Section 02

Plex Guide

K's Plex Journey

First Setup & Hardware

Before the first movie plays, two things need deciding: how Plex gets installed, and what it's actually going to run on. Here's exactly how that went.

Case Study

Personal Pathway

Here's exactly how it went, step by step — install, naming, transcoding headaches, and the hardware decision at the end.

  1. Installed from plex.tv/media-server-downloads.
    1. This was the PC running it: kevinboba — Completed Builds, PCPartPicker
      1. Windows 11 x64
  2. After the typical install, Plex opens in browser with {Computer-IP}:32400.
    1. Other devices on the same network can also visit that same address.
    2. Not reachable from outside the network at {Global-IP}:32400 — unless that port gets forwarded to the Plex computer.
      1. You can find the Global-IP at whatsmyip.org or whatismyipaddress.com, or check it directly in the router's settings.
  3. I tested a handful of movie files early on to see what Plex would and wouldn't pick up correctly. Plex recommends a specific naming convention (it may have changed since), but I ended up with this because it's what worked for me:
    1. Movies\Avatar (2009) [2160p].mkv
    2. Squid Game (2021)\Season 01\Squid Game (2021) - S01E01 - Red Light, Green Light [1080p].mkv
  4. Next hurdle: mass-renaming TV episodes.
    1. FileBot is the fix — it renames Movies/TV into whatever format Plex expects. Search for the older version, since they've started charging for it. (Hint: it's on GitHub.)
  5. At this point my Movie/TV libraries were functional, and playback was working.
    1. Good on local devices, on Wi-Fi — tested on an iPhone 13 Pro and an Amazon Firestick.
    2. Good on remote devices too — tested on an iPhone 13 Pro (cellular data), an Amazon Firestick, and a TV's own built-in smart-TV platform.
      1. Depending on your server's upload speed (Mine ~800mbps up)
      2. and the viewer's download speed (Depends)
      3. The TV's base platform struggled — played Interstellar in 4K on it and it was bad. I found out here a smart TV's built-in hardware usually isn't great (depends on how much you spent, sometimes). A Firestick or equivalent closes that gap.
  6. New problem: transcoding. Transcoding, plus burned-in subtitles, plus 4K files = constant buffering. Transcoding is what happens when the video player — usually a browser — doesn't support the file's codec, so the server converts it on the fly instead of just sending the original.
    1. Browsers don't prioritize supporting every codec — a tradeoff Netflix and Amazon avoid by building their own codec and caption handling straight into their own video players.
    2. About 90% of transcoding work can be avoidable by using the Plex Desktop app or mobile app instead of a browser.
      1. Worth noting: this is a different download from the Plex Media Server app installed in step 1. The server hosts the library; the desktop/mobile app is just the client you watch through.
      2. Not always realistic — most new users default to the browser out of culture from YouTube/Netflix/HBO Max, or because a work laptop/device restricts allow installing apps.
      3. There are workarounds (converting to .srt) — covered in a later section.
      4. For now, the solution is just: download the app. Assuming both the server host and the viewer have a stable internet.
  7. Infrastructure. Movies played fine, but it meant my personal PC tower had to stay on at all times — the same machine I work and game on. The setup was getting messy, and I wanted to isolate this project to its own environment + stay on 24/7. Also if I got unusal lag while gaming, I had a finger to point at already.
    1. Research pointed toward a Beelink N150 — QuickSync, low power draw, small form factor.
    2. Ordered 2/17/2025:
      1. Beelink Mini S13, Intel N150, 16GB RAM / 500GB SSD
  8. Mini PC setup.
    1. Installed Plex Media Server the normal way, under the Windows it shipped with.
      1. Linux is probably better performance-wise, but with zero experience there I didn't want to debug unfamiliar incompatibilities, no ability to troubleshoot missing files, or bugs that I would be new territory for me.
    2. Ran Windows Debloat (Raphi) to strip out the Microsoft programs/processes I wasn't going to use.
    3. Installed Tautulli for logging playback metrics over time + a cleaner 'master' dashboard.
    4. Installed TeraCopy for mass file moves queueing without that problem where File Explorer chokes and then restarts on its own.
    5. Installed Google Remote Desktop for remote access (TeamViewer, AnyDesk, AnyViewer all work too but those are paid).
      1. The Mini PC isn't normally connected to a monitor — I only temporarily plugged one in for initial setup, and strictly use remote access thereon.
    6. Installed FileBot for renaming (needs Java).
    7. Installed Bulk Rename Utility for cleanup renaming, like stripping (1) off duplicate filenames.
    8. Installed Everything as a fast file lookup search tool.
    9. Installed CrystalDiskInfo to catch a dying drive early.
      1. If a file goes missing or media turns up corrupted, this is the first thing I check.
      2. Also shows how long a drive has been running, and how much it's written.
    10. Installed OneDrive (or whatever cloud provider you prefer).
    11. Installed MKVToolNix to add, edit, or remove audio/subtitle tracks.
      1. .pgs and .vobsub are image-based subtitles; .srt is text-based. Any 4K file using PGS or VOBSUB should have an SRT alternative — image-based subs lean on the server for a lot of extra transcode work and tend to buffer.
    12. Installed VLC to sanity-check new files before moving them into the library — mostly confirming the right audio/subtitle track. Especially if your file has multiple languages and the one you want is not the defaulted one.

Up next

Hardware sorted, drives chosen — next was a detour into cloud storage, to see if buying drives could be skipped entirely.