Avoid Excessive Transcoding in Plex

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PLEX MEDIA SERVER

Get this from www.plex.tv if you’re building your first media server.

HANDBRAKE

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THE BANE OF ANY MEDIA server’s life is the need to transcode. Imagine this: You’ve converted your movies to one format already, only for your media server to waste precious CPU cycles converting it to a format that can be played back on your target device. Sometimes this process is inevitable—you want to watch a 1080p HD movie on an older 720p screen, for example—but in most cases, you should be looking to minimize the need to transcode. You’ll not only reduce the load on your server (allowing it to serve multiple streams simultaneously without breaking a sweat), but often you’ll make things easier for your playback devices, too.

But how do you go about avoiding the need to transcode unnecessarily? First, you need to prepare your media so it’s in the most universal format possible. We’ll show you the settings you need to convert great video that will play on the widest possible devices natively. We’ll also reveal how to optimize your server and playback devices to avoid unnecessary transcoding, too. Our media server of choice is Plex, but the techniques and tips below can be translated