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Plex media server on OpenVZ
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Plex media server on OpenVZ

mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

Has anyone tried running a plex media server on openvz?

I'm 'worried' that it might be considered abuse while encoding the movie on the fly.
Ideas/inputs on this?

Comments

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    Well, I've been doing something similar this morning on an N2800 dedi with Subsonic, and a single video stream averaged out at around 100% of one thread for the 50 minutes of the show, if that helps any.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    Take it that most providers will consider it abuse then. :(

  • NekkiNekki Veteran
    edited April 2014

    You could try abusivecores.com, one decent core might outperform 4 crappy ones.

    Obviously depends what you're transcoding too, I'm working with SD video files, HD would obviously take a greater toll on CPU.

  • I've run plex on OpenVZ but not encoding, just streaming. Haven't had a problem yet.

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    @ACaton said:
    I've run plex on OpenVZ but not encoding, just streaming. Haven't had a problem yet.

    Well you won't with streaming, because you're not hitting the CPU particularly hard that way.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    Thought I should get some input here first, my idea was to eliminate the need to re encode the movies before streaming while on business trios etc.

    Guess I will need a dedi tondo the encoding first.
    Abusivecores is an option, depending on how much disk it has.

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    What format are you planning on streaming to what device?

  • How often are you on a busyness trip and how often do you need to stream / encode? Maybe something cloud based that is only turned on when you need it?

  • You could use Plex cloud storage. Don't know which it supports but it's fine for most purposes.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    @Nekki said:
    What format are you planning on streaming to what device?

    Format is "unknown" at this moment, still planning.
    Worst case would be streaming to iphone or ipad on a 3G connection.
    So I expect "heavy" encoding from time to time.

    @rds100 said:
    How often are you on a busyness trip and how often do you need to stream / encode? Maybe something cloud based that is only turned on when you need it?

    I'll be travelling almost every week to different locations (inside Sweden) for the next month or two. Then I will have a long vacation (where I probably will use it also) then the business travel will continue, not as often as every week I hope.

  • Just noticed. It supports Google Drive, so you could buy storage there and have Plex sync it there. Don't know how it works with copyright and stuff like that, though.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    t> @mpkossen said:

    Just noticed. It supports Google Drive, so you could buy storage there and have Plex sync it there. Don't know how it works with copyright and stuff like that, though.

    I googled plex cloud sync and noticed that as an option, will have to look into that as an option, if I'm not mistaken it is partly what I'm after. No 'on the fly' encoding, I have to have a premium pass and encode the movies before I leave.

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    Instead of transcoding, what about getting a decent media player app ($5-10) that can play most things natively, then streaming direct via samba?

  • DciteDcite Member
    edited April 2014

    Pre-encoding things to a lower resolution should actually be quite fast. Question is how low a resolution will you take? 640x360 is really low res and would not turn up too nicely on anything bigger than a ipod.
    854x480 should be nice on most smaller screens.

    Higher resolution encodes takes more cpu power, likewise, the lower the bitrate limit, the more cpu power it would take.

    EDIT: How large are your original files and how good is your upload? As Nekki says, streaming the file as is, is certainly an option. As for uploading to a dedi.. it might be a very, very, long upload...

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    @Nekki said:
    Instead of transcoding, what about getting a decent media player app ($5-10) that can play most things natively, then streaming direct via samba?

    Samba is out of the question since it will be over the internet and often it has to download the whole file before it can start playing.

    @Dcite said:
    Pre-encoding things to a lower resolution should actually be quite fast. Question is how low a resolution will you take? 640x360 is really low res and would not turn up too nicely on anything bigger than a ipod.
    854x480 should be nice on most smaller screens.

    Higher resolution encodes takes more cpu power, likewise, the lower the bitrate limit, the more cpu power it would take.

    EDIT: How large are your original files and how good is your upload? As Nekki says, streaming the file as is, is certainly an option. As for uploading to a dedi.. it might be a very, very, long upload...

    I will mostly play it on iphone 5s or ipad mini so it doesn't have to be that large.
    The original file could be 720p or 1080p.

    Upload is no problem, "worst" case is 10mb/s and at best 10gb/s . :)

  • DciteDcite Member

    @Mikho Well a 720p animation seems to do a pretty good job of saturating my upload at 672KBytes/sec (about 7Mbit DSL upload)
    Aren't you glad you have an unlimited upload?

    If you have a descent upload from home, leave the storage mechanism running and accessible. As for Samba being out of the question.. I don't know how an ipad does it, but android streams from SAMBA fine (does not download the whole file first, reads as needed) While a VPS route nice and shareable it's so much more effort.

    Personal experience using SSHFS/samba and MX Player on android to stream videos from home. Unfortunately for me, the location/connection I access it from at times is slower than my own home's upload and so that would limit my streaming options.

    Thanked by 1daxterfellowes
  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    MikHo said: Samba is out of the question since it will be over the internet and often it has to download the whole file before it can start playing.

    Hmmm, in my experience with iOS video apps they all seem to stream via Samba, which makes sense as you're talking about potentially storage-limited devices which often won't have the space to download a 1GB movie every time. It'd be worth checking out for sure, as it could save you quite a bit in the long run.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    @Dcite said:
    Aren't you glad you have an unlimited upload?

    Yes I am :)

    @Dcite said:
    Personal experience using SSHFS/samba and MX Player on android to stream videos from home.

    Had an android phone a few years ago and I agree that you can do much more with it then an Iphone when it comes to stream movies.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    @Nekki said:
    Hmmm, in my experience with iOS video apps they all seem to stream via Samba,-

    I must be very unlucky since I never managed to make it work.

  • NekkiNekki Veteran
    edited April 2014

    @MikHo

    Might have a bit of better news on this for you. I've been doing a bit of testing with Subsonic and had some encouraging results.

    I picked up one of the 4 core Xen specials from OnePoundWebhosting after asking them about using it for transcoding, and went for it; I watched the load average all the way, and after sitting at around 2 for 10 minutes, it dropped to 0.07 and stayed there for the rest of the video. I guess that means it transcodes the video upfront, then just streams after that, so I guess as long as you have access to a couple of decent cores and disk I/O is reasonable, you shouldn't get into too much trouble with Plex.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    @Nekki

    I actually ordered a VPS from the Crissic deal after I made sure that both Skylar and I was on the same page that if it was abusive (CPU wise) I would get suspended and in a worst case scenario risk loosing my account.

    I installed Plex on debian and uploaded the http://www.bigbuckbunny.org movie in all different formats.

    I monitored with htop when streaming the movies to my computer and to my iphone.
    Most abusive was when streaming the low resolution video to my computer with the setting "best quality (auto)" - that actually used all 3 Cores to the max.
    If I changed the settings on my computer to a lower resolution it work with very little load. Like your case, in the beginning (buffering I suppose) a higher CPU usage which after a minute dropped to almost nothing.

    Streaming to iphone did exactly the same, high CPU usage when buffering then very little while playing, if I paused the movie, load dropped to 0 within 2 seconds.

    I will have to do some more monitoring with different movies (resolution and codecs used) before accepting the fact that it actually works.
    Streaming to a computer is out of the question, to many parameters to cslculate that can cause a high load on the VPS.

    All in all, it will probably work as expected (GOOD) and I will be happy. :)

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