Synology NAS COMPLETE PLEX Setup Tutorial (2024 SETUP GUIDE #5)

[Music] hello and welcome back and that is Right today we're going to show you how to set up Plex Media Server on your sonology n from the ground up we've already done a bunch of videos prior to this one going through the right way to sell up your sonology now is right the very first time in 2024 the latest software updates but a number of you who are coming into this Arena buying a sonology now are probably doing so for Plex media server that is right this is probably arguably the premium media server application you can install on a Naas but also to have your own alternative to Netflix Hulu HBO Max Prime Disney plus you name it whatever and on this channel as you can see here from on screen we have covered Plex a lot we've covered it in a number of different ways on different platforms for many many years and even done setup guides previously as well why are we redoing it now well because we haven't done setup guides for a couple of years here on the channel and sonology DSM has kind of evolved in a number of very key ways so we just wanted to alongside the guides for a lot of the proprietary first party stuff we want to make a dedicated one here for pl we may even revisit this for MB and jellifin although I think I did videos on those early last year so first thing we need to do is get our media for those that aren't aware if you have astrology NZ already you've already sorted out your pools your volumes your physical setup we've already done that in Parts one and two of this video series that should be linked in the description but the next thing you going need to do is make sure your media is on the Nars make sure you either select an individual folder to dump the multimedia into so in the case of mine I've already put media into different directories I've put it into the video folder the photo folder and the music folder but you do not need to do this if you don't want to you can create a brand new folder if you choose create a new shared folder it has to be a shared folder and then from there call this Plex Media if you choose and then put that media that you want to have inside here and I'll try and spell the word media when I'm using a keyboard I've never used before straight from there create that folder don't worry about encrypting it unless you really want to but right once if you never want it to be deleted in any way use right once read manyu again you can do Integrity CH you can do all of this stuff to create that new folder if you choose and then when you want to put data into that folder go back into file station and from there select the folder you want and either select the upload option to upload data directly from your local PC into it or you can just drag and drop files directly into this if you choose within a folder so for example if I go ahead and grab that you can just drag and drop and the files will go straight inside so once you've transferred all of your media onto the Sony now the next thing we want to do is head into the package center now in the package Center we can go down to here tolex media server it's a thirdparty optional contributor and down there and click the install button but bear in mind that the verification that sonology does for thirdparty applications is nowhere near as Speedy as it is for their first party applications what do I mean by that well as you can see from the link here at the bottom when we go into Plex if you go to plex's own website and select download select and we'll have to remove my camera from on screen remove that there on plex's own website up at the top select download and select Plex Media Server from there on the drop down select Synology as you can see there as you can see if there's beas it will include beers if they're available or you can remove them and as you can see this will download a version of Plex Media Server for your sonology now so as you can see here we would select the version that best suits our needs which for sonology would be DSM 6.0 and newer select that one and it will do the downlo download but what we really want to look at is that version number there that version number 1.4.0 7998 if we look over at Sony's website we can see that it is not the newest version it's actually like one or two versions before that so if you want the latest version of Plex the very very latest download it from Plex their own site rather than using the one on the App Center but this is one that sonology have verified on this platform it's gone through their checks before they've added it to the store and don't worry because once you've installed cakes media server you can actually update it manually still as well but when you're ready click install to install it locally onto the system or if you've downloaded the file using that method go to the top right select manual install select browse finds the file you've downloaded and then you can go ahead and install it just like any other package but for now let's click install now while it does that the amount of time this takes will depend on the speed of your internet connection but installing Plex as it's a third-party non-partner application known as a contributor app the installation of Plex Media Server is actually a fraction different as you can see here on screen compared to any other system what why is that different well the default level of access that a thirdparty contributor app has to the rest of the uh sonology naz's folders structure admin rights and credentials is significantly lower so when you install it you need to give it access manually and so many users forget this step so when you go in if you already have and you're reestablishing an an old Plex server you should have a token that you can download to reestablish all of the connections but if you're doing this as a brand new installation just go ahead and click next install it and then after this when it does the installation it will invite you to head into the shared folders area and the users area to give access for Plex to where your multimedia lives on the server as you can see here on screen so the first thing you need to do is zoom out slightly go into the control panel and from there as you can see it's telling us to go into the shared folder something we've already opened up from earlier on and what we want to do is select the folders or folder where our multimedia is so for me we go into video we select edit we then go to permissions from there we can see that all of these users have got access and I've already created this user from a previous video for Plex but the really thing the important thing we want to do is system internal user cuz here at the bottom we find Plex Media Server there and what we want to do is make sure the Plex Media Server can access that folder so find plex and either give it read and write access or read only access now why would you give it read and WR access all it's doing is collecting media right it's just going to watch the media why on Earth would you give it right access and you're right for a lot of users that's not going to be needed however Plex actually has a kind of two-way working relationship with you and your data when you're watching so when you're watching media maybe you want to you know create playlists you want to scrape metadata you want to create custom um you want to apply custom art you want to save some of that custom art you want to add custom subtitles lots of these things all add up to actually creating data that some of which can live in that directory not all the majority will live in plex's own directory but I personally for planks give it read WR access but again that's that's why in a previous video we did highlight the use of let's save that um of creating an account just for Plex because if you create an account for Plex on its own you can make sure that all of the access that Plex has will only be to those preset folders and only that level of security credential but that's quite a hyper way to do it and if you do want to create a user that has level of access I'll show you again in just a moment but for now ensure that Plex has access to that specific folder and click save any other folders you have where it is data that you're going to need Plex Media Server to access go ahead and add access to those now if you do want to go down that road of creating a special account just for Plex Media Server and giving it just a specific access to Plex and nothing else head into the left hand side of the screen where it says user and groups click create give it a name in this case I'll go with Plex 2 give it a password again in ensure that password is different to every other password on the system then click next from there say which group it's in so again if you created subgroups you can use that from there say which apps it's got access to and shared folders so in this case you want to give this access to Plex the main directory app but also give it access to video to photo and to music or whatever folder you are utilizing for Plex Media Server then assign if there are any storage quoters the the amount of space it can use otherwise it will be unlimited if you've got applications which again in this case we've got Plex Media Server assign it access via this directory for permissions and then from there go ahead finish up and that user will be created and then you can use that user for Plex and remember if you create a group of users or you put that user into a group that already has Plex access like an admin group that will be automatic so now you've created access for this user and for Plex to access that directory there remember you can still use whatever default user you want to use for this so when you're ready go ahead and click open now if you've already got a Plex account you will have to bond that account with this um sonology Nas so in this case I'm using the dummy Plex account here this is a Plex pass account more on that later on and go ahead and sign in to that account with your user credentials now this page here sometimes will hang the reason being that you are moving away from an online portal where it is authenticating your account onto a local portal and sometimes this page can hang it can also be caused by uh popup lockers so if in the event this page doesn't change for around 30 to 60 seconds go ahead and refresh the tab and now it will carry on with the installation from there you'll see the walk through of how to start binding and adding your media but I'm I'm going to walk you through at least one example we've got the name of the nas that we can change if we choose so I'm just going to call it something something slightly different if you want to be able to access access this from outside the home go ahead and tick that box but again you can come back to this later if you want to check those security credentials because you're going to be bouncing from the Plex Media Server there this page while it binds and authenticates that connection can sometimes take up to 30 to 60 seconds again but do not refresh this page because it can pretty much bugger up the whole installation let it do it in its own time now select add media select the media you want to use so in this case let's go with films or movies name it what you want select add folders from there browse multimedia folder and find in the volume that you created where that data lives where the movies folder is in my case it's in the video folder in the videos folder scroll up I've got movies cuz I'm British click add and there we go if you've got multiple folders that have got movies you can select another folder and add that there if you've got subcategories you can add them from there click Advanced then choose the scanner now this is what it's going to use to scrape and collect all of the metadata what is metadata metadata is the th is the p is the poster art it is the list of actors it's the description it's the reviews it is all of the surrounding information that makes online streaming platforms like uh Netflix so popular cuz it presents a media in such a beautiful beautiful way this allows you to use free online data services such as the movie database and the IMDb to collect all that information and apply it to the media you own if you don't know which one's best for your needs select plex movie and then with the agent stick with the default but if you find some of your more Niche material or older material isn't really finding the right metadata I do recommend the movie database it seemingly has a lot more of the custom art applicable to it from there if you're using a Plex pass you can enable trailers at the beginning of the movies if you want to utilize a lot of that background extra stuff again local metadata is if you've already got box art and stuff like that you can scrape that instead of the online services and again some of these are limited to Plex pass accounts to basically bolster a lot of your multimedia to make it feel like it's an online streaming platform with your own and also things like parental control can all be maintained and monitored here and adapted to your own setup needs a lot of these are going to come down to your own preferences go ahead and click library and there you go we've created our first library now you can do this with all kinds of media you can even go as far as photo media of your own photo collections where what you can do is start crawling your own photography your own Decades of photos that you've created over the last few years all of which and if we go with those directories is there will allow you to enjoy your own collections same with music it can use music and crawl the metadata there for our Music once that's added again in advanced you can use a Plex agent and that will crawl and find not just lyrics data but it can also get a lot of the box art for a lot of your audio media if you're enjoying your media for example via Plex on a smart TV it can then display that media now things like music videos they keep talking about adding some of these features I've never really seen them integrated very very well at the moment I wouldn't say they're an option but for now I'm just going to go ahead and add a few more of these directories and we'll Skip To The Next Step once you've added all of those directories that your media lives in go ahead and click next now depending on the devices you're going to use to access your Plex Media Server it's worth remembering you're going to need the app the app is available on a multitude of platforms from Smart TVs to mobile devices to tablets to laptops and more all of these client applications allow a more smooth experience compared with that of accessing in the web browser but do bear in mind that some of them like the mobile applications are subject to limitations and if you're not using a Plex pass then there are some features of Plex you're not going to be able to use the mobile applications I believe cost between 99p and $4.99 some of the client application for desktop um the majority of them are completely free and if you go to consoles as well things like PS5 and Xbox they have Plex apps but again transcoding is something where you re shape in the fast that we'll talk about later on that you're not going to be able to do on the other side on that client device you're watching on which is another reason for Plex pass because that enables you to do those things on the local side of things but for now go ahead if you want those individual apps to be downloaded get them there or download them in the app center of your client device you're going to watch on so as you can see we've now added this device if you've got multiple Plex service like I have it will list them but for now click continue on top of that you'll also be invited to add a lot of the these third party ones now a lot of these such as title are part of your Plex pass account think of Apple music Amazon music that sort of thing titles is like those and it's rolled in with Plex but if you don't think you're going to use any of the free inclusive services that they include or you're not going to be using a digital TV tuner and an account to live stream your TV then you can disable all of those and just add the files and folders that you've added earlier on after that click finish setup and it will begin crawling that metadata for your TV shows now again I wouldn't bother with this turbocharging your metadata thing there's just no need for it the base level Services afforded to you from the TV database IMDb and more are more than enough I would stick with those I wouldn't bother with it but as you can see it's now started crawling those folders we've created if you have multiple different Plex servers on the left hand side they'll be listed there so for example here is the nas that we've just curated and put together there and if you're enjoying joying this on a desktop sorry a mobile device or a f TV there should be an option with Plex and three lines or the home key that allows you to flick to and from as mentioned earlier on in the video there are going to be updates available um all the time from Plex and it is recommended that you update to them cuz some of these close vulnerabilities now as mentioned the version of Plex that's downloadable by default in the App Center isn't that much different currently compared with that of the server update from Plex but it doesn't automatically update itself Plex it needs to shut itself down in order to do it so it is recommended that you stay on top of those updates and when you do select an update what will happen is it will download to your local machine like the first time you then save that file and then when you save it go back into the app center on the sonology nas select manual install as mentioned and click browse and find that file and install it it will make the Plex server restart but you won't need to go back into the controller panel and reassign any of the uh permissions for clex or the user once you've done that the first time you don't have to do it again now heading back in other uh configuration options that are going to be very very important to a lot of users and let's face it it's the big one is going to be transcoding if we go in to uh our option here select the three dots select manage server and then select settings this will allow us to configure this server in a greater degree of um fluidity and efficiency with the sonology now and the thing that we're of course talking about although they call it transcoder we're talking about transcoding and conversions now immediately head up to the top right and select show Advanced that's going to be really important now transcoder quality you can see here depending on the level of complexity of your uh media and how much of the system resources you want to use I would always select make my CPU hurt anyway cuz if you've spend money on sonology NAS particularly a sonology Nas that may have Hardware transcoding on board of which by the way this Nas does not um if you are using a DS 423 plus a ds920 any intel powered Nas that has integrated uh integrated Graphics uh and something else uh Intel Quicks sync these are the things where you're going to want to use dedicated tools on the CPU of that Nas that can used to convert the file little B more efficiently think of the cutlery in a drawer now if you want to spread butter on a piece of bread sure most of the knives you can use to spread butter on a slice of bread but we know that a butter knife or a small knife is going to do better than using a meat cleaver because some tools are better suited to the job and therefore will require less energy and do the job better that's why transcoding using integrated graphics on a CPU is important even a CPU like the one inside this system which is uh a dual core uh embedded ryzen processor the r1600 that's featured inside this system as powerful as that CPU is with a clock speed I believe up to 3.1 GHz it is a general power to get stuff done which means when it comes to more graphical tasks it will just throw power at the problem now if you had integrated Graphics that is a smaller component of an overall CPU that is better suited to handling graphical manipulation and graphical tasks like conversion and transcoding it will use less power to get the job done it will do the job better faster using less CPU power leaving more CPU resources to the rest of the system and lowering power consumption it also means that more transcoding actions can happle simultaneously so if you do use a sonology NZ and you have integrated graphics on board then definitely definitely definitely select made by CPU hurt is it will use the cpu's efficiency level to the maximum now you there are limitations so for example if your CPU uh has integrated graphics and you're doing too many tasks or you're trying to uh transcode something of a higher Fidelity or quality such as 8K there's only a finite amount of graphical resources available and trying to offload that and utilize some of the traditional power there in non-graphical uh optimized uh power usage of the CPU it's going to result in a lesser impact and overall lower results case in point if we go back into my list of servers and we try to play this 8K file here this is an 8K HC file this is a horrifically high-end file and as you can see it's an immediate transcoding there and while that's playing if we minimize that file to the bottom of the screen and we go into the dashboard of this sonology Nas go back in we're able to see here on the dashboard let's go to it there that we are doing traditional transcoding we're not doing Hardware transcoding it would show the letters h/w and right now if we open that up there at the bottom of the screen it's lowered the frame rate it's barely doing any of the buffering it is struggling to play back this file this file is 4 minutes and there's absolutely no way that buffer is not going to get overwrought that's because although we've got a powerful CPU it just simply does not have the power to get it done look at that CPU power we've used practically the entire CPU to get that job done so do know that transcoding is not just a fix all tool that allows you to play wherever you want there are limitations there now moving forward from transcoding uh and sort of burying in the weeds a little bit if you are running a CPU or using a graphics card um on a system and L onology is that appropriate but if you're using a CPU that has integrated Graphics there will be an option down here for Hardware accelerated acceler ation well you can actually select the driver or or select the GPU engine if you've got more than one option there so do check out if that option is available not just set to Auto if there is an option for using a better um Hardware transcoding engine on your system so again going through those options very handy indeed transcoding is not just black and white another thing that isn't black and white that a lot of people seemingly Overlook is the fact that Plex actually supports DNA digital living network Alliance and if you want to utilize your ple media server but you're using a dumber or older device that doesn't have the ability to install Plex Media Server you may not know you can just enable DLNA what that will do by clicking save changes there is now this Nas will appear as a media server so whereas before when we wanted to access um our Naas as via the Plex app now what we can do is get the system to appear as a local brainless server that means we can see the file folder structure and when we go in we'll be able to see the content of this Plex Media Server now as general files and folders we don't need to install PL and if you've got one of the first generation LCD or smart TVs then chances are you you don't have the option to install an app but this allows you to access and see the contents of that Plex Media Server over DLNA without the need of the app on the client side you still need it on the server but it's a nice way to get around it and a lot of the consuming effort of Plex there also bear in mind you're not going to have access to transcoding using that DLNA option native tolex there other things you should stay on top of in Terms of automated maintenance is to do with as medor is added to the system and changes to that media so for example in the libraries tab here on the left make sure to scan the library automatically because what you don't want is a system whereby you're adding media and you're getting ready to watch it and unfortunately it's not ready to to be found and so you action that procedure while you're on the sofa and your dinner is getting cold and you've still got none of the scrape metadata all the information so do make sure to scan your library automatically likewise go into the schedule task area and from here you can actually set up a number of different automated systems to refresh and flush old metadata to get rid of dead metadata if you've deleted Media or moved it around on your system a lot of these automated procedures if you set them up early doors will pay dividends longterm also a Time bit of housekeeping to keep in mind is to head into the network tab I just want to quickly discuss about bandwidth usage now streaming movies on Plex Media Server is actually not going to be that bandwidth intensive the majority of the media you're going to be watching Once you stream it you're actually streaming it in small chunks let's get that camera back on very briefly when you're streaming media you're not accessing the whole file you're accessing a portion of that file but depending on the bit right and depending on the resolution and depending on just general the weight of the file and all that adds up though even those small incremental amounts of data can be pretty darn big case in point if I head in here and start accessing one of our 8K trailers we can play that file there and again we'll minimize that down to the bottom and if I make my way into the uh bandwidth monitor here we'll be able to go into the dashboard and we're able to see that it doesn't seem like much we're accessing 15 megabits it's pretty small but not loads but if we were transcoding uh if we weren't transcoding that file or we were accessing multiple files at once because at the moment we're being severely hampered by the CPU not being at handle Lake K the result would be that we could oversaturate the bandwidth and end up either with a situation where one multiple users trying to access files are going to have a terrible time or if you're running surveillance backups virtual machines anything else with your sonology n that there just simply isn't enough ban withd to get everything done so if you're using a qap Nas that has multiple Network ports on the rear what I would strongly strongly recommend is to bind it to a specific interface so as you can see here we have only got the one interface 1921 16811 164 that it's the physical ethernet cable connecting myology Nas to a switch which is also connected to a router but lots of C lots of sonology nazes have multiple ethernet ports same as your router will have multiple ethernet ports as well your network switch will have multiple ports so what you can do is attach two cables one uh both cables from the sonology into the router or switch then you can assign one cable specific to Plex and multimedia use perhaps for video station Sony FR as an audio station if you prefer even DLNA media server and the other one can be used for back backups or even have a third one just for surveillance but what you're doing is separating the traffic into its own dedicated Lane and that will mean that if you've got lots of users particularly external users accessing the data and indeed sharing with the local area network they will have their own lane and that whole area of bandwidth to utilize without fear of crossing over into more important Endeavors or were still not having enough bandwidth for their own multimedia because as mentioned even though you're getting those small packets of data unlike differential or incremental backups which are little bits that can be updated over days weeks or months when you're watching a video file if you don't get the next packet in line as you're watching the movie or TV show or listening to the music you know immediately because you can't see or hear it anymore so bear that in mind when setting up the perfect sonology Plex N Final thing it's worth keeping an eye on who has access to your server monitoring that access and of course removing access for individual users of varying levels over time and knowing how to do that early doors will make it easier later on when on the hoof you may need to sever that access now there is a lot of options here at the bottom to find out logs and information about General access on the system but the two main ones you want to look at are these ones number one managing access so if you have family members or friends that you want to give access to your Plex Media Server account you can grant access here on this tab enter their information and they can be invited to join Plex or if they have a pre-existing Plex account it will bind using that email access for them to your Plex server and if you want to remove them go to view or friends and you can jettison people as needed over time and get rid but a really useful option here is authorized devices because what you might find is you might give access to your Plex Media Server to someone and you feel like they're exploiting it maybe they're adding it to too many devices Maybe maybe they bunged it on too many things and you don't want to completely remove them cuz you know hash Orcs but on top of that you really wanted to sort of clip their wings a little bit from here you can go for example we've been using this for a long time on older Nas systems we've used this account for for the channel and just go ahead and kill access to that and there you go I can now remove them from ever having access that works in both directions too so you can utilize that to ensure that people can't get access to to your Plex Media Server with too many devices and that's really it you're now ready to enjoy media on your Plex Media Server Nas and when you do want to log in and access this NAS from your smart TV from your phone or whatever just use the login credentials that you've bound to this account via that sonology nap installation and there you go you've now set up Plex have yourselves a fantastic time watching your media keep in mind again there are other considerations h VC support is going to be very very important and for that you're going to have to make sure that you use a device to either support HC highly efficient video Codec more on that in my other videos and again you can find out more in a lot of our idiots guides and stuff like that for eight mistakes everybody makes I'll link that Below in the description um but make sure one that you either have support of hvvc or a Nas that has integrated Graphics to convert it if you need to and of course when enjoying your media on your n keep it legal it's really really important PL is a great tool and the last thing we want to see is it going away but apart from that thank you so much for watching there are if you need further support you can always check out our free advice section here on the right side of the screen alternatively use our Nas Builder where for example if you want to build a Nas 4lex you want local access but you want remote access too and you also want the ability to run backups if you want to have it for 1 to five users go ahead click Nas and it will list every single Nas that you can use that supports those features and then you can start doubling down and adding other features such as the amount of storage you want to use so we want 10 terabytes we want over four Bays of storage we want one disc of file safety and we've got $600 to spend we can go ahead click find a Nas immediately we've now got four nazes recommended that you can use for that and then get ready for your Plex Media Server installation just click there on the right opens in a new tab and it result at a small fee coming back to me and Eddie that allows us to keep doing what we do at NAS Compares but again use the free advice section one of our recommended forums the free advice section takes 3 to 5 days on the right hand side expediated support use our community Forum or use expediated Services of iri membership tier or Zoom consultations here on Kofi or patreon thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 7,515

Keywords: NAS Server, NAS Drive, NAS Guide

Id: 1NXrUCK83X4

Length: 32min 48sec (1968 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024