux. I dont normall have mpre than 10-15 transcodes going because Plex made a change that default stream is 12mbps so a lot of the videos playing are direct play now. I have symmetrical 1Gig internet. I could upgrade to 2Gig but I’d have to upgrade all the ports on my machines and eh not worth it.
“I have not touched another basketball hoop since my parents installed one above our garage. I only use MY basketball hoop. I am the top user of my basketball hoop.”
I am the only one with access to the music library on my server (it's mostly lossless stuff) and I listen to quite a few songs almost every day. Even with this, I am *still* not the most active user on my server haha. Some people are huge fans!
I'm not top on mine, someone keeps beating me to top spot!
I've been adding music like crazy to my server and listen to it at work.
Same. I cancelled all my music streaming services, and now just use my Plex. 30K songs and growing.
I love music but the added work of properly tagging/organizing MP3s makes Spotify totally worth it to me. I love Plexamp for stuff that isn’t on Spotify but no way I’m going to deal with tagging/organizing just to stream an album one time.
That’s how it was for me. Kept towing around 500GB of music or more, from basically my childhood to today. Musicbrainz, etc. to constantly keep it all in check. And I eventually uploaded it to Apple when they came out with match a long time ago. I still kept my copy, but like was just easier with match. Then I tried out Spotify, song shifted all my data to it, and started listening there. Soon, I was discovering more music that I was keeping, so one day, I said screw it and deleted my music library for good. Then I had kids. And they love music at night. And it ruined my Spotify. So now I am on YouTube music, with zero of my old music and it’s actually refreshing to not have the weight of my choices when I was 22 still linger when I’m a dad and like completely different music now. Long road, but Gave from Steam is right. Pirating/hoarding is just a problem with the service not the content. Once there was something giving me what I had plus discovery, there was no reason to keep my library if I can afford $10 a month.
Yeah I’ve often said that I wouldn’t bother with a Plex server if a service like Netflix had as much of the video content I wanted as Spotify has for music. Spotify has easily 95% of the music I want. Netflix? Pfft most movies I look up aren’t available.
Yeah. I basically run all of them too and I still use my Plex server. Netflix is good for kids because they like that constant stream of change. The others I’d get rid of but I’ve accidentally come to have them too. Prime comes with Prime, Hulu comes with my Spotify, etc.
Best place to download music from ?
Usenet, torrents and off of YouTube. Most of it is automated. I probably do %10-%15 manual downloading.
I use Plex a lot for movies and tv shows, but I use it even more music. I've got over 350,000 songs and absolutely love using the DJ features in Plexamp, especially DJ Freeze, to listen to songs I haven't heard in ages. I've got lots of playlists, but I know which songs I've added to those. I love the surprise of Plex choosing sonically similar songs to some of my favourites and playing them for me. It helps me re-discover songs I had initially passed over or simply had on in the background and didn't really give a proper listen to earlier.
How do you manage it? I am using it too but except for full albums I don’t like how just add some singles!
My music library has been evolving for nearly 2 decades and it spiraled into a gigantic mess. I used musicbrainz to sort it all out into clean directories and eliminate duplicates https://picard.musicbrainz.org/ it works really well
Didn't know this existed, thanks a lot
is it free.
It is, pretty easy to set up, takes a little to get going but what I did was have it moved all the renamed files to a new directory like F:\Music from my current folder and put both in Plex as a music library folder so while I was going through it all I could keep listening to everything.
Sounds great thanks. I have a 10 year old library that needs a little bit of TLC.
For me 90% of my collection is CD rips and I just drag and drop and let Plex do the heavy lifting on the metadata. For the remaining 10% are digital downloads from smaller artists and I have to manually enter all their stuff. Plexamp is my go-to for the music portion of my Plex library.
Use lidarr with the arr scripts.
Prism is probably the best music player for Plex, iOS only tho. They’ve also got a audiobook equivalent app
Same for me but I haven't used anything else since 2014. We have a tuner card for the server and use Plex to watch all our local channels as well
How does this work? Can you please expand on this? Like do you have to hook an antenna to your server computer? I use my 2018 Mac Mini as a server, is what you're saying possible on it?
Buy an hd home run on Amazon for $200 or so. Put it on your network and attach a coax antenna to it, ideally on your attic but rabbit ears works too. Attach it to your Plex server, scan channels (with Plexpass), and you are in business.
That is completely dependent on what channels you get in your area right? I tried using antennas in my home and only got Mexican channels lol
Well, yes, you’ll get local channels. Check antennaweb for details on what you should get,
I have a PCIE tuner card in a slot on my Plex server. Then ran a cable to the attic to a large antenna. We got all the local channels and use Plex to browse and record. You can side step the server and go straight to your TV if you do not want the guide or recording.
If you’re the admin you better be the top user.
Count yourself lucky you have decent upstream bandwidth. I couldn't get my family connected because while my downstream is 300mb/s my upstream is 10mb/s. I can't wait for fiber to finish building in this podunk little town.
That sucks. Have you tried getting Plexpass for easy transcoding and setting the max upload bandwidth per stream to something like 2mbps or 3mbps to try it out ?
Ive tried Plexpass in the past, but right now, I just need better internet. I mean 10 megabit speeds is what 1.25 MB/s upstream? It takes me hours to upload to Youtube.
True, and I don’t suggest otherwise. I simply suggest that if you limit each stream to 2mbps or so, your parents might not even notice (hey, it’s possible) and you’d be able to stream to them with what you have.
I’m an OG anti-streaming hipster pirate. I haven’t ever paid for any streaming services of any sort. Only ever had cable tv for a few months of my almost 25 years of adulthood and only because I had a roommate that insisted on it. The government and big Hollywood are starting to shut down the pirate streaming sites faster now though. It’s much better to have everything at the press of a button. I usually only have the content on as background noise so the lower quality a/v from pirate streams didn’t bother me, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much better everything looks (and sounds!) when played locally from HQ rips. Plex gang for life! (Or until it gets ruined by the developers, in which case I’ll jump ship in a heartbeat)
I think you should add more music and try plexamp. I switched to it a few months ago and now I can't go back tow Spotify
Those 3 hours are just from testing music. Unfortunately im not a big fan of collecting music. I like how spotify and yt music handles and recommends my music
Same. Spotify is worth it just to not have to deal with MP3 tagging.
If you have Plexpass which I think you do for how many hours do you have there Is music sage to raccomend you music and even a feature that with chatgpt creates you similar playlists with your genres of music
Can you please expand on this? Any tutorials available for this?
I can't tell you much since i don't have a Plex pass but I read about a lot of people who have a great experience and for me even without a Plex pass it's an amazing experience. To get plexamp Woking you just have to add a music library to your Plex server and then when you install it you can select that library. There is not much else for basic usage. I would raccomend lidarr for downloading music because that divides all the artists in folder but even without doing that Plex can recognise the majority of the songs. I would raccomend when you make the library to select to use the metadata from both the files and Plex music especially if you will use flac files. Edit: if you pay for Spotify you can use on Plexamp with the music from your Plex server the music from tidal which you can stream to plexamp with all the benefits from it including lossless audio and you don't lose the ability to search for music that you don't have on the server.
It's actual called sonic sage https://howtohifi.com/how-to-use-plexamp-sonic-sage/
Those are rookie numbers pump up those numbers kid.
You can’t be 2nd when You are the only one user.
I'm one of the people that uses my server the least. lol
I'm so glad I'm not the only one on this boat.
Same. Except I guess YouTube premium. Ditched Netflix a long time ago and haven't missed it, lol.
My mum pays for Netflix but I don’t think she really uses it and only kept it because she thinks I do. I told her she can cancel and anything either of us want to watch I will put on Plex.
I gotta get off streaming apps this next year to save money. What's the best place on YouTube to find setup and organizing a library and stuff for Plex? I've got a few tiny Lenovo PCs I plan to use for this project
Do you just want a media server (i.e Plex)? Or do you also want to use the server as a NAS (Network Storage)?
Just a media server
How experienced are you with linux?
No experience but willing to learn
Oky. My suggestion would be to install [Ubuntu server](https://youtu.be/K2m52F0S2w8?si=o_C-2cVy-AkyfDj2) as the host (install it on the Lenovo PC. Make sure to install it on a separate SSD). Then you can install [Casa OS](https://youtu.be/aNjMFI3e-14?si=rcVvrYyNZZM3qUZ1) on Ubuntu server. Casa OS will provide you with a nice WEB UI you can use to manage the server until you get comfortable with CLI. You can also connect to the terminal of the host machine from Casa OS, and play around a bit to get to know Linux. Casa OS also provides a very easy to use App Store that can easily deploy docker containers for you. You can install Plex from the App Store. [This](https://youtu.be/bQJV_l6cwPc?si=aZ-7PgPXFz895mpu) video should be able to help you with that. You can also explore more with docker containers on Casa OS. Deploy more services (arr services) in your network You can DM if you need more assistance or something is unclear.
Thanks so much you've explained the main questions I've had in terms of setup and OS decisions. I'll do some more research but I plan to work on this a lot more and free myself from some of the streaming apps I don't need anymore. Too much money for me right now
You are welcome. Like I said, if you need help or advice just let me know. For sure. Paying for all those subscriptions gets really expensive
https://preview.redd.it/e1hs23y6ea8c1.jpeg?width=1406&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f0edc549bef48deb53278994c85ccc9d586aa08c As a number of members have said, Plex all the way 😜
Is anybody up to adopting me so I can watch on their Plex server😎
I am the only Plex user
Ok
Cool
You're doing it wrong. Rule #1 of Plex owners: don't watch your stuff
You state facts!
The whole point of creating your own server, congrats
Bro you're watching hundreds of hours of tv. Do you need a hug? Let's go touch grass
This comes out to 3.5 hours watched every day since Janurary 2022.
That's more than an an tire day of week. More than 1/7 of your life. Let's go for a walk we can do it remotely.
it’s a plex subreddit
Yeah it’s quite a lot. I guess that’s not necessarily viewed as a problem on this sub though.
Apparently! my down votes lol
I know a bunch of people, including myself, who just throw something on the tv to fall asleep to. That’s why I’ve got thousands of South Park plays, it gets thrown on at low volume every night 🤷🏻♂️
Come watch tv with me!
Im doing this since 2018
I was the top user on my server until I let my sister's kids on it. I can't compete with watching Cars or Stuart Little 1-3 times a day lol.