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Plex Server on Mac Mini M1

Z

ZMA15

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 9, 2022
6
1
Hello,

im currently running a plex server for three users (mostly direct streams with some encoding streams) on my intel nuc. The nuc is starting to show its age and is incredibly loud even when it’s not doing anything.
I have a Mac Mini M1 (8/256) that is not getting any good use and I’m thinking about moving my plex server to it.
I have a large HDD that I use for our personal content/media.

my questions are:
1- has anybody been successful in moving there plex server from a windows machine to a Mac silicon? Plex says it’s basically near impossible.
2- do you run into the occasional problem or is it smooth sailing? I will occasionally be traveling and will not have access to my server.

thank you!
 
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ZMA15 said:
Hello,

im currently running a plex server for three users (mostly direct streams with some encoding streams) on my intel nuc. The nuc is starting to show its age and is incredibly loud even when it’s not doing anything.
I have a Mac Mini M1 (8/256) that is not getting any good use and I’m thinking about moving my plex server to it.
I have a large HDD that I use for our personal content/media.

my questions are:
1- has anybody been successful in moving there plex server from a windows machine to a Mac silicon? Plex says it’s basically near impossible.
2- do you run into the occasional problem or is it smooth sailing? I will occasionally be traveling and will not have access to my server.

thank you!
Click to expand...
I use an M1 Mac mini to run my Plex server. I have not had any problems. The server software updates every few weeks. What I could recommend is running real RealVNC server on the Mac mini and then you could use anything from a computer to an iPad or an iPhone to connect to your Mac mini just in case anything was to come up. I utilize this solution all the time. Depending on where all your data stored, you could use your hard drive formatted in NTFS using NTFS for Mac, or I might recommend a second hard drive again utilize the NTFS drive and NTFS for Mac and transfer the data from one hard drive to the second one.
 
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hi,

i actually did it 2 months ago using the below, and runs great

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/bn14n4/_/enixgcr
  • Installed PMS on my Mac
  • Shutdown Plex on my Windows Server
  • Zipped my PlexData folder from my Windows server (Mine was C:\PlexData\Plex Media Server)
  • Copied zip to my mac
  • Unzipped folder and replaced my Mac's PMS folder (~/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server)
  • Start up Plex on Mac
  • Go to settings in plex and update the share mappings (as long as you keep the internal folder structure in tact it doesn't really matter what folder you're pointing to)
  • Run a full scan
  • Profit


 
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I moved my Plex server from an intel mini to my current M1 mini (16/512) and it has been flawless. I only stream mkv/mp4 to local devices, I don't have users outside of the home.
 
When you guys are running Plex server does it transcode 4K movies with no issues? I thought about moving from my late 2012 iMac with 512gb SSD to a M1 mini or even the new Studio. Mostly would use it for Plex, Channels App and some home office stuff.
 
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GDF said:
When you guys are running Plex server does it transcode 4K movies with no issues? I thought about moving from my late 2012 iMac with 512gb SSD to a M1 mini or even the new Studio. Mostly would use it for Plex, Channels App and some home office stuff.
Click to expand...

I'm curious about this also. I have a 2013 iMac with a 3.4 i5 and my Plex library is housed on a ThunderBay4 TB3 RAID drive connected via a TB3/TB2 adapter. On my LG tv, higher bit rate 4K rips buffer a lot. I'm almost positive its the i5 at fault, just wondering how well M1 Plex servers handle the load.
 
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opuscroakus said:
I'm curious about this also. I have a 2013 iMac with a 3.4 i5 and my Plex library is housed on a ThunderBay4 TB3 RAID drive connected via a TB3/TB2 adapter. On my LG tv, higher bit rate 4K rips buffer a lot. I'm almost positive its the i5 at fault, just wondering how well M1 Plex servers handle the load.
Click to expand...
That is the same issue I have on my late 2012 iMac with upgraded SSD. Hope someone with a M1 responds. Tempted to just get a Studio, as can’t imagine would have that issue then, but then again if a M1 mini with 16gb Ram would work, that would be fine too.
 
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Rather than create a new thread, I have a related question I'm hoping folks here could chime in on..

My old old xeon server is starting to become a nuisance and, for several other reasons also, I've been pondering a switch to a Mac mini instead.

My plan is a Mini + software mirrored externals disks now that disks exist that are much larger than my total need (14/16/18 TB single drives are reasonable now)

Of course there's a premium for doing this with Mac minis, but what I'm more wondering about is if I should be getting one of the final Intel Mini's for the QuickSync (and can save probably $200 doing it) -- or if the M1 mini's are already better at this than even an i5/i7 from the 2018 Intel Mini run.

Any tips from anyone are appreciated!
 
opuscroakus said:
I'm curious about this also. I have a 2013 iMac with a 3.4 i5 and my Plex library is housed on a ThunderBay4 TB3 RAID drive connected via a TB3/TB2 adapter. On my LG tv, higher bit rate 4K rips buffer a lot. I'm almost positive its the i5 at fault, just wondering how well M1 Plex servers handle the load.
Click to expand...
How high of a bit rate are these rips? I’ve been running PLEX off a raid 5 enclosure attached by FW800 to my 2010 i7 iMac and never had any buffering issue on 4K (only 20-30Mbps bit rate though) content
 
I have a cheap dedicated plex machine at home, a Lenovo m70q with 8gb of ram and a I310100T, same size as the mini, consumes 10-15W on average, I would recomend something like this over the mini for the following reasons:

  1. Plex Great benefit from Intel CPUs as it can use Vsync to transcode without huge performance penalties, Plex server currently is not optmized for the M1 and so even being drastically more powerfull than the i3 on the lenovo performance will be on par or worse in general in transcoding tasks.
  2. Mini M1 has 2 USBA gen 3.2x2 10gbs and 2 Thunderbolt 40gb/s, m70q has 4 USBA gen 3.2 5gbs and 2 USBA gen 3.2x2 10gbs You have more ports to connect drives and docks for cheaper unless you have a setup to take advantage of the thunderbolt ports which is pretty overkill.
  3. the m70q is cheaper to fix if something breaks and can be upgraded just as easily if the need arises (can go up to 64gb of ram and a i9, also it has both a nvme slot and a sata.
So if you plan to use it long term I would search for a lenovo/HP/dell mini pc, it will be worth more in the long run, if i's just a stop gap the mini will be ok, but not optimized at all for the task, when (and if) plex updates to support native transcoding on M1 then the story changes and the M1 becomes a AMAZING server. but for now... I would go with a mini pc.

Also, for your second question: this is more a problem I created for myself, but I installed some misbehaving apps and docker containers on it (running linux server but it can run windows no problem) and somethimes the system freezes, until I do a clean reinstall the system I connected a cheap sonoff wifi switch to the power outlet so if it freezes while I´m alway from home I can force shutdown it (not recomended but it's just for the ocassional freeze until I fix) since the bios is configured to reboot after a "powerloss" it will restart and is good to go again.
 
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iSightG5 said:
How high of a bit rate are these rips? I’ve been running PLEX off a raid 5 enclosure attached by FW800 to my 2010 i7 iMac and never had any buffering issue on 4K (only 20-30Mbps bit rate though) content
Click to expand...
Most of my movies are straight mkv rips from disc. My bitrates go as high as 102Mbps. I’m a little perplexed though, when checking my high bitrate movies tonight I tried playing them again since I hadn’t for a while due to the buffering problems. Now all of them seem to be playing without buffering?? I can’t say for sure if the last time I had these issues with high bitrate mkvs I was on the same Plex versions I’m running now ??‍♂️

Plex WebOS client 5.0.1
Pms MacOS 1.25.9.5721

Kaikidan- thank you for the suggestions but I’ve suffered through every major release of Windows since win3.0 in college. Edit- I do have to say that win2k wasn’t too bad.

No thanks to a winpc pms server, and I’m too set in my ways to learn Linux ?
 
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opuscroakus said:
Most of my movies are straight mkv rips from disc. My bitrates go as high as 102Mbps. I’m a little perplexed though, when checking my high bitrate movies tonight I tried playing them again since I hadn’t for a while due to the buffering problems. Now all of them seem to be playing without buffering?? I can’t say for sure if the last time I had these issues with high bitrate mkvs I was on the same Plex versions I’m running now ??‍♂️

Plex WebOS client 5.0.1
Pms MacOS 1.25.9.5721

Kaikidan- thank you for the suggestions but I’ve suffered through every major release of Windows since win3.0 in college. No thanks to a pc pms server, and I’m too set in my ways to learn Linux ?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I know your pain, in my case I've stoped using windows since 2009 or so after dealling with all the windows Vista BS become too much, been using linux and OSX from them on so it was pretty simple to configure an ubuntu server 20.04 machine, specially since plex was not realiable on my mini 2014, it would froze 2-3 times per week for whatever reason and no HW support for h265, there is also TrueNAS that some people use who supposedly is pretty simple to install and mantain a PLEX/NAS server, never used it thou.
 
opuscroakus said:
Most of my movies are straight mkv rips from disc. My bitrates go as high as 102Mbps. I’m a little perplexed though, when checking my high bitrate movies tonight I tried playing them again since I hadn’t for a while due to the buffering problems. Now all of them seem to be playing without buffering?? I can’t say for sure if the last time I had these issues with high bitrate mkvs I was on the same Plex versions I’m running now ??‍♂️

Plex WebOS client 5.0.1
Pms MacOS 1.25.9.5721

Kaikidan- thank you for the suggestions but I’ve suffered through every major release of Windows since win3.0 in college. Edit- I do have to say that win2k wasn’t too bad.

No thanks to a winpc pms server, and I’m too set in my ways to learn Linux ?
Click to expand...
Any chance you were watching those movies that were buffering with subtitles/Closed Captions? I was having issues with some movies buffering when the .ASS/.SSA/.VOB/.PGS subtitles were selected. From what I've read all those formats have to be transcoded to play on most devices, .srt files are text so they don't need to be transcoded
 
That’s good to know but I can’t think of any of them that would have had subtitles on.
 
The PMS process cpu usage usually averages 8-12%. The Plex Transcoder and Plex EAE Service processes will sometimes get as high as 20% each. My cpu is never maxed out even when a movie is buffering. Both my iMac and LG tv have 802.11ac and the iMac normally averages over 800Mbps, I'm not sure how to determine what the tv is actually getting. Both devices are the only two on the 5GHz band on an Archer AX50 router.
 
opuscroakus said:
On my LG tv, higher bit rate 4K rips buffer a lot.
Click to expand...

You are running the Plex Player app on your LG TV, right? I just ran a WiFi speed test from the LG app store on my C8 LG and it was glacially slow - 52 Mbps or slower. I should be getting 10x that. So that's one possibility. Can you connect your LG via ethernet?
 
Yup, I don't see any buffering issues with my LG OLED but that is connected directly to my router via Ethernet. If you had buffering previously but not currently, it may well be networking issues, especially if you are connected via Wifi.
 
HDFan said:
You are running the Plex Player app on your LG TV, right? I just ran a WiFi speed test from the LG app store on my C8 LG and it was glacially slow - 52 Mbps or slower. I should be getting 10x that. So that's one possibility. Can you connect your LG via ethernet?
Click to expand...
How did you do this, I’m not seeing anything in the LG App Store that I could use.
 
I opened the web browser on my tv and tested with speedtest.net. Much to my surprise I averaged around 50-55Mbps dl just like HDFan reported. I will figure out a way to run an ethernet cable to it but I think it only has a 10/100 ethernet port. A possible improvement but maybe not enough…

I have 300Mbps internet service, my 2013 802.11ac iMac has no problem hitting that but my 2018 tv has 802.11ac and can’t come near it. ?
 
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GDF said:
That is the same issue I have on my late 2012 iMac with upgraded SSD. Hope someone with a M1 responds. Tempted to just get a Studio, as can’t imagine would have that issue then, but then again if a M1 mini with 16gb Ram would work, that would be fine too.
Click to expand...
A Studio is maaasssssssive overkill if its main role is a PMS. A 16GB M1 )of M2 if you can wait), is a much better solution.
 
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opuscroakus said:
I opened the web browser on my tv and tested with speedtest.net. Much to my surprise I averaged around 50-55Mbps dl just like HDFan reported. I will figure out a way to run an ethernet cable to it but I think it only has a 10/100 ethernet port. A possible improvement but maybe not enough…

I have 300Mbps internet service, my 2013 802.11ac iMac has no problem hitting that but my 2018 tv has 802.11ac and can’t come near it. ?
Click to expand...
Just remember that it’s not just the higher speed with the Ethernet, it will offer added stability compared to Wifi which is susceptible to all kinds of interfere. It’s definitely worth running a cable, even if only temporarily to test.
 
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