I’m looking for some processor recommendations. I have apple devices throughout the house that haven’t been a problem until recently has UHD media makes its way into my library. Because Apple doesn’t support MKV the server is having to convert on the fly and choking.

 

Any recommendations? I don’t want to break the bank so only looking for something that can handle a single file of this size at a time.

 

Thanks!

What do you want to do with the files? In order of increasing processor power needed, the easiest is simply to rewrap the MKV files into a different container - QuickTime, presumably, since you have Apple devices. Next there's transcoding to a different codec and rewrapping. Most processor intensive is rescaling to a different resolution while transcoding to a different codec and rewrapping into a different container. What software are you planning to use? Handbrake? Or do you want to convert them in real time, on demand? For pure software decoding an AMD Ryzen with lots of threads offers great value for money but if your particular application can make use of the hardware acceleration offered by Intel's Quick Sync you'll be able to offload much of the processing to the integrated GPU of a fairly modest Coffee lake processor. Alternatively, you might already have a graphics card that can help with the processing.

What do you want to do with the files? In order of increasing processor power needed, the easiest is simply to rewrap the MKV files into a different container - QuickTime, presumably, since you have Apple devices. Next there's transcoding to a different codec and rewrapping. Most processor intensive is rescaling to a different resolution while transcoding to a different codec and rewrapping into a different container. What software are you planning to use? Handbrake? Or do you want to convert them in real time, on demand? For pure software decoding an AMD Ryzen with lots of threads offers great value for money but if your particular application can make use of the hardware acceleration offered by Intel's Quick Sync you'll be able to offload much of the processing to the integrated GPU of a fairly modest Coffee lake processor. Alternatively, you might already have a graphics card that can help with the processing.

Way more complicated than I originally thought.

I use Plex and was hoping there was an easy way of simply relying on the on-the-fly transcoding. Admittedly I don’t know a lot about the hardware details. Is there a specific processor that you’d recommend?

What socket is your motherboard or are you planning on getting a new motherboard? The more cores the better so if you can get a minimum quad core with hyper threading then great. If you can go with a Xeon with six or eight cores, even better.

Likely a motherboard upgrade as well. Will check out my options but the more I read the more unlikely 4K transcoding will be. Seems there’s a lot of challenge and debate about what will work.

Transcoding to what? If you want 1920x1080 mp4 files you can use the Optimise function of Plex to create an HD version of your movie alongside the original UHD version. Such files are comparatively small compared with UHD MKVs so storing them shouldn't be a big problem. The advantage is that Optimise doesn't run on demand so it can take as long as it needs to do the conversion, meaning that you can use your current processor. Once the Optimised file is available Plex will serve it to your device instead of the MKV.