How Do You Upload Media to Plex?
Plex Media Server is a convenient way to store all your movies, shows, and other media in one place–and brand it accessible from any device, whether yous're at home or on-the-go. If you're looking for a no-headache way to spotter your movies anywhere, this is it.
What Is Plex Media Server?
Here'southward a common situation that all too many people find themselves in. Y'all accept media files–music, movies, TV shows, and even photos–but you don't have an easy way to hands admission them on your plentiful and varied devices.
Practice you copy your Blu-ray rips over to your laptop? What about your telephone–do you convert the files so they're smaller and compatible? Do y'all fling shows to your Idiot box via your desktop and Chromecast? Do you lot upload all your photos to your iCloud business relationship to send them to your TV via Apple Goggle box? What most your music? What if you lot're abroad from dwelling house on a business organization trip and you lot want to stream your Television receiver shows to your iPad?
Even for serious geeks with a lot of experience managing their media, information technology's a huge pain to go all your devices talking and accessing the same collection. It doesn'thave to be that manner, though. Plex is a centralized media server organization that eliminates virtually every trouble you run into while managing a big personal media collection.
The Plex model is simple: you park all your media on a single computer with the Plex server software installed, and and so you install Plex on on all your other devices. Yous can install it on Windows, Linux, or Mac computers also as Android and iOS, video game consoles like Xbox and PlayStation, your Apple TV, and there are fifty-fifty smart TVs that come with Plex built correct in. Then, from whatever of those devices, you can remotely access your entire media library and watch information technology with no hassle.
Further, because the Plex model is a server/customer one, you don't have to worry about copying files to your various devices and dealing with problems like playback quality, video resolution, and other details. Your Plex server will, transcode all your media content on the wing, then that it plays properly on whatever device y'all're using. Desire to sentry your Television receiver testify in the backyard on your iPhone? No problem. Want to picket it on your laptop at your in-laws' business firm? Besides no problem. Want to hook your new smart Idiot box correct into your media collection without any additional hardware? Buy the right Idiot box and that'southward no problem either. In short, running Plex is like running your own individual and polished streaming service, where yous're the one curating the library.
That sounds pretty bully, huh? Non only do you become on-demand streaming to all your devices but you get absolutely beautiful metadata and art to continue with it.
Let'due south take a closer look at what you demand to get started and so jump right into preparing your media collection for Plex, installing Plex, and–everyone's favorite part–accessing your Plex media collection.
What You lot'll Need
Plex is a really polished production, and once y'all become it up and running it'southward about as headache gratis as it gets. That said, even so, the near important thing is to go into the experience with a clear moving picture of what yous need and how all the pieces of your Plex setup work together.
Home Is Where The Server Is
First and foremost, you need a figurer that houses all the files and runs Plex Media Server. You can install Plex on Windows, Linux, Os X, and even on dedicated server software similar FreeNAS and on NAS hardware similar the Synology system (you tin meet all their supported platforms for the Media Server app hither). But regardless of what platform you choose, information technology'll have to be a computer that's ever turned on. There's no betoken in having a comprehensive streaming solution for all your personal media needs if, when yous go to access information technology, the content is offline.
In improver to e'er being on, y'all'll want the server estimator to have a decent amount of processing power to handle the same transcoding. The more users yous expect to be watching at once, the meliorate hardware y'all want. Plex media server notwithstanding works on older hardware but it will automatically disable transcoding if the hardware is insufficient, and playback will suffer and stutter on really former or under-powered hardware.
So, y'all'll want every bit beefy of a CPU equally you tin spare. Plex recommend at least an Intel i3 processor (or equivalent) or amend with at least 2GB of RAM (RAM isn't particularly important to Plex). You tin read over their hardware recommendations hither.
Lastly, you'll want a lot of hard drive infinite–enough to store all the movies, Tv shows, music, and photos y'all take.
If you already have some hardware laying around you aren't using, past all means give it a shot. Worst case scenario, you find that file playback is unsatisfactory. Best case scenario, yous find that the sometime hardware works fine and you avoid purchasing whatsoever new gear.
You can check out the bachelor platforms for the server software here.
A Client For Every Device
The server but one half of the Plex system. The other half is the "customer" app, or the app you practice all the watching from. While you can play the media from the server'due south spider web-based command panel, it's like watching Netflix in your web browser–most people prefer to sit downward in their living room or watch on their mobile devices. And for that, you need the Plex customer to access the server.
Y'all can notice a Plex app for merely about every platform you tin can imagine: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Apple tree TV, Roku, and more. I thing that has been a source of perennial confusion regarding Plex is whether or not information technology is costless–and a large amount of this defoliation hinges on the fact that the mobile apps take an "activiation fee".
The Plex media server software has ever been free. Most of the client apps have always been free.Some of the customer apps take a nominal once activation fee a few dollars (due east.g. the iOS Plex client app costs $4.99).
Plex has two ways of dealing with the paid apps. If you only need i app, you may wish to but activate that single app. The other option is to buy a Plex Pass, which is like a subscription service that gives you both admission to all paid apps, plus benefits like syncing to your mobile devices for offline access and deject-based file storage. If you need many apps across multiple platformsand you desire the premium features, y'all might consider the Pass subscription for $4.99 a calendar month or a $149.99 lifetime laissez passer.
You can read more virtually which apps are paid, which are free, and the differences between a gratuitous Plex membership and a premium one here. To check platform availability and download a client app for your platform, bank check out the Plex downloads page hither.
Now that we've looked at the general guidelines for selecting a device for your Plex server, and how to go the client software, let's look at the rather of import stride of organizing your media.
Footstep One: Consolidate and Organize Your Media
Plex works all-time if all your media content is well organized and in the same identify. To that stop, yous should have all your media on the aforementioned device y'all're installing the Plex server software–whether it's an old desktop computer, a dedicated storage server in your basement, or a NAS device, all your media should be on it.
Farther, you want to organize your media into a clean folder structure that keeps major media types separated and piece of cake for both you and Plex to parse through.
If y'all've already invested whatsoever time in organizing your media, especially if y'all've used media center software like XBMC/Kodi in the by, then in that location's a skillful chance y'all've already got a perfect (or about perfect) folder structure in place.
Here's a simple example of a best-practice directory structure for Plex:
/Media/ /Movies/ /MovieName (Year)/ MovieName (Year).ext /Music/ /ArtistName - AlbumName/ Track# - TrackName.ext /Boob tube Shows/ /ShowName/ /Flavour 01/ ShowName - s01e01.ext /Photos/ /Album Name/ Image.ext
In the in a higher place directory structure, you lot come across that the major media categories are separated into distinct sub-folders (like Movies and Television set Shows) and that each media type has a pretty straight frontward naming convention. Movies go in folders named after the movie; best practise is to include the yr in parentheses to cutting down on confusion. Music is organized in a straight forward Artist Name/Album Proper name format. Goggle box shows are organized by the name, season, and episodes are tagged with both stats with the "sXXeXX" format. Photos are even easier–Plex just reads the anthology proper name off the binder and loads up the images inside.
While the to a higher place examples encompass pretty much 99% of the territory you may discover yous need a lilliputian extra guidance when naming DVD .ISO files or other less common formats. If you need additional help cleaning up your media bank check out the Plex guide to media preparation here. (Update: This guide has vanished from Plex'south electric current website, merely the link we provide will accept you lot to an archived version of the guide.)
A final note on organizing your media for Plex: if you've used or are currently using another media heart software (like XBMC), don't worry about your metadata. You tin can safely run XBMC and Plex completely in parallel with no hazard to your metadata, as neither application uses the same metadata files.
Step Ii: Install Plex Media Server
The foundation of the setup, beautifully organized media aside, is the Plex Media Server awarding. For our tutorial today we'll exist installing information technology on a Windows machine just, small nuances aside, the installation process is practically identical across all platforms as the bulk of the procedure is done from within the Plex web-based control console.
Head over to the downloads page and grab a re-create of Plex Media Server for your platform. Run the installer and relax for a minute. When the installer is consummate, Plex will automatically launch, and should load the web command panel for you lot. If information technology does not, open your web browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.ane:32400/ on that computer. (Alternatively, you tin access information technology from another computer on your network by replacing the 127.0.0.i address with the local network IP address of your reckoner or NAS device).
After accepting the user agreement, you'll be prompted to sign into your Plex account. On the off risk that you have an quondam Plex account from previous experiments with the platform, sign in. Otherwise, click on the "Sign Up" link and sign up for a new account.
After your showtime sign in, y'all'll get a rundown of all the features of the Plex Pass premium service. While we happen to think the premium service is pretty great, let'south not get ahead of ourselves–use Plex for awhile to determine if you want to invest in information technology. Close out the popup window to return to the server setup.
The first step is to name your server. Past default, the server is named later on the network proper name of the machine upon which it is installed. You lot tin change the server name to something more exciting than say "Dad Part" or leave it as is.
Next, information technology's time to add media to our library. Select "Add together Library".
Here you tin add together many different library types: movies, TV shows, music, photos, and home videos.
Let's start off past adding some film files. Select "Movies" then, in the drop down carte du jour that appears, name your movie library and select a language. For virtually people leaving the default proper name of "Movies" should suffice. Click "Next".
At present it's time to signal Plex at the actual files, select "Browse for media folder" and select the binder that houses your pic files. Once you've selected the folder(due south), click "Add library" to consummate the procedure.
Echo these steps for TV shows, music, and/or photos. It isn't necessary to populate all the libraries, ofo course–if you lot're using Plex solely for Television receiver shows, then go alee and ignore all the other library entries.
The last step of the initial server setup is to let remote access to your media server and send anonymous data to Plex. Both are checked by default, and nosotros recommend you exit them checked unless you have a pressing reason to uncheck them. Select "Done".
At this point yous'll exist kicked into the web-based control console for your Plex server. Depending on how quickly your machine is working, you may come across "Updating libraries…" or yous may already take content to display like this.
Note, for the first few hours or even for the first mean solar day, the "recently added" section isn't especially useful aseverything was recently added to the library. Things volition calm downward presently and recently added volition become useful again over the coming days.
While y'all can browse through all your media libraries correct from the Plex command panel (and even sentry content right in the web browser), it's more useful for checking in on your library and less useful for really enjoying your content. Let's look at how you can admission Plex with a remote client.
Step 3: Admission Your Plex Media Server from Elsewhere
At this point we've doneall the hard work (and it wasn't even that difficult). Once you accept the bodily Plex media server upwardly and running, it's totally shine sailing. How smooth? Because your entire library is stored on one central server, y'all can easily tap into it from any computer, smartphone, or other device and get the exact aforementioned experience–the same media, same meta information, same recently added list, same database tracking what shows you've watched and which ones you need to catch up on.
Search for the app in your phone/tablet/TV's app store, install it, and launch it. Again, we're using the iOS app, but they're all essentially interchangeable. Click "Sign In" and utilise the aforementioned credentials you lot created when you fix up your server.
Boom. You lot are instantly connected to your media collection. Do you lot see how the screen on our iPhone mirrors, down to the show titles, the screenshot you just saw of the media server command panel?
That's Plex'south strongest element correct there: centralization makes everything run then smoothly. If we tap on the "Browse" button, seen in the lower correct corner of the screenshot above, we tin can then select from our available media. Let's exercise that and and then select "Telly shows".
How about someFamily Guy? Why not, nosotros'll select a flavor and an episode.
With but a few taps subsequently logging in, we're watching an episode without a hiccup:
And that's all there is to it! If you take local media and a desire to sentinel that local media anywhere in your house (or even away from dwelling house) and on any device, Plex Media Center is an all-in-one solution that makes enjoying your movies, TV shows, and even family photos and videos, an absolute cakewalk.
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/252261/how-to-set-up-plex-and-watch-your-movies-on-any-device/
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