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Thirdgen89GTA

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So, on a whim today, I setup Plex Media Server on the M1 Mac mini.

HOLY FUCK APPLE.

Plex Media Server doesn't have a native Apple Silcon version binary, so its running EMULATED x86 code, with hardware transcoding. its literally emulating intel's QuickSync to apple ARM hardware.

The fucking M1 doesn't even BLINK at 4k Transcoding. literally, it doesn't even hit the CPU more than 10%. Which BTW, the M1 is still building the thumbnail database simultaneously for all of the media I added to it. Its freaking insane.

And its doing this all over the 1Gig NIC vs the old Plex Servers direct disk access.

Phenomenal. I can't wait to see how a true native binary version performs.
 
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Thirdgen89GTA

Aka "That Focus RS Guy"
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Its been scanning and building the thumbnail previews since this morning, its got a lot of shit to go through, 60tb+. So I expect it to take probably 24-48 hours to build the thumbnail metadata database.

Screen Shot 2021-09-13 at 2.44.16 PM.png
 
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ZXMustang

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Feb 19, 2019
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So, on a whim today, I setup Plex Media Server on the M1 Mac mini.

HOLY FUCK APPLE.

Plex Media Server doesn't have a native Apple Silcon version binary, so its running EMULATED x86 code, with hardware transcoding. its literally emulating intel's QuickSync to apple ARM hardware.

The fucking M1 doesn't even BLINK at 4k Transcoding. literally, it doesn't even hit the CPU more than 10%. Which BTW, the M1 is still building the thumbnail database simultaneously for all of the media I added to it. Its freaking insane.

And its doing this all over the 1Gig NIC vs the old Plex Servers direct disk access.

Phenomenal. I can't wait to see how a true native binary version performs.

And this is why apple has not needed to keep up with the rest of the tech universe and their hardware specs. Every year/new tech that gets introduced by apple always has less CPU power and less ram and so on than the other like brands. And they always get laughed at and made fun of, yet the collective of people dont understand that apple doesnt need to run those levels of hardware to get the desired performance. There are guys running W10 in parallels which is a VM running in OSx, and they are able to play a decent set of games at 60fps. This is windows running in VM with only a fractions of the M1's resources still able to run games with its on-chip GPU. There is a video of GTA5 running at 1080p60 in a W10 VM on an M1 macbook pro.

 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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Running in a w10 VM within OSx with a fraction of the M1's resources?? Thats not impressive?? Man you are hard to please. With this potential, the new M1x or whatever is coming is going to be a powerhouse.
Look, I am not saying it isnt cool, it just isnt revolutionary.

Its like running doom on a calculator. Its cool, its impressive, but its just nothing special.

I just feel like 1080p 60fps isnt that special considering we see 4k @120fps
 

Thirdgen89GTA

Aka "That Focus RS Guy"
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So, the M1 is an SoC, not a CPU. Its dedicated graphics, and ML hardware acceleration is pretty much unmatched in anything AMD/Intel.

The performance isn't good when compared with say a modern Ryzen CPU paired with a RTX GPU. As expected, those stomp it.

However, there isn't another chip on the market that comes close to the power efficiency of this chip for the performance it provides. The GPU/ML acceleration is off the charts good. The closest to compare it to would be a Ryzen 4xxx series mobile chip with on-board GPU, or an Intel mobile chip. And neither of them has something approaching capabilities it has for hardware acceleration in a 10w TDP package.

The GPU and programmable ML are the key's to its performance here. And right now Rosetta 2 is making great use of the ML for accelerating hardware transcoding. I did not expect it to translate HW acceleration to emulated QuickSync as well las it does. I expected it to run it as standard code on the CPU. I was expecting maybe 3-4 1080p encodes simultaneously, and for 4K to be a joke. But the HW acceleration was the key.
 
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SpeedSpeak2me

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So, for shits and giggles I tried to use an attached USB 3.0 external drive (WD My Passport) on my ASUS RT-AX86U router to serve as a file location for Plex. Though the transfer rate (bi-directional) on file copying across gigabit is sufficient (averages 80-90 MBps) it just can't support playing back videos from it, even 1080p. None of the quad core's CPU's come close to maxing out. So not sure where the bottleneck is. It'll play for about 2-3 seconds, pause, play, pause play... Don't think the router was really intending to be used for that purpose. I don't think an SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure would make a difference.
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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So, for shits and giggles I tried to use an attached USB 3.0 external drive (WD My Passport) on my ASUS RT-AX86U router to serve as a file location for Plex. Though the transfer rate (bi-directional) on file copying across gigabit is sufficient (averages 80-90 MBps) it just can't support playing back videos from it, even 1080p. None of the quad core's CPU's come close to maxing out. So not sure where the bottleneck is. It'll play for about 2-3 seconds, pause, play, pause play... Don't think the router was really intending to be used for that purpose. I don't think an SSD in a USB 3.0 enclosure would make a difference.
Definetly something with the router not designed to process video encoding
 

SpeedSpeak2me

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I just tried it since I have a 2TB drive on the router for my Time Machine, and it has about 1.3TB free.

I can just load the videos to my Media drive which has a few hundred gig free. It's a basic WD 4TB 3.5 that works fine for my needs.

I'm holding out of the new Mac Mini so I can port my Win10 over to a Parallels VM then make the desktop a file server/media box. It has an i7-4770K in it with 32GB of CAS 7 and CAS 9 memory, so it can handle a few streams on the LAN without a problem. I just need more space.

Shit, I'd like a miniature version of what Will ( Thirdgen89GTA Thirdgen89GTA ) has. Like maybe 20TB of total space with redundancy for everything (videos, photos, etc), with whatever magic he uses to cache so that everything comes up quick, and seeking through a movie is damn near flawless and immediate.

When that day comes, he'll know. Gonna get a nice sushi dinner at my expensive in trade for his knowledge and experience.
 

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