Suitable GPU for use with Plex / Handbrake

JustAnotherSaver

It's probably over 12 months since I did anything regards Plex, other than watching a movie through it. I was starting to get in to it (so in other words, everything was pretty new and what I had learned isn't quite so clear right now due to not continuing with it).

I remember that trying to compress the files to save space took about 5-10 hours. They are pretty much all blu ray rips.

I was told at the time that I should have my GPU process it rather than relying on the CPU as it should be quicker.

Now that i'm running out of HDD space I'm looking at doing this again (I gave up due to how long it was taking and thought I'd maybe have a bash with a new rig one day).

My motherboard is an ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3.

My current GPU is a nVidia GeForce GTX 460 1GB.

Going through old emails, I was advised 12-18 months ago to pick up a 2nd hand ASUS Phoenix GeForce GTX 1050 2GB card as this would be suitable for the job at a reasonable price.

I got one for about £55 but when it arrived it was bent and wouldn't fit so I returned for refund and that was the end of me compressing anything.

I had a look for another of those but there's nothing on eBay 2nd hand.

Can you recommend something suitable and compatible that'd work well for compressing video files?

I suppose the main question is what sort of difference will it even make? Like I said, videos were taking 5-10hrs to do which is why I gave up.

I know it also depends on what settings I was selecting but can I realistically chop that down by a decent amount while retaining no obvious video/audio quality loss? What i took 5-10hrs to do, obviously there's going to be a loss in quality somewhere but there was nothing noticeable to me. I just didn't fancy taking that amount of time for all the films I have to do.

getmore4less

You need to remind people what the rest of the system is.

Neil_Jones

Its not all about the GPU:

https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/technical/video-nvenc.html

However HandBrake’s software video encoders, video filters, audio encoders, and other processes benefit from fast CPU and memory. HandBrake’s hardware video encoders also benefit from modern GPU hardware.

Also:  Handbrake isn't the only program in town of its kind.  It'll be fine for movies/films, but it'll give TV programmes made on videotape a deinterlaced look.

My Ryzen 3 setup (with a GTX 650Ti)  did a Blu-Ray rip (via MakeMKV) and a Handbrake pass combined about 2hrs (I usually just get it ripped, tell Handbrake what to do, tick the "shut down on competition" box and then go to bed).  Your setup is much older and so will be much slower as the CPU will be the main bottleneck.

Also Plex will transcode on the fly based on the device its connecting to.  Not so much an issue for sound but will be for video.

JustAnotherSaver

getmore4less said:

You need to remind people what the rest of the system is.

AMD Phenom 2 X6 1055T 2.80GHz

16GB RAM

Samsung SSD 830 for what the OS is on. Barely anything left. Keep having to run disk cleaner.

BQT L7-530w PSU

No dedicated sound card.

Anything else just ask.

jamesd

You appear to have an AMD supporting motherboard, so presumably an AMD CPU. The hardware options for AMD and Handbrake are described here. Look on the left for Intel QSV if you have an Intel CPU.

One really easy mistake to make with Handbrake is picking a software encoder instead of a hardware one. Picking H.265 instead of Intel QSV would be a very slowing mistake to make with an Intel CPU.

Once you're certain that you're using the hardware encoding support, the next thing to experiment with is settings, since those can make a huge difference to speed and quality. There don't seem to be many potentially useful ones in the AMD hardware selection but increased gop-ref-dist is useful for space saving on Intel.

Whether there's going to be a quality loss will depend on the material being encoded, the display you're using and the settings. You're going to find it a lot more challenging to fail to notice quality issues sitting a few feet from a 4k OLED display than a few feet from a laptop 720p one. If you know your intended viewing resolution, converting to that can greatly speed up the encoding by reducing the amount of picture that has to be processed.

JustAnotherSaver

Neil_Jones said:

Its not all about the GPU:

https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/technical/video-nvenc.html

However HandBrake’s software video encoders, video filters, audio encoders, and other processes benefit from fast CPU and memory. HandBrake’s hardware video encoders also benefit from modern GPU hardware.

Also:  Handbrake isn't the only program in town of its kind.  It'll be fine for movies/films, but it'll give TV programmes made on videotape a deinterlaced look.

My Ryzen 3 setup (with a GTX 650Ti)  did a Blu-Ray rip (via MakeMKV) and a Handbrake pass combined about 2hrs (I usually just get it ripped, tell Handbrake what to do, tick the "shut down on competition" box and then go to bed).  Your setup is much older and so will be much slower as the CPU will be the main bottleneck.

Also Plex will transcode on the fly based on the device its connecting to.  Not so much an issue for sound but will be for video.

That's what i did (set up & went to bed) but it was still running.

Regards TV programmes, I'm not yet in to that. I've been in contact with a guy who has been in to Plex for a while and he touches on getting programmes but I get the impression it's not above board if you get me. Not that that bothers me. I couldn't give a monkeys. For now at least I'm just doing straight movies and 99% of these are blu rays.

I've considered a new setup next year. This current setup I put together myself in 2010. It's served me well and does the vast majority of my needs perfectly fine but it shows its age where this is concerned. I'm just undecided between another build or off-the-shelf this next time round. This current build cost me approx. £1,000 - £1,500 back in 2010. This time round I wouldn't need to buy things like monitors, keyboards, mice, speakers (thought can't remember if speakers formed part of that original cost).

Regards Plex and transcoding ....

If i use my TVs Plex app, I have trouble. Say about 30mins from the end it will crash. It'll play flawlessley up to that point but then crash. Then it'll have a hissy fit for a while before buffering a bit and then eventually finishing the movie.

I can't remember how it performs with the Plex app on the fire stick. I think it had some kind of issue. Can't remember what.

Plex via Kodi on the fire stick though - perfect (most of the time). For some reason it struggles with Blade Runner 2049. 3 times i've had a bash and 3 times it buffers badly. Perfectly fine with everything else - and unlike with the other methods, it direct plays.

This is all accessing the files that are stored on said PC.

JustAnotherSaver

jamesd said:

You appear to have an AMD supporting motherboard, so presumably an AMD CPU. The hardware options for AMD and Handbrake are described here. Look on the left for Intel QSV if you have an Intel CPU.

One really easy mistake to make with Handbrake is picking a software encoder instead of a hardware one. Picking H.265 instead of Intel QSV would be a very slowing mistake to make with an Intel CPU.

Once you're certain that you're using the hardware encoding support, the next thing to experiment with is settings, since those can make a huge difference to speed and quality. There don't seem to be many potentially useful ones in the AMD hardware selection but increased gop-ref-dist is useful for space saving on Intel.

Whether there's going to be a quality loss will depend on the material being encoded, the display you're using and the settings. You're going to find it a lot more challenging to fail to notice quality issues setting a few feet from a 4k OLED display than a few feet from a laptop 720p one. If you know your intended viewing resolution, converting to that can greatly speed up the encoding by reducing the amount of picture that has to be processed.

I view my movies on my living room TV: https://www.panasonic.com/uk/support/discontinued-products/televisions/tx-58dx750b.html

Panasonic tx-58dx750b.

I don't know how far I sit from it. Not very far. 6-8 ft perhaps. 8-10ft maybe. No more than 10ft.

Obviously it wont always play on that TV, eventually it will get replaced. I don't watch my movies on mobile phones or laptops though. Will that one day change? I don't know, anything is possible. It's for TV use really though. Once I get set up properly (long term I'm thinking NAS enclosures connected direct to routers) then people could perhaps access the library from outside my house. When I say people it'd just be probably 1 other person, maybe 2.

I don't currently have a 'proper' surround system. Maybe that'll one day change. Who knows. I have a Sonos Beam right now. It's more likely I'd buy a better soundbar but i'm quite happy with the Beam so would likely only replace it if/when it died.

getmore4less

Samsung SSD 830 for what the OS is on. Barely anything left. Keep having to run disk cleaner.

That's not good  what rubbish is on there, OS should not fill even the 64GB version.

Got any other storage

Neil_Jones

JustAnotherSaver said:

Neil_Jones said:

Its not all about the GPU:

https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/technical/video-nvenc.html

However HandBrake’s software video encoders, video filters, audio encoders, and other processes benefit from fast CPU and memory. HandBrake’s hardware video encoders also benefit from modern GPU hardware.

Also:  Handbrake isn't the only program in town of its kind.  It'll be fine for movies/films, but it'll give TV programmes made on videotape a deinterlaced look.

My Ryzen 3 setup (with a GTX 650Ti)  did a Blu-Ray rip (via MakeMKV) and a Handbrake pass combined about 2hrs (I usually just get it ripped, tell Handbrake what to do, tick the "shut down on competition" box and then go to bed).  Your setup is much older and so will be much slower as the CPU will be the main bottleneck.

Also Plex will transcode on the fly based on the device its connecting to.  Not so much an issue for sound but will be for video.

That's what i did (set up & went to bed) but it was still running.

Regards TV programmes, I'm not yet in to that. I've been in contact with a guy who has been in to Plex for a while and he touches on getting programmes but I get the impression it's not above board if you get me. Not that that bothers me. I couldn't give a monkeys. For now at least I'm just doing straight movies and 99% of these are blu rays.

I've considered a new setup next year. This current setup I put together myself in 2010. It's served me well and does the vast majority of my needs perfectly fine but it shows its age where this is concerned. I'm just undecided between another build or off-the-shelf this next time round. This current build cost me approx. £1,000 - £1,500 back in 2010. This time round I wouldn't need to buy things like monitors, keyboards, mice, speakers (thought can't remember if speakers formed part of that original cost).

Regards Plex and transcoding ....

If i use my TVs Plex app, I have trouble. Say about 30mins from the end it will crash. It'll play flawlessley up to that point but then crash. Then it'll have a hissy fit for a while before buffering a bit and then eventually finishing the movie.

I can't remember how it performs with the Plex app on the fire stick. I think it had some kind of issue. Can't remember what.

Plex via Kodi on the fire stick though - perfect (most of the time). For some reason it struggles with Blade Runner 2049. 3 times i've had a bash and 3 times it buffers badly. Perfectly fine with everything else - and unlike with the other methods, it direct plays.

This is all accessing the files that are stored on said PC.

Let's not get too hung up in the whole legality thing, because technically speaking (unlike America) we don't have the right in law to make copies of copyrighted material for personal use (which is what shifting it to a digital file and playing it through Plex is).  We're supposed to go and buy a new digital copy for Plex use (and a bunch of other things in this regard), but in reality what we do and what we're supposed to do are two entirely different things.

Note that Kodi is just a player, it doesn't do any transcoding on its own, its main selling point is it makes your digital library look pretty.  You may do better just to rip your files, do what you need in Handbrake, stick them on (preferably) a network drive and then play them through Kodi.  Kodi you can add to the Firestick via side-loading.

TV built-in apps tend to be total crap, because Smart TVs are only smart in the regard they "can" do certain things..  Doesn't mean they will, and doesn't always mean you get updates for them either.  A third party option like the Firestick usually means regular updates and if the TV shipped with an out of date app version that happens to have an irritating bug in it and there are no updates for it, you're stuck.

But your main argument is you want to condense Blu-Ray 50Gb files down to 1, maybe 2 Gigabytes.  Possible. But you're running 10 year old hardware.  The Phenom II X6 1055T was a six core processor, but it was built on technology that was brand new in 2007, and that was one of the last processors for that platform.  Plus of course a lot of software was (and still is) built for dual/quad-core systems, so having more cores doesn't necessarily mean better performance.  Gaming in particular is more about the cores on the graphics card than the processor, though a lot depends on the game and the hardware you pair.

[Deleted User]

JustAnotherSaver said:

Can you recommend something suitable and compatible that'd work well for compressing video files?

I suppose the main question is what sort of difference will it even make? Like I said, videos were taking 5-10hrs to do which is why I gave up.

I know it also depends on what settings I was selecting but can I realistically chop that down by a decent amount while retaining no obvious video/audio quality loss? What i took 5-10hrs to do, obviously there's going to be a loss in quality somewhere but there was nothing noticeable to me. I just didn't fancy taking that amount of time for all the films I have to do.

Just looking at this another way - cheaper to buy a 2nd bigger disk than processing power to re-encode. You get 4TB hard drive for about £80 that would hold about 120-160 Blu-ray rips. 

You haven't said how big your SSD is but guessing 512GB which means you'll be struggling to get more than 20 rips on it.

JustAnotherSaver said:

I've considered a new setup next year. This current setup I put together myself in 2010. It's served me well and does the vast majority of my needs perfectly fine but it shows its age where this is concerned. I'm just undecided between another build or off-the-shelf this next time round. This current build cost me approx. £1,000 - £1,500 back in 2010. This time round I wouldn't need to buy things like monitors, keyboards, mice, speakers (thought can't remember if speakers formed part of that original cost).

If you want a better Plex setup at the fraction of the cost of a PC, then I'd recommend something along the lines of what I use, £180 for a Plex server:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/shield/shield-tv-pro/

I've had it streaming to 6 users simultaneously, can transcode on the fly for remote users, very lower power consumption and doubles up as a full Android TV player client to plug into your TV. It has GPU hardware transcoding when required.

Pair that up with either a 4TB USB drive or NAS and you've got room for 160 Blu-ray rips all for about £260 compared to the price of a PC and the associated running cost.

JustAnotherSaver said:

Regards TV programmes, I'm not yet in to that. I've been in contact with a guy who has been in to Plex for a while and he touches on getting programmes but I get the impression it's not above board if you get me. Not that that bothers me. I couldn't give a monkeys. For now at least I'm just doing straight movies and 99% of these are blu rays.

If you want the whole hog, add a raspberry PI with Sonarr for TV shows, Radarr for movies and you'll soon have your own mini Netflix running off the Plex server.

JustAnotherSaver said:

Regards Plex and transcoding ....

If i use my TVs Plex app, I have trouble. Say about 30mins from the end it will crash. It'll play flawlessley up to that point but then crash. Then it'll have a hissy fit for a while before buffering a bit and then eventually finishing the movie.

I can't remember how it performs with the Plex app on the fire stick. I think it had some kind of issue. Can't remember what.

Plex via Kodi on the fire stick though - perfect (most of the time). For some reason it struggles with Blade Runner 2049. 3 times i've had a bash and 3 times it buffers badly. Perfectly fine with everything else - and unlike with the other methods, it direct plays.

This is all accessing the files that are stored on said PC.

Plex shouldn't be transcoding video for local play, it should be direct provided the client is capable of de-coding the the movie - mine never transcode for local play - range of devices from phones, laptops, TV's, Xbox etc, all direct play.

Have you bought the Plex licence? If not, it will help because it allows hardware transcoding, otherwise on the free version it will be using inefficient software transcoding - this might be your problem.

Bonus - if you buy the Nvdia Shield Pro I linked to above then it will hardware transcode without the licence - the only piece of hardware on the market that will do this. I do have a licence though for remote streaming purposes.

CoastingHatbox

If you a ripping a lot of BluRays etc.., then you probably want to have a proper think about storage requirements. If you have them all on a single hard disk drive, do you fancy re-ripping the entire collection when the drive breaks?

I'm not sure what OS you are using, but if you are building a new rig, I'd probably go with an Intel CPU that supports Quick Sync (probably at least Kaby lake) if you are using Linux. If you are using Windows, then you should get support for the Quick Sync equivalent (which I believe is DAVX) on AMD CPUs.

I'd see how this setup works before spending any more money on a discrete graphics card.

If I was ripping BluRays I would probably add a couple of BluRay drives to my home server and script something up so inserting a BluRay disk into a drive results in an automatic rip stored in the right place for the media server* to pick up.

The advantage of using my home server for this is, it's always on anyway so doesn't matter too much how long it takes. It also keeps the noise away from anyone who would find it annoying (including me).

*I started out with Plex but switched out for Emby when Plex stopped being opensource, and in turn JellyFin when Emby stopped being open source. Having opern source privacy respecting software I think is good for this type of thing.