PLEX MEDIA SERVER COMPLETE 2021 SETUP | EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

so welcome back to the channel everyone triple-m here this is my brand new plex set up for 2019 so guys on YouTube channel every year I try to do a Plex Media Server set up because I keep getting a lot of questions about Plex what is Plex why do you want to get Plex how do you use it how do you set it up and what are the benefits what our compatibility it's just a ton of questions me personally as a Plex user this is probably the ultimate control you can have over your content so there's no need for subscriptions there's no need to rely on a particular service a particular provider all the media is yours you can add your photos your movies your music your TV shows whatever you want Plex is your own design guys very important your own design is housed on your server no one's gonna take it down set it up you can access it on the go and it's a beautiful thing so this video is gonna be pretty lengthy guys I'm gonna put time slots in the comment section so please don't comment saying hey this videos too long just keeping in consideration that this video is made from everyone from beginners all the way up to advanced users so check the comment section check the timeslot skip to the area that interests you and drop your questions in the comments section below so this video of course we're gonna go through the setup we're gonna answer what Plex is what's the difference between a free flex account versus a paid Plex account I'm also gonna show you how to download and install the server application as well as some of the client applications how to stream your media how to set up your library which is very important and of course if you stick around to the end guys I will be answering some of those questions individually that you guys dropped on the last video without further ado let's go ahead and jump into it this video is being sponsored by ipvanish ipvanish is one of the best VPN services in the world they do have top speeds they do have a money-back guarantee and they're recommended by some of the top organizations in the world from CNN CNN Lifehacker as well as PC Mag now if you guys don't know what VPN is VPN is short for Virtual Private Network and what a VPN does is essentially encrypts your data that way no one can see you web traffic so a lot of people use it for different reasons the access geo lock content other people use it to remain anonymous why acquire media maybe for their plex server most people just want to remain anonymous keep the Internet service provider out of your business keep them from tracking you and keep them from knowing what you're looking at check the link in the description where I will have a VPN deal that will save you a little bit of money [Music] if you're new to the channel subscribe hit a notification bell guys please if you have any questions drop it in the comment section below so once again here's the basic gist of it you have your movies your TV shows your home movies your music and your photos on your media server now from your compatible device your smartphones tablets your connected TVs your real cool your fire TV stick or even your computer you can access this on your web browser as well so pull the device the device talk to your server and you get your content that way so having that said guys let's talk about the devices that you want to use for your plex media server so remember that a server is there it's supposed to be available to serve content on demand whenever you need it so the ideal setup or ideal configuration is the server that's always gonna be on so whatever you server is just keep in mind that this device should always be on that way when you're on the go you can go ahead and grab the media now having said that a couple things want to take into consideration guys you want to get a device that's powerful enough to serve to your compatible devices now if you're planning a stream maybe one device or two devices at a time you can get something like a mini PC or something like that attach your hard drives to it and then you can go ahead and stream that way with only two devices being seen at a time you shouldn't be a big burden on the CPU on that device Plex is CPU intensive so that's the main draw that you're gonna get so you want to get something with a good processor or a decent processor to run your media server another thing to take into consideration is power consumption so anything that's gonna be on 24/7 since they're gonna add up $2 dollars is gonna add up to tens of dollars a dozens of dollars then it's gonna add up to hundreds so make sure whatever using it is somewhat efficient a lot of people use an older laptop which is a great start for Plex Media Server I personally I use network-attached storage it is always running however it is pretty low power consumption so that's another thing you want to take in consideration if you're gonna use a full desktop you're gonna see the hurt on your electrical bill so keep that in mind let's go ahead and proceed to the first step of your Plex installations first thing you want to do guys is get your media server up and running for this example we'll be using a PC or mini PC but if you click on the drop-down right here guys these are the compatible devices you can install your media server on so this will not be your apps or your client devices this will be a server so the device is always running so on a computer you can install it on freebsd on linux on Mac or on Windows if you're on an ass or network attached storage the Zeus Robo freenas Netgear Netgear actually has a router nighthawk x10 that that allows you to install plex they do a little review on it I'll go ahead and link that as well and also install this on QNAP which is another Nass Seagate I believe it's a hard drive technology which is the Nan's that I'm using on raid Western Digital and on the other you can install this on docker as well so if you're planning to use plex you will need one of these devices and what I'll do I'll put a shopping list on Amazon of compatible server devices for Plex and go ahead and check those out I'm using a Windows device this installers for windows 7 service packing one or higher so but I'm gonna click download a lot of people said I skipped a couple steps during installation from my last video so I want to make sure I capture everything and this is why this video is gonna be a little bit lengthy so hopefully you guys use those time slot timestamps and skip ahead to the area that interests you the most media server is downloaded let's go ahead and we'll double click here and we'll start the installation process we're going to accept so Plex has been installed and a no letter you guys are saying where is my Plex so if you look in the bottom right of your PC you'll see this Plex icon right here now if you don't see the Plex icon or you can hit the Windows key on your computer and it should see Plex right there if you don't see it you can always search for Plex and it will show up so what we're looking for of course is the media server so click on that again and nothing's gonna happen so Plex is always running in the background guys so it's right here it's running and to get into the configuration double-click right here in the taskbar so once you sign in you will see a screen similar to this just tell me how Plex work so Plex one sign computer to keep your media scans your media files automatically organizes it and makes it beautiful play your media on any screen with your favorite place absol got it so right here if you guys again interested in Plex Pass can't go ahead and purchase it so they have three basic plans first one is $4.99 a month second one is $39.99 a year and the third one is a lifetime membership four hundred and nineteen dollars you get the same features on all three services the only difference is the length of time that you actually paying for it personally I got a lifetime guys figured hey this is something I'm gonna use I'm invested in it one-time payment you don't have to worry about it again that's the way I look at it but if you're just looking to try out the premium features $4.99 for a month just to test it out might be a good option for you so what the Plex pass what do you get so you get advanced audio so unlock the sweet fades loudness level so you can play with equalizer a lot of cool stuff photos you have auto target of places sort with the Plex extra enjoy a theater like experience with cinema trailers so you get trailers you get a lot of cool features which kind of makes the experience a little bit better you also get a discount in title if that's something that you're interested in there's a look at the dashboard for your music but some of the cooler features that I think guys is the ability to add a TV tuner to your Plex for your local channels which is awesome I personally have this I've set this up go ahead and link that video as well this is a very cool feature you on the road you're in another country you connect to your plex you can watch your local channels which includes words so that's a cool feature for me personally I'm getting about 50 channels in my area so that's 50 free channels that you're always gonna have with you you're never gonna pay for and they do have DVR where it records directly to your device so you also have mobile sync user control a lot of cool stuff will use the control guys you can add a council basically can add a kid's account you can set what permissions what folders they can view you can choose their password you can lock them out you can restrict them one of the other cool features that I've mentioned yet guys is that with a plex pass if you're going on a trip or something gonna be an airplane you are allowed to download that movie to your device or download content to device so you can have something why you're away from network connection or away from Wi-Fi so keep that in consideration as well just gonna go ahead and just skip it for now now you get to give your plex media server a name so I can just name this main PC plex server so right here you can give it whatever name you like something short something that's easy to recognize something that's easy to type whatever you prefer I just put it right here we're gonna click Next and now you can add your library from here however I don't recommend it but you guys want to go ahead and browse for certain location and your music your photos you can go ahead and do that I'm gonna save it for when we actually get into plex so let's go ahead and click Next all set we're gonna hit done alright so everything here is free stuff guys you can see you have some headline news we have some video on demand like I said these are free stuff that's provided by Plex you can watch it it is completely free add your most of it but the meats and bones is gonna be when you get into your plex media server and your own media you also have some podcasts some video on-demand stuff all stuff that's included within Plex and I do have a lot of different options here I do have a couple things set up but the that we just created is the main PC plex server so I'm gonna click on that you can see I currently have nothing in my library you can see I currently have nothing in my library so to the left here we can pin we can unpin go home click on the hamburger menu kind of hides right there but what I want to get back into is the actual server let's go ahead and expand it I'm gonna click more again and this is the server that I'm working with so before we can add our media we need to have folders with media and it's usually located on the same computer if you want an answer beyond an ass you can also connect your nas to your PC and use a shared folder location so for this setup I'm gonna show you how to put everything on your computer and and point to that folder for your media so let me go ahead and minimize this so before we go into the media one of the most commonly asked questions is where do I get my media from can you tell me where to get media so being that this is on YouTube guys I cannot tell you how to obtain anything illegally but if you do a Google search guys there's tons of way to get media out there and now a legal way to get it is if you have a DVDs laying around your house you can go ahead and use a DVD ripper that way you can essentially transfer from your hard disk over to your PC and that is legal it is a great area if you're sharing it but for the most part people won't have any issues with that as well so like I said there's tons of way to get media on your Plex fortunately I cannot go into that on this channel but if you do a simple google search you'll find a lot of resources out there so keep that in mind so this is gonna be pretty straight for a guy so you're gonna put a folder wherever you want it so for me I'm gonna just put everything on my C Drive so C Drive I have a folder it's called content alright so when we click on the content folder I have two folders once for movies once for music now this is where you can set up your folders a lot of different ways guys so the easiest way to get this set up is in my movies folder I have all my movies in there let me change the view I'm gonna go to details you can see I have about 20 movies on here different genres different file types did that on purpose just to have an accurate representation of what you might have in your library so very important guys every movie that you have in here it is named kind of like I see it here so alien covenant 2017 between every word you put a period so alien that covenant dot 2017 1080p same thing Bruce Almighty you do have gladiator there so what you want to do is put a period in between every word so this makes it easier for Plex to go to the internet gather information about your particular movie so it will automatically download thumbnails download the main characters download trails and stuff like that and it will associate it with that movie so that's why it's very important to name your movies like you see it here so from here you can just BAM and just drop everything in one folder and Plex will sort it for you so that's one way to do it that's the easiest way to do it another way to do it and I've done this in the past can go ahead and create subfolders for a different category so for instance if I want a folder for the kids I can go to kids let's create a folder then I can look for kids movies like steam engine I'll just drop it in there tangled let me just drop those two in there with this set up this way guys you can break it down to kids you can do kids educational kids learning you can do horror you can do different genres you can do different categories black cinema you can do war movies whatever you want to do guys you can break it down by folder and you can go into Plex and you can associate to that particular folder so that's one way to do it like I said you don't need to do that necessarily because if you have it all grouped in one folder like you do here it will still find the median you will still have the option to to sort it based on the genre because it will pull that information from the internet so drop your comments in the comment section below let me know how you have your plex media solders set up go to music I have two albums in here but within the movies folder let's say I wanted some folders in the music folder so I'll just name this one hip-hop I'll name another one reggae alright so what I'll do is I'll just drop the 8 mile soundtrack and the jay-z in the hip hop folder and same thing I can drop I'll write your music in the regular folder so in the hip hop folder if you guys know this same naming convention for that particular folder so this is the entire album guys you know see it all right here now same thing eight dot mile that soundtrack got 2002 but I should have no issues pulling this data once you import it so that's the basic layout of the setup you can do this with photos as well you can do it with your home movies whatever you want to name it you do have a lot of options in there so we're gonna go ahead and jump back over to plex I'm gonna go ahead and import this into a library first thing let's go ahead and we're just gonna manage library you can see nothing in there as of yet I'm gonna add a library and this one is gonna be for my movie so I'm gonna click on movies I'm just gonna leave it as that but I'm also gonna just make this all alright I'm gonna hit next and now you get to browse to that location where you actually put all of your movies or wherever you store your media so I'm gonna pick browse I noticed on my C Drive it's on the content so my movies folder and I'm just gonna go ahead and click Add I'm gonna click at the library and it will start scanning out and while that's happening I'm just gonna go down to music I'm gonna click on edit just gonna call it music all gonna go to folders I'm just gonna browse to the location where my music is see content music I'm gonna click Add gonna go ahead and save the changes there now if you guys wanted to add additional library like I did create a library for the kids movies I can go ahead and do so so what I'll do is I'll add a library it's gonna be a movie library I'm just gonna name it movie - kids next I'm just gonna browse through the location once again go to my c drive go to content movies go to the kids folder click add in add to library and you can see it's starting to build out guys so that's basically the gist of everything that's exactly what you need to do to get everything up and running so from here if I go home and you can see now I have those two libraries right here so please disregard everything that's down here especially this is another server that I had this is also another server so this is my Nvidia shield TV this one actually has a HD tuner in the Nvidia shield and allows me to pick up local channels like I said I've done a video on that I'll go ahead and link that in the description and also put a card in the top right this is my main plex server this has all my content so I'll probably show you guys around that in a little bit and this is just stuff that's associated with Plex that came with actual install but this is the server that we're working with of course you can see the three libraries that I just built or right here so I click on the server you can see I have all the movies that I just added all the music that I just added and it's starting to look pretty good pretty cool so if I go to kids you can see I have the two kids movies that I added let's go back to movies - all and one thing I want to point out is that I've grouped everything in the same folder if you guys remember so it automatically said that hey these two are recently released they built that category up top for you all the movies were recently added this is a musical movies with Michael Fassbender whoever that is top on Play movie so we'll start building out that category but if you go to the library to the right then you can't start doing some cool stuff you can sort by folder so if you guys wanted to just go to kids folder you can go ahead and do so let's go back or if you want go by title by year by raiding a Content rate and duration they viewed the bitrate you can go ahead and do so as well nothing click on the drop down and it says all they can see can browse by genre so if you click on John Rock if I wanted to watch something that was a war movie click on that you can see I have everything right there so that's what I was saying for some people they want a group in the folders you don't have to you do have those built into Plex where you can go ahead go to the different genre you can sort by release date sort by rating and every end place does it all for you so of course playing this is no issues guys hit the play button and I'll go ahead and mute this and I'll blur it out as well you see it's a plane with no issue right there hit the background and we'll still play in the bottom left of your screen so there's a lot of different ways to connect your plex server while you're on the go so far as your streaming devices you can connect on your fire TV so that includes the fire stick as well as the power TV cube also your Android TV so your Nvidia shield your Mii box anything else that runs that operating system your Apple TV chromecast Roku Smart TVs your TiVo and just going on to mobile devices Android Android auto iOS your computers of course you can connect on the web or with cody and with your gaming consoles Nvidia shield even though technically that's a streamer I would put that in the Android TV category but Nvidia shield PlayStation your Xbox one also has compatibility with Amazon Alexa Sonos calvo I'm not sure what that is we also have some virtual reality connection so oculus Samsung VR Google daydream your Lenovo Mirage solo and like I said it's just most of your devices that you have will have some Plex compatibility so this is for the client application guys so keep that in mind this is what you'll use to stream your media let me show you two different ways how you can quickly connect to your plex server so the first word guys is to connect to your browser and this is one of the most popular ways to connect so with this you can connect from any computer laptop a work at home family members house real easy so all you need to do is go to flex TV then go to sign in and I just put in the email that you use to create the account with now once you signed in go ahead and go to launch and if you click on your server you can see you have all your content right there so pretty straightforward all you need to do is just click on whatever you want to play and it will go ahead and start playing in the window so fastest way to connect while you're on the go now using a smart phone it's another easy way to connect now I am using an iPhone let's go ahead and we'll click on that we'll go ahead and sign in with your email you can customize your sources so right now everything's just checked I'm gonna hit continue I don't have a Plex fast but it's prompted to use a plex pass for those advanced features so it's gonna hit back and here we are guys so this of course is the free media I can go to my movies or whatever I need to connect to you can see the same basic content that we have is present right here so from here it's easy to launch it guys hit play again with the plex pass then I click not right now and we'll go ahead and play it guys I can't put it in portrait or landscape whichever you prefer you can see it's coming through looking pretty good as well so one thing to keep into consideration is that you will get unlimited streaming without a plex pass while you're on your browser so that will always be available however if you're on a mobile device like the iPhone like this one it will let you know that hey your stream is limited to one minute so will prompt you to upgrade the app which I believe is like four dollars or something like that you can upgrade just the app and you will then have the availability to view the full content so keep that in mind especially when using Plex on your mobile device so that's a basic layout for you place guys from here you can go ahead and if you guys wanted to add more library all you have to do is go to the server you're working with hit that plus button and then you can select what you want to watch you have a TV show menu that's dedicated to your TV show so we'll build it out and it will search TV shows on the web just to make everything match up well with you if you guys just added a bunch of media to you you wanted to force you can go ahead and just hit the three dots right there if you scan library files it will find the new media they just added on the manage server settings empty trash in any database now question that I received is about sharing your plex media server with others so you can go ahead and do that guys however you will need to have a premium Plex account and to share the movies while you have a plex account you'll hit the drop down and right here where it says users and share and you'll click on that and you can see this is my main account I have a couple libraries shared with me by Triple M but yeah you can create a user right here let's go back home so that's a basic so that's a basic so that's basically how you share your plex account guys let me go ahead and jump over to my main plex server so that's a basic way that you can share your plex account now if we take a look at my actual plex account you can see that I have two accounts and we'll just give it a second for it to load so I have two accounts right here and this is what it'll look like after you share it so this is the main account this is the user so this is a kids account that I have permissions set to and I've done a full video on just sharing your plex media guys I'll go ahead and I'll lay that for you so this is what my plex library looked like and I did set it up a little bit different guys I set it up portfolios gives me a little bit more control but I said you can set it up however you want so if I go to movies children movies you can see you have all the kids movies right there movies all a lot of content in here guys but if I go to the drop down here go to user sharing you can see I'm sharing these two libraries right here and I do have the option to set a pin that way if I want to restrict it to a pen I can go ahead and do so and also because I do have a plex pass account I do have the Nvidia shield set up as a Plex server and I can access that live CD tuner on this Plex account so if I go to more right here and then right here where it says live TV and DVR so this is actually all over the air TV guys looks really good right so anything on here she'll be able to play guys this guide is updated automatically and like I said if you guys have any questions check out the full live TV setup that I've done in my Plex and I'll go ahead and pin that in the comment section as well so that's it for this video like I said this was pretty lengthy I'll go ahead and I'll link those timestamps you guys can jump ahead if you need to but before I don't want to answer some of those questions that you guys had on my previous Plex videos I know there's a lot of them some of them I've already answered in the comment section but just in case someone didn't go through the comment section I can go through and answer some of those questions as well so this person says when I sign in I don't get an option about server where am i struggling so first question is are is that Plex server on the same network as your server running what is your server installed on so many questions if you want to you can go ahead and shoot me an email give me some more details and I see if I can help you figure this out right how do I become a user to someone's media content and how do I find the best server content so I believe what your accent about is how can you access someone's plex media server their movies their content what will happen is that person will have to share their account with you essentially so I have my plex media server if I wanted to share my content I can select which folder I want to share if its movies if it's a certain time I can set up in I can share it with you I know some people do this and they actually top it off of it but that's that's another topic in itself so to answer your questions yes you can access someone else's media but they will have to share it with you through your Plex account so another question this is great well how do I connect it to my smart TV so so many Smart TVs might have that Plex application that you can download and after you download that app you can go ahead and sign in with the existing Plex account now if your Smart TV does not have a plex app more than likely the best option is to get something like a fire stick or something cheap that you can go ahead and use the access your plex media 5 6 is usually good option it's very cheap it's capable of running most of the content that's on your plex click questions do movies already appear in plex account yes so we talked a little bit about the video on-demand Plex recently rolled out a video on-demand service that's a driven so some movies will be there it will be a driven it won't be the newest content so to get the best content guys you need to go ahead and put your own content in your media server I searched how to install Plex plug-in on Mac stupid YouTube gives me this suggestion well hopefully you find what you're looking for so I'm fair I have to pay for it if it's something that you're gonna use for a long time I definitely think it's worth it I've had it for a couple years now and I was probably one of the best purchases that I've made so never let me down guys always hitting it up on the go definitely recommended if you're new to this and just want to try it out for dollars for the first month see if you like it and then you're good to go how to add web tools for this version so what tools I did a video on this a couple years ago and what tools was essentially way to add those third-party apps to your Plex so you can get xxx you can get free movies you can get live TV some of those other add-ons that we used to be able to get on Cody Cody with Kay was available on plex but since the crackdown a lot of that has been removed and that's the way it's going I don't see it coming back just a huge crackdown and we just have to adapt and overcome I guess how do you do DVDs for Plex I'm thinking they're acts and how do I go ahead and put DVDs that I already own on click so I talked about it a little bit and I reviewed a service called wonder fox I believe a couple months back I'll go ahead and link that video as well I wonder Fox allows you to if you have a DVD ROM on your computer just put a DVD in use the program pull the content off then you can go ahead and save it as mp4 and put it in your Plex library so that's probably one of the best ways to go ahead and do that I do think that handbrake and some other programs are out there so I'll check that out and I'll let you know some other recommendations so definitely wonder fox is one that I've tested it works fine and I'll go ahead and put that in the comment section what format do your movies need to be in so most of my movies are in either the mp4 format or MKV both of those seem to work well I know that dot MOV the file sometimes have issues so I would try to stay away from some of those Mac codecs I would stick with mp4 MKV if I were you good video but where do you find media to load and like I said this is something I cannot absolutely cannot go into on this channel but do a quick YouTube or Google search you'll find a lot of content showing you guys how to get media to your plex server is it safe to use pirated content another one it's a judgement call guys do your research be safe about it use a VPN as well is it possible to change the type of library once you've added it so everything is changeable guides like if you want to go in and change the folder location you can go ahead and do so if you want to actually go to the folders that you created and put new content in there you can go ahead and do so and it's just a matter of refreshing that data once you change that content in the library so hopefully that answer your question I'll go ahead and I'll do one more can you find almost every movie in the world and Plex or is it only your own uploaded movies that you can watch if so then how so like I said this is gonna be a very popular question Plex does not provide the movies for you you provide the movies for your plex server and then however you get them you put them in there they're yours for a lifetime essentially so like I said can't go into how to acquire media do a google search make sure it's safe about it use a VPN as well if you're doing anything that you're unsure about that's basically it hopefully I answer some of those questions that you guys have I want you guys to go ahead and do the same thing for this video drop your questions in the comment section below let me know there's something I did not cover in this video I'll try to either make a second video to address that also check out my Plex playlists guys I have a ton of content in there how to add your live TV to your plex how to share your Plex a lot of cool videos in there definitely worth checking out and I'll go ahead and link that playlist as well so that's it for this video if you guys have any questions drop it in the comment section below don't forget to hit the thumbs up on this video share this video thank you for watching and I'll catch you on the next one [Music]

Channel: Triple M

Views: 412,697

Rating: 4.7572818 out of 5

Keywords: how to setup plex, plex media server, how to install plex, plex complete walkthrough, starting a plex media server – everything you need to know, plex Byte My Bits, cord cutter, IOS, Roku, Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, Android TV, Xbox One, Amazon fire stick, Amazon Fire Tv, Smart TV, Amazon Alexa, Windows, Kodi, review dork plex setup, super dell plex setup, plex 101, what is plex, PC, WEB, Sonos, lon.tv, triple m, handbreake, plex setup, plex vs netflix, plex, 2021 plex setup

Id: j2n4Q868_ig

Length: 32min 30sec (1950 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 22 2020