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Hallo zusammen, ich bin echt sehr dankbar auf dieses Projekt gestoßen zu sein. Ich bin ein großer Fan von Synology und generell auch gerne bereit für gute Software teure Hardware anzuschaffen. Seit langem habe ich schon die ds214play im Auge unter anderem auch wegen der Hadwaretranscodierung. Leider ist es so, dass mich der fehlende DTS Support schon sehr stört und aus meiner Sicht ein Must Have ist. Auch im Plex Forum äußert man sich nicht richtig aus ob und wann die Hadwaretranscodierung einmal supportet wird. Daher bin ich zu dem Entschluss gekommen, ein wenig Bastelei in Kauf zu nehmen, um annähernd zu bekommen was ich möchte... Die Geräte zu den gestreamt werden soll: iOS Devices und ein aTV 3gn. TV ist nen älterer Plasma Samsung der nur HD Ready kann. Generell bin ich aber auch mal bereit nen vernünftigen Mediaplayer zu kaufen Hardwareseitig bin ich jetzt beim HP ProLiant G7 MicroServer N54L hängen geblieben, wobei ich gelesen habe das 720p damit geht jedoch 1080p nicht. Daher meine Frage: Aktuell benötige ich ja gar kein NAS was 1080p kann, da der TV nur 720p schafft. Die neuen TVs bieten ja alle SmartTV mit der entsprechenden PLEX App. Im Falle einer Neuanschaffung eines TVs wäre dann überhaupt noch eine Transcodierung notwendig? Die werden doch per Direct Play oder höchstens Direct Stream gefüttert und verstehen doch sehr viele Formate (mkvs etc..) oder? Sollte meine Gedankengang nicht zutreffen: Was gibts denn für fertige NAS die für XPEnology ausgelegt sind oder was ist alternativ ein gutes Set Up zum selber basteln für 1080p transcoding (20bit datenrate)? Danke im Voraus. Gruß Kewl

Soweit ich im plex Forum gelesen habe schafft der n54l transcoding? Oder bin ich falsch informiert? Vielleicht abhängig von DSM 4.3 oder 5?

Unfortunately most Synology solutions are underpowered in CPU for plex transcoding. The 3612 might do the job (price tag of 3k), but even that is borderline. If they would only offer smth with more power in the consumer field.

Is anyone else having issues with ffmpeg/transcoding using ds video mobile app? I am using gnoboot 10.5 alpha and dsm 5 update 2. I can log in via ds video on android but, it won't transcode/play anything on the mobile device. Trantor 4.3 worked great with the same video files and mobile device.

Merci, tu sais si le processuer est assez puissant pour faire tourner Plex media server (transcoding ...) ou dois je polustot passer au G3220?

Built my own with a SilverStone Precision PS07 case and an Asus E35M1-M pro (5 SATA / miniITX / AMD). The case allows for more than 5 drives. It is very quiet, using 35W approx when using it. It will however not be powerful enough i think for transcoding, but this is not my use case. For streaming to my XBMC via CPL plugs a 10GB HD movie it is totally ok.

Hello Pechi, Thanks for your answer ... I hesitate between both : buyin n54l or creating my own. The only thing I see is that for the price (~200€) is a solution that seems interesting, but when I have a look on a home-made solution, I think it'd be possible to create something more polyvalent if needed (converting videos on any format, using an HD XBMC solution, adding some functionnalities without overuse the server) and for a price just a little bit higher (my conf will cost ~260€). The price seems not bad for the proliant n54l and allow compatibility with xpenology, but for how much time will it be enough ? Is it possible to use that for streaming/transcoding 4K videos ? If I create my own NAS with the config I indicated, It'll be possible for me to add a graphic card if needed for future, I'll be able to change the CPU in the future (with an i5 if my g2030 or g3220 seems becoming limited)... That's the reason of my questions ... For a pure NAS usage, I'm sure that n54l will be enough, but what for additional functionnalities ? And why wouldn't you be confident in instalation on an home-made solution (based on intel CPU) ? Thanks again, Regards Stef

I used to own a DS411+. Loved it, but it was underpowered for Plex transcoding of movies. Sold it and built my own system with Intel thin-ITX motherboards, first with a DG61AG and i3 2120T, then a DQ77KB and i7 3770T

I'm curious too Bayou. Since it's been almost a year since your post, have you made any progress on the # of cores? I have a Gen8 Microserver with a Xeon 1230 v2 running xpenology on ESXi. Just seems like more cores couldn't hurt - especially when transcoding (Plex, etc). I can see 40-50% CPU utilization when streaming mp3s to my phone when outside my LAN. At any rate, it's a cool setup to be sure.

I'm curious too Bayou. Since it's been almost a year since your post, have you made any progress on the # of cores? I have a Gen8 Microserver with a Xeon 1230 v2 running xpenology on ESXi. Just seems like more cores couldn't hurt - especially when transcoding (Plex, etc). I can see 40-50% CPU utilization when streaming mp3s to my phone when outside my LAN. At any rate, it's a cool setup to be sure.

Please remember about power consumption too. N40L has 15w TDP and N54L has 25w TDP. (N40L + 2x2tb WD Green = 31w in hdd hibernation mode) For 24/7 home use it can be important. Just for NAS (w/o torrent, media transcoding and etc.) even N36L is enough (transfer speed is equal).

Hi, on this computer it seems to be a dual core intel pentium. I have made some tests. With video station on my I can play any video in original size even 1080p videos, but if I use transcoding (by changing the image qualité in video station player) I can play correctly videos up to 720p, larger videos have troubles. I have read synology documentation and it seems that 1080p transcoding is only supported by the DS214play, the other synology NAS can only transcode videos up to 720p, so it seems to be a normal comportment

Just to report back. I got XPENOLOGY 4.3 with the latest update up and running on my IONITX-A-U Atom N330. It works pretty well! My only curiosity is that I seem to get spotty performance transcoding videos via Video Station... It's curious in that sometimes it will transcode a video using 60-70 % CPU and everything is smooth, then other times it goes to around 100% cpu transcoding the same video and playback is is all jerky. This looks to be related to the ffmpeg process sucking up all available resources. I had better luck the other day with Plex, but even that now is going to 100% cpu and choking. It's very.... Unpredictable... Which is driving me nuts. I know the dual core Atom is not going to be so great at transcoding, but I know it was working better on and off. Note that I do know that it does not always transcode, depending on the video. This is only referring to when the ffmpeg process is spawned when streaming a video. With the variations occurring with the same test videos. It's very weird! Any ideas would be appreciated on that one. I'd say overall though, this board works quite well with minimal headaches setting up with XPENOLGY. Hopefully this helps somebody else out there. Frank

Hello! Planning on what will be my next NAS. Currently I'm on a Synology DS409 which I'm very satisfied with, but of course, over the years it's become a little sluggish. So naturally for my next NAS I'm looking for good performance, for a relatively low buck. I've looked over the alternatives available from Synology at the moment, but it doesn't quite cut it. It costs too much compared to what you get. But I love the simpleness of DSM, so that when I started looking for custom solutions and found XPEnology. Now, I've been googling around for some time, looking for recommendations for builds, but I haven't found that many suggestions. So thus I'm asking here if you could help me pick out a Mini-ITX board and a CPU that would work with XPEnology. I'm aiming for a quiet, low powerusage solution, that won't have trouble transcoding stuff with Plex Media Server etc. Ideas? So for I've only chosen Node 304 from Fractal Design as the chassi. Everything else is up for discussion. Thanks for your help!

Hi guys Very nice work....thanks everybody, and especially to Trantor... Yesterday i have installed xpenology 4.3 r1.0 on my new Asus H87M-pro, for now i have checked: USB3 OK Sata3 OK eSata3 OK UPS OK Standby, usb, eSata, Sata OK WOL problem, does not work, ave ideas? (on MB have enable NIC S4 and switch for wol) PS: This motherboard with i7-4770T, and Ali Seasonic SS-400FL2 F3, power consumpion in idle (only usb boot, and one ssd) is 25 watt. Operating with 4 hdu segate st3000dm001 the power c. is 55Watt, st-by hdu power c. is 31 Watt. (when transcoding first film i measuring consumpion )

2GB is more than enough. But streaming will be difficult on the N54L, as DLNA transcoding uses the hardware, and that is not too strong, at least not strong enough to provide proper transcoded streaming in 1080p (besides, DLNA as a standard, sucks. balls.)

May not be possible to restore the Media Server transcoding?

Intelligence, have you started your project yet? This sounds like something I might like to do also (with my main concern being plex 1080p transcoding.) Needless to say I am anxious to follow your progress!

Hehe, not available from the particular store But how about when installing packages, will that be distributed across the storage or the USB? But they probably don't take up that much space anyway. Any thoughts about the CPU or anything else? Any ideas how the CPU will cope with transcoding? Ideally it should handle multiple streams. I plan on letting my parents and friends connect to it via Plex.

Yeah, I get that. However the performance with a custom build would probably be better. This is what I'm looking at now, do you think it'll work with XPEnology? ASUS H87I-PLUS mITX A-Data S102 Pro 16GB USB 3.0 (storage) Intel Core i5 4570T 2.9 GHz Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) CL9 1600Mhz VENGEANCE LP Fractal Design Node 304 For me it seems like this is a good build to consider if I'd want to be able to have multiple plex streams (transcoding) and run torrents and what not aswell.

I believe Plex already uses the GPU if its present for transcoding, and such it would be a good idea to include a graphics card. But let's see about that later. I don't know where you heard it, but Synology and XPEnology does spin the disks down. There are specific cases, e.g. the HP N54L, where it won't do so that easily, but it can be done. I'll take your 400-ish budget as $400 +- $50. From that, you can get an entry- or mid-range i3/i5 Haswell mobo with RAM and CPU, and maybe even a graphics card dumped in there. Given that you gave no more specifics, e.g. networking, I'll list some stuff: - AAEON EMB-QM87A Great motherboard, though not so well known brand. Double network stack, good if you want to do some firewall or just bridge them to achieve 2Gbps. 6 SATA ports, 4 of them SATA3; USB3 6x, and a lot of COM ports inside as a bonus. Price is not out yet, but it is supposed to be cheap (sub-$150). It includes an i5 or i3, depending on your selection, but you will need a CPU cooler! This would be my choice for HTPC. - IBASE MI980 Another good competitor. Pluses are that it has two mPCIE sockets (for WLAN or mSATA), standing memory, and support for i7 CPUs. Also two different chipset version are released, ether Q87 or H87. Negative is that it uses more power, and has no HDMI ports. Both LAN controllers are Intel, unlike the AAEON. - Kotron KTQ87/mITX Seems to be good, but has a few negatives. Only one mPCIE port, only 5 SATA (but all of them are SATA3), but tons of USB, and LGA1150 instead of BGA1634. - BCM MX87QD The usual. 4 SATA3 ports, no HDMI but there's DisplayPort, two mPCIE (one full size for mSATA, one half-size). Double network stack, both are Intel. - MSI Z87I If you want something with a bigger name but same budget, the Z87I is perfect. Only 4, but SATA3 ports, double Realtek network, HDMI supports 3K displays, and I could go on. All of this for $140. - Asus Z87I Deluxe Probably my favourite from the whole collection, apart from the AAEON. Great quality, 6 SATA3 headers, compact, well designed. But most probably pricy. You can either try Hyper-V with a Win Server 2012 install + XPEnology running virtualized (actually you can assign one of the Eth ports to it as-is. Then you can mount the XPE shares on Win directly, and have both of them running, while having an HTPC. But Hyper-V, again, requires some power, something that a G1610 won't be able to provide. Or you can try installing X11 and compiling Gnome Shell directly, that *should* work but nobody tried that as far as I know. It would be most definitely a fun project! You won't lose your data. Either you can use RAID (last, big partitions of all drives will be the one you want to fix if it craps itself), or Synology's own implementation, or a simple volume. Each of them has their advantage, but I'd go with something like RAID5/6 or maybe 10. You don't need a lockable USB drive, but a motherboard with CMOS lock. The USB key won't get corrupted, at least not easily - all you have to do is to pull it during install, and done. I'd also suggest a more powerful CPU for either the Hyper-V or the transcoding goals. The G1610 might not cut it.

Hi Lockon, as you can see in my signature, I have a BeQuiet L7-300W (~ 30€). I've also tested another 330W PSU from Seasomic which consumed approx. 4W more. So the right PSU makes a reasonablke difference. I made some power test in the past with my Server before going into production including PICOPSU etc. and found the BeQuiet o.k. It was just in my fundus of hardware. If I would be one now, I would go for a bit better BeQuiet (L8 or L9) or Enermax, but always just 300W which is more than enough for this kind of NAS / Server. Even on Power up and full transcoding with Plex, my box consumes 65-80W max which brings enough buffer before stressing the PSU. My endgame will likely be adding an Intel 2 Port LAN + IBM M1015 SATA + 10x 3TB Drives + Dualport HD-SAT Card (to stream via DSVideo to my mobiles; if drivers will be available) and I expect approx. 50-55W idle then (1,5W per HDD, 5-7W LAN, 6-8W SATA, 7-8W SAT). But I need to say I'm not the XPenology Expert and it could be optimized I believe. As mentioned WoL doesn't work and I don't know if Xpenology triggered HDD Standby works as my WD Red have a Hardware Standby after 10 Minutes. I hope this helped myhtpc

Thanks for all your work guys Does anyone know where I can get the synology Media server package prior 1.1-2406? as the new 1.1-2406 has not got transcoding any more. Thanks

IPKG would definitely come handy, but I disagree with the other options. Many don't want Apache logging. For example, my server is running perfectly now, so no need for extra processes taking computing power from transcoding. WOL fucks up my BIOS in a major way. It might not apply to you, but many motherboards get their CMOS scrambled once you enable any kind of BIOS editing inside Synology. Disk recognition is also a per-device setting. You have to figure out which port is what, and edit synoinfo according to the results. Maybe your ports would match a few computers, but it would just cause further problems to us. So, yes, IPKG can be included, but all the other options are personal preferences that many don't want to have in their initial install. Does this happen during the initial boot with empty drives, or after you initialized all of them? If latter, I think it might be a collision in the SATA driver, maybe the one for your controller is misbehaving. Please post exact log messages (screenshot via phone/camera is fine), and we can run a diff on the storage drivers source code to find the problem.

Just thought id chime in and post my success. Motherboard used= Asus P6t v2 Deluxe Proc. I7920 Sata ports= 6 (port 5 always seen by DSM as esata, but can be used as a hot spare eathernet ports not recognized, had to add a intel pcix nic using it with 5 3 TB Samsung disks Everything seems to work except quick connect, avg read and right in a gig network is 110MB/s big files or small Plex works on 1080p transcoding to multiple clients w/o a hitch. Overall much better than my real 1512+ if I can help anyone with similar specs feel free to pm me. AND a BIG Thanks, to the creator