I really like Plex and consider the subscription well worth the money and I like that it transcodes files on the fly to make them compatible.
The only problem I have is that the server is a little be anemic. It can handle 1 transcoded stream but starts to struggle a bit if it gets more than one going as happens sometimes. I have enabled direct play as much as possible but sometimes it is still impossible to avoid.
I have a number of Plex installs (Linux server, Win 10 clients, Android Clients, iOS clients, 2 fire tv clients) and I was wondering if there was anyway to talk to the Plex database to get information about what files need to be transcoded to what formats to work with the different clients and which video files in the library would need to be transcoded?
The server is idle a lot (out at work etc) so it would be useful to be able to transcode in the downtime and move all the video files to a format that would require minimal transcoding effort between the clients. It would be ideal if this feature was in plex but lacking that, just someway to get the information out so that I could set Handbrake running to do the job at times when things are idle would be perfect.
I can program some, so i'd be willing to give it a go putting something together to handle the processing and scripting handbrake to the task.