Plex is awesome software. Simply put, it allows you to stream your media anywhere in the world, on any device, whenever you want. But there is much more than that...
We cover the basics of software Your Guide To Plex - The Awesome Media Center Your Guide To Plex - The Awesome Media Center If you have a lot of movies and TV shows saved locally, you need to install Plex. And this is the only guide to getting started with Plex that you will ever need to read. Read More
This article takes things a step further as we show you some of the best tips and tricks guaranteed to help improve your Plex experience.
This isn't an unknown hack, but it's still surprising how many Plex users don't take advantage of it.
The store gives you access to hundreds of TV channels and video on demand services that are not available natively.
Explaining how to get it working is beyond the scope of this article, but luckily for you, we've covered installation instructions along with some of their best channels. 20 Unofficial Plex Channels You Should Install Now 20 Unofficial Plex Channels You Should Install Now On the unsupported AppStore, you can unlock new Plex content to watch. Here are the best unofficial Plex channels to install. Read more in a previous article.
Did you know that you can link multiple folders to a library? This has many advantages, probably the most obvious of which is bilingual movie libraries. Let me explain.
Let's say, for example, that you are fluent in English and Spanish. It is very likely that you have some movies with English audio, some with dual audio and some with Spanish.
Organize your folders like this:
Then create two libraries, one for English and one for Spanish.
The English library pulls the contents of folders one and two with the language set to English, while the Spanish library pulls the contents of folders two and three with the language set to Spanish.
If you have family and friends who only speak one of the two languages, they can browse the corresponding library and only see the content that they could see.
New Plex users will eagerly work both the native channel store and the unsupported AppStore, adding anything that looks remotely interesting. I am guilty of doing this myself. However, it is the wrong approach to take.
Not only is it highly unlikely that you will ever need all of those channels, but they can also greatly impact your experience by hampering the media server's performance in terms of processor load and the weird bugs that sometimes appear on dead channels. /P>
It is better to choose five or six of the most attractive channels and follow them.
Okay, how many of you have movie and music libraries with no rhyme or reason for their naming structure? Time to Organize Your Music Collection:Tag and Rename Them with TagScanner Time to Organize Your Music Collection:Tag and Rename Them with TagScanner I don't like to see things out of place. Lately, my music collection has been. Luckily, there are plenty of music organization tools out there that can make the sword work easier if one is falling behind. MP3Tag was my… Read more ?
This is already a bad idea from an organizational point of view, but for Plex it's an absolute nightmare.
Why? Because Plex uses metadata scanners and agents to automatically extract episode details, artwork, and other associated details in your library. It gives you a richer experience and makes it easier to navigate within the app.
Details on how to name each individual type of content can be found on the Plex website.
It's a common misconception that you can only have one server per home setup; actually, you can have as many as you like. In fact, just using a server is not wise.
What if you're away from home with your laptop (acting as a server) and your family wants to watch something? Or what if you have all your music on your laptop but don't want to keep hundreds of gigabytes of movies on the same machine? Or maybe your partner has a very different taste in TV shows and wants to watch your stuff on the same Roku app?
No problem, just download and set up Plex Media Server on any computer/network drive you like.
Heavy Plex users may find themselves in the market for a new computer and will want to make sure the machine they buy can maximize their Plex experience. The answer is to focus your search on the CPU instead of the GPU.
Testing reveals that Plex uses almost no GPU, but a faster processor can make a big difference.
At $149.99, a lifetime Plex Pass Upgrading the best media center, with a Plex pass [Giveaway] Upgrading the best media center, with a Plex pass [Giveaway] Love Plex? You'll love a Plex Pass even more. With new and exclusive features only for Plex Pass holders, it's the best way to support the development of the best media center app. Read More Exactly.
If you're one of the people turning to Plex as a cord-cutting solution Cut the cord forever with these 15 streaming TV channels Cut the cord forever with these 15 streaming TV channels Cable TV is on decline, as the Internet offers cheap, on-demand entertainment. Here are 15 of the best streaming TV services to help you cut the cord. Read More
That's because a Plex Pass unlocks a host of cool features, including:
Plex comes with its own transcoder How to get smoother playback on Plex with a simple solution How to get smoother playback on Plex with a simple solution Plex is impressive, but the quality isn't always perfect. Here's a neat solution that you can use to get optimized quality every time. Read more . In layman's terms, that means it will convert any media in your libraries to a format supported by the client device. Everything you need to know about video codecs, containers, and compression Everything you need to know about video codecs, containers, and compression Explained The difference between codecs and containers is relatively simple, but the hard part is trying to understand each format. Read more.
Which sounds great, but it's not without its drawbacks. For example, it will put a lot of strain on your CPU, fast-moving movie scenes can become pixelated, and sometimes you'll run into weird audio or visual bugs where transcoding has gone wrong.
The solution is to pre-encode all videos in a format compatible with the devices you use. To convert your video, try a free tool like AVC.
Note:Remember that you can have multiple copies of a video, so you might have a version specifically optimized for your iPad, one for your Roku, etc.
These eight tips and tricks will put you on the path to Plex stardom, but there are plenty of other ways to get more out of Plex. We may reveal more tips and tricks in a future article, but in the meantime feel free to help other readers by sharing your own ideas.
How have you made your personal experience with Plex more satisfying? What Plex settings have you changed to get the most out of the software? What little-used feature have you exploited?
You can answer these questions or just take the opportunity to express your thoughts on Plex in the comments below.
