Recommendations for organization / transcoding

[eric.frederich]

Looking for recommendations on how to name / organize my shares as well as transcoding options.

 

I have 3x 8TB drives with 1 as parity so 16TB of storage.  Previously, before unRAID I just shared a 1TB directly from my Linux workstation.  I would rip my BluRays and transcode them twice... once at 1080 and once at 720 (still have some tablets the kids use that are 720p)  Then I started running out of storage.  Now that I have 16TB and I'm running Plex it opens more options and I need your help.

 

Organization:

Should I create a Photos share, a Music share, a Movies share, a TV Shows share?

Or should it be a "Media" share with appropriate subfolders under it?

Should I keep a "kids" folder under Movies and TV Shows or should "Kids" be at a higher level?

 

Transcoding:

Movies.

Should I just keep the 20-30GB BluRay rips and 4GB DVD rips on my server and just let Plex do the transcoding?... Maybe do that until I run out of space then start transcoding?

My old machine seems to be able to handle transcoding okay.  My Chromecast (1st gen) was struggling to even play a 5Mbps 1080p so I had Plex transcoding at 720p and some lower bitrate... worked fine.

Music.

What to do here?... Keep everything as FLAC?  I looked at a project called mp3fs which dynamically represents itself as a directory of mp3s but it's all done on the fly as files are read.  Limitation is that it has to be constant bitrate.  Not sure if this is possible to do on unRAID from within Docker since it's the host that would want to be running FUSE.  In any case, how should I keep my music when I start ripping CDs?

[Frank1940]

There are a lot of folks here who are doing exactly what you are thinking about.  Store the Media at the highest possible resolution (You can always transcode to lossly format but you can never recover that lost resolution from those conversions!)  and then transcode it on the fly as required.  The only problem is that Plex requires about 2000  passmarks of CPU power per stream for 1080p material.  Regarding how well plex handles transcoding on the fly, I don't see threads complaining about issues.  With unRAID, you can easily try it to see how it will work for you before making a total commitment to one scheme or the other.  Just setup a plex Docker and test it out. 

 

Organization of your media is up to you.  Think about and discuss it with your family.  Once you decide and implement a layout, everyone will soon be use to using it that way and any future change will be met with resistance.      From what I have seen, folks use all sorts of layouts and they must be satisfied with them as I don't see a lot of questions seeking different (or improved) layouts. 

[tdallen]

I store my media at original resolution - but FYI high bit rate BD rips can require a lot of CPU horsepower to transcode (more than the average 2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream).  I'm happy with separate shares for Movies, TV Shows, etc. but it can work just as well with a Media share.  There are some share level settings (split level, allocation method) that, if you are inclined to tinker with them, would benefit from separate shares.  On the other hand multiple shares requires backup to be more granular - I have to backup multiple shares instead of just a media share.