to dedicated plex machine or not...no, definitely to, definitely

So I am now reluctantly accepting if I want to use Plex as a media server and not a really technical way to indulge my passion of random micro-organization with a side benefit of watching movies, I'm going to have to build a dedicated server to it.

See, up until now, my home server was Thing That Let Me Play With So Many Cool Things, and as a side benefit, resulted in two promotions at work and a reputation for coincidentally always having the basic skill sets for any tech work because when you're running Ubuntu server and can download pretty much anything used on web servers to practice with and forums chock full of experts to google, the learning curve is fast.

However, as I have discovered while ripping 4Ks, Plex Media Server wants all the resources, all of them, every one. Actively doing nothing on my server, I can mostly play everything okay, but transcoding is almost impossible because of all the other things running on it even when not being actively used. Trying to rip something while Plex is running? Nope. Trying to use Handbrake at all? God no.

And: I do a ton of recreational scripting and sometimes it's even useful, I experiment with different programs like ntop and oracle and apache just to see what they do, I have several IDEs to keep up with my python and C++ and so I can read downloaded source files, and I experiment with different flavors of Linux, and when I've uninstalled, reinstalled, and altered programs too many times or I start getting too many errors (which is a side effect of trying four different Linux distros or ever installing anything oracle as you never, ever get rid of all of it), I nuke or replace the OS drive and start over with a fresh install (all data is kept on separate drives).

Which leads me to the biggest difficulty: even if I do a full backup of Plex, a lot of organization inevitably gets lost. I finally gave up and did the painful work of using someone else's organizational folder scheme in preference to my own much better one, but there's still a lot of bad matches that must be fixed and customization, and the hellscape that is organizing TV shows that have some questionable quirks (hi, Dr. Who), stand up comedians (sometimes they're movies! sometimes they're TV!), and miniseries (sometimes they don't even know for sure).

That's nothing, though, compared to the nightmare hellscape of Plex when it comes to home media organization, aka fanvids.


Plex: The Home Media Category
The Home Media category combines loose with strict and manages the worst of both worlds. The expectation is that it's all home movies organized by date or event, and if that's what you want, it probably works, I have no idea. But trying to adapt it to anything else is basically DIY all the way.

First step after adding the entire Fanvid folder: for it to be useful in any way at all outside of Folder View, you gotta tag everything.

Primary tagging aka Fandom: this one is actually easy. Fanvid folder has ninety eight subfolders by fandom.
In Plex, switch the view to Folder, select everything in the folder, and add the appropriate tag or tags. That part, thirty minutes to a couple of hours as i just discovered tag hierarchies a few months ago and it's a work in progress.

Secondary tagging? Here's where it gets trickier and is related to the nightmarescapehell of Plex.

All those fucking vid titles. Generally, the title of the vid is the filename. Why is this a problem? Whoo boy, it's time for show and tell.

(Note: these have been mildly altered in very specific letter relate formations to protect the guilty. But you should feel guilty, okay. Or probably laugh evilly, which is my guess.)

Example: neversaw-you-smile_johnrodney_RODNEYFAN13333_BIG

This is a good one! No, really. Song title, pairing, vidder name right there! I just need to edit, which is monotonous and time consuming but gave me tagging info and full song or vid title so fuck yeah, this is good shit.

Example: clarklex
Me: ...well, it gave me pairing. Could be worse.

Example: __final3_sm_au(spoilery)__[crack!vid]__s h e r l o c k__
Me: You know like this.
Note: song title was not fucking final3

Example: ___P(collab)__REMASTER__divx
Me: ...seriously?

Example: hp_divx__(in the style of Mulan!)_sm_________
Me: I am not getting the love of multiple underscores.

Example: mcyn
Me: ...oh my God I hate you.
Note: this, as it turns out was an acronym for the song.

Vidders do not owe me clear titles or file names, I get that, total respect, but when one's vid collection is between 800 and a 1000 files in roughly ninety-eight fandoms and only one in five has the minimum 'song or vid title' in the name, only one in twenty has any useful information at all, far too many have random repeat-one underscoring, and all--ALL--still have to be hand edited anyway, you get cranky and wish you were more entitled. Editing eight hundred to a thousand vid titles is never going to be fun, but titles that have information for the tags make the process at least a little less miserable.

(Shoutout to obsessive24, keewara, here's luck, and talitha78, who consistently have a file name that generally includes both title of song and their names at minimum, and fan_eunice and sisabet, who never fails to have a minimum song title and sometimes even a pairing. None of you abuse underscoring, either. Bless you all.)

All of this careful, obsessive metadata for reasons unknown will not migrate from backup after a reinstall. Moving a file to a different folder will mean redoing all the data for that file, and that holds true for any file in Plex.

Example: My movie files were in two 3TB drives, mounted at /media/movies and /media/movies2 and I was down to minimal space on both. I just added a new 8TB to take care of this. Here's what I did to minimize impact.

Note: I partition and format all my drives in gparted the gui but manually edit fstab in command line when it comes to mounting.

Last night:
- stopped Plex server
- unmounted drive at /media/movies
- edited fstab to switch the UUID of the movies drive to be mounted at /media/movies3
- in gparted, relabeled the drive to Movies 3 because it's confusing when label and mount point don't match
- remounted the driver formerly at /media/movies to /media/movies3

Today:
- stopped Plex again, just in case.
- in gparted, partitioned and formatted new drive to ext4 and labeled it Movies and got the UUID of drive
- edited fstab to associate UUID of new drive with /media/movies mount point.
- mounted the new drive at /media/movies
- found out the /media/octavia drive vanished. Have not followed up because one thing at a time.
- started migrating files on /media/movies3 to /media/movies

Probably around Midnight:
- migrate files on /media/movies2 to /media/movies
- start Plex
- edit movie sources and remove /media/movies2

For those super confused on what the fuck that means.

Plex doesn't know anything about physical hard drive; it doesn't care. It only knows the location/address of the file. Mount points are not entirely unlike the letter drives in Windows for the purposes and only the purposes of this conversation (or like ten peole will be like "...uh, wait" and yeah, but it's close, okay?)

Examples:
Ubuntu/Linux: /media/movies/the.martian.2015/the.martian-4K-extended.edition.mkv.
Windows: D:/Plex Media/movies/the.martian.2015/the.martin-4K-extended.edition.mkv.

In Windows:
If you had to replace your D drive with a different D drive but set up the organization exactly the same, Plex would have no idea. It doesn't care. Provided, however, you shut down Plex before you took out the old drive and put in the new one and migrated your data. If Plex is still running, it will get super baffled, wonder why the location no longer works, search for them, update the database that These Don't Exist What, it's a mess.

Generally, it should settle once the new drive comes online as long as the file organization is identical, but sometimes, the database is a dick. And if you decide to now use the location D:/All Video/Plex Media/movies/the.martian.2015/the.martin-4K-extended.edition.mkv, the risk increases. Sometimes, Plex migrates everything; sometimes, it just doesn't.

Back to Ubuntu:
When I turned off Plex, /media/movies and /media/movies2 are known movie folders. It has no idea of the hijinks that occurred since I did that. So when I bring it back up after all movie files from /media/movies3 (formerly movies) and /media/movies2 are on the new drive mounted at /media/movies, it's tricked! As far as anything that was on movies3 (formerly movies).

To avoid doubled files, I'll edit to remove /media/movies2 from movie sources immediately since those files are copied on to /media/movies. Depending on how quickly Plex notices, I still may have doubles, but that's not a big deal. The reason I didn't remove that source last night before I stopped Plex and not worry about doubles at all is this: sometimes, Plex will--for reasons--migrate over all the metadata if it realizes the file didn't Mysteriously Vanish Forever, but simply moved. Sometimes, it won't. Sometimes, some it will and some it won't. There has got to be a pattern here but fuck if I can work it out.

All of the above only applies to the Plex categories of TV, Movies, and I think Music; Home Video/Other Video--only the part where you can trick it by location. But it never, ever, even by accident, retains metadata if you move a file even to another fandom folder; it's gone. Which means I can't reorganize easily but far more stressfully, I made an incredibly basic error during my last file reorganization.

Here are the Plex sources:
Movies: /media/movies
TV: /media/television
Music: /media/music

All other video:
/media/video/clips
/media/video/fanvids
/media/video/literal.vids
/media/video/music.vids
/media/video/parody.trailers
/media/video/[other video categories]

This was a mistake.

Fanvids was supposed to be mounted on its own drive or partition at /media/fanvids for the same reason /media/television and /media/movies are mounted on their own drives/partition with a backup on a secondary drive. That way, should drive failure occur, not only are my fanvids safe, but once I switch out the drives for a new one and mount it to /media/fanvids, all my weeks of painstaking manual metadata entry are safe.

(I literally cannot work out why I did this.)

Moving fanvids now is going to be a problem. The only option that will definitely work to get fanvids on its own drive and not lose metadata is to mount a drive at /media/video/fanvids. However, while perfectly practical, that offends my very strict personal organizational structure: all physical drives other than the OS drive are mounted directly to /media/[mount point of drive].

Exception: when a program has libraries and data I want to store on a separate drive either because the OS drive isn't big enough (that's a feature: my OS drive should never have any data I am not willing to lose in a drive failure), to keep the data safe in the event of an OS nuking, a program does fit the OS but slows it down anyway due to amount of data/libraries, or a program has a lot of data, libraries, and services that are hard to get rid of when I uninstall the program itself (oracle, ntop) and each service have to be tracked down and individually uninstalled and the libraries manually deleted or they'd keep not only sucking up resources but complaining with obnoxious popups in the GUI or causing random errors. If most of it is on a separate drive that I wipe after removing the program, the services are still obnoxious and there but don't take up nearly as much resources and therefore can ignore them for a while.

This, by the way, is the number one top reason I regularly nuke my OS and do a clean wipe, re-partition, and new linux install from a USB drive. You can remove, autoremove, purge, and purge-all, and it just thinks you're cute to even try. The nice thing now is that with this method, I can ignore it until I have the time and leisure to plan the OS wipe and reinstall and reconfiguration because that shit is fun. I hate having to rush through it to get everything up and working instead of taking a weekend and leisurely researching which linux distro will be the GUI this time on top of Ubuntu Server, then spend a wonderful evening restoring all my configurations for SSH and Samba, restoring the host file and configuring fstab, greeting midnight while compiling programs that don't exist as packages or the packages are outdated or limited, adding links to all my bash scripts in /usr/local/bin, fixing file permissions as dawn breaks--God, that sound good right now and why am I torturing myself with something I can't possibly do until probably November??????

Sorry, back on subject

Plex Media Server, for example, has all data mounted at /var/lib/plexmediaserver but on a separate SSD labeled Aemilius. My OS drive isn't nearly big enough to house all the metadata and therefore my OS runs faster and Plex can run at all.


Which leads me to why I need a dedicated server for Plex (yeah, it took a while to get here and I bet you forgot. Yeah, I did, too): nothing but Ubuntu Server, a basic GUI distro, Plex Media Server, and all packages required to run it will be on the OS drive. Provided I plan the organizational structure carefully and assume its permanent (aka Why Did I Put Fanvids With All the Random Video??????), once it's all installed, configured, and running, all I'll need to do is minimal maintenance and updates and ignore it otherwise. And my home server can return to being for ripping, encoding, experimenting, and as needed, nuking.

I was originally thinking NAS--after all, those are made for Plex and media servers, right? Dedicated, less expensive, easy to use?

Funny story: I googled on which one to get. Color me surprised: none of them. Low processor power and low RAM (non-expandable) were an issue (aka, playing 4K movies, playing multiple movies on different devices at the same time, playing movies with subtitles on, transcoding, you know, the things the NAS was purchased to do?) but also? Expensive as fuck. And that doesn't include the price of the hard drives to put in it, which you buy separately.

Most recommended NAS for Plex: Synology Bay DiskStation DS1019 - $639.99. The five bay expansion to this costs $449.

You know what's almost half the price, has a much, much, much better processor, more and better RAM, comes with four bays, has a DVD RW (not needed but is there), and RAM is expandable to 64 GB (and possibly 128) and drive bays expandable to six (and some have gotten eight) with the purchase of a SATA PCI-E controller card that retails under $30? It even comes with a 1T hard drive.

Dell PowerEdge T30 Tower Server (2017) - $370.94

In case you're curious: this is the current top recommendation for a Plex Media Server.

Dell PowerEdge T30 Tower Server (2019) - $479 and the price is more than justified by twice the RAM of the 2017 (16GB) and a 2 TB hard drive.

I am seriously not over this. That Xeon chip can play two to four 4K movies simultaneously, can transcode on the fly, and probably clears your skin and removes wrinkles, this processor has power to spare. Pair that up with all that RAM.....

Yes, I did start a budget for this like right now.

Look, if anyone here is thinking of getting that Synology because you don't want to do the OS installation and configuration and all that--I have a counteroffer. For less than the difference in price between those two you can buy me a plane ticket to come to your house for the weekend and do it for you--set up, installation, configuration, format, partition and mounting of all drives, customization, and teach you how to do it yourself as well, and that server will be up and running and you will be watching movies before I leave. I may even do some tagging for you. Price of labor is meals and a Good Omens binge on Saturday night, maybe some squeeing, vodka and ice cream, and nachos. I'll even bring salsa.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

A pile of random late-night thoughts:

1) Whee, fun!

2) I like the arrangement of putting the OS on a "disposable" disk so you can reformat things and reinstall "whenever". Personally, I've found VMs to be a pretty good thing for playing around with different OSes and such when I was doing that, but when it's also programs that one wants to play around with, that's rather more annoying.

3) For addressing your fanvid file-organization "mistake", symlinks are probably your friends. One pattern I've seen used in a lot of similar situations is that the directory tree one uses to access the files is just a large pile of symlinks, making the storage and access entirely independent. The extreme version of this is Content-Addressed Storage, where the file _actually_ lives at a filename like /cas/a43f/a43fe231adeda567382, where "a43fe231adeda567382" is the md5 of the file or something. And then the sensible filenames are just symlinks. (Actually, for doing this with disks rather than something where /cas points at a distributed database posing as a filesystem, you would probably also make /cas/a43f a symlink, and then you would just need to update that symlink if you moved all the files starting with a43f onto a different disk.)

4) It really is amazing what sort of computer a person can get for $500 these days. (Especially considering that the retail for the processor is already half of that.) Although it does look like those Amazon prices are a bit too good to be true, based on the reviews; a similar system on Dell's site is more like $800. Still remarkably cheap!

[seperis]

I like the arrangement of putting the OS on a "disposable" disk so you can reformat things and reinstall "whenever". Personally, I've found VMs to be a pretty good thing for playing around with different OSes and such when I was doing that, but when it's also programs that one wants to play around with, that's rather more annoying.

I used to love VM but for reasons I don't use it very much anymore. I should add that back into my standard reinstallation.

For addressing your fanvid file-organization "mistake", symlinks are probably your friends.One pattern I've seen used in a lot of similar situations is that the directory tree one uses to access the files is just a large pile of symlinks, making the storage and access entirely independent. The extreme version of this is Content-Addressed Storage, where the file _actually_ lives at a filename like /cas/a43f/a43fe231adeda567382, where "a43fe231adeda567382" is the md5 of the file or something. And then the sensible filenames are just symlinks. (Actually, for doing this with disks rather than something where /cas points at a distributed database posing as a filesystem, you would probably also make /cas/a43f a symlink, and then you would just need to update that symlink if you moved all the files starting with a43f onto a different disk.)

This is exactly why I wish Plex's database was more transparent and we could do direct editing; on a guess, there's a lot stored in XML files. Going in and manually fixing the connection would be so much easier than trying to work out Plex's convoluted method of detection and how to work with it for something as simple as a file move.

It really is amazing what sort of computer a person can get for $500 these days. (Especially considering that the retail for the processor is already half of that.) Although it does look like those Amazon prices are a bit too good to be true, based on the reviews; a similar system on Dell's site is more like $800. Still remarkably cheap!

I was suspicious, too even after reading the reviews on amazon for the many T30s, but--I went to Dell website and tested a few configuration--they don't allow much on this level--and it's about within those if you minus the cost of OS (which you can't do on the site).

Weird but true: I only buy Dell laptops because I live in Austin and it's super easy to upgrade and get tech support form former Dell employees who sell (much cheaper, better quality) Dell compatible parts. And I usually get the very latest and max it because a.) I need the power and b.) generally I use it three years and give then give it to relatives or friends that need computers and since most of the don't have my needs, it's great for them for years.

My last, an Alienware 17, I meant to keep a fourth year because seriously, that thing had power to spare, but it had a fairly major problem come up that--as of then--would be expensive to fix. So went to the Dell website and looked at Alienwares, but as it turns out, the only one combining processor power, RAM, and a touchscreen was an XPS. However, the XPS 15's allowed configurations are limited as hell (it was ridiculous), I couldn't get a configuration I wanted, and the nearest still was off.

Then I looked at Best Buy: the same Dell laptop had all the right elements I needed, a better configuration, and a hundred less than Dell's site.

I am considering just doing another build; I haven't built a desktop since Child and I built his second gaming computer a year or so ago, and I really really desperately want the M.2 NVAND like on my laptop (four times as fast as SATA III, imagine Ubuntu running on that) but I always get overwhelmed when it comes to system board, there are just so many choices.

[kernezelda]

You are a goddamned marvel of a human being! Everytime I read one of your technical posts, I just goggle at your brilliance.

[seperis]

I promise, it's much less complicated than it sounds. When I started out, I had a friend tutor me over AIM to get me through my first install and nurse me through the multiple weird mistakes before sheer repetition took over. That's also the other reason I want to move Plex to it's own computer; a lot of this, including command line, is very use it or lose it, and worrying what will happen to Plex when I want to instal something sketchy to play with or get a new OS means I'm not keeping up my skills as well, much less advancing them.

[lemon_badgeress]

that offer is compelling enough to make me wish i watched visual media and needed to do this. XD

[seperis]

With salsa! *G*

[azurelunatic]

*shares this with partner, who has had an expensive NAS on The List for a while*

[talitha78]

Ha! I live to serve.

[seperis]

You have my upmost gratitude.

Seriously if you just looked at the tagging, it would look like seven-ten vidders are responsible for all the vids in there because all that are tagged right now are the ones with names in the title or I knew on sight, and to be fair, I do actually know all yours on sight or by style.

AND I just found an old external drive that a) last accessed in 2010 and b.) had two entire folders of vids from circa 2008. Some I know are in there (title editing does help for memory) but some I previewed and I swear I don't remember ever seeing.

SGA, Smallville, Firefly, and three fandoms I don't even recognize and counting. I feel like an archaeologist finding lost civilizations!

[talitha78]

Well, you are doing Good Work just in terms of archiving all of those vids. All of your metadata work is so valuable, especially if you ever consider donating your fanvid collection to one of those fan preservation projects. I think morgandawn is the front person for the vid community when it comes to that.

[neonhummingbird]

Reading this gave me so many flashbacks to setting up Plex, first on my MacMini, and then on my Nvidia Shield + 8TB hard drive, and the sheer amount of swearing I did with having to sort my movie metadata, and the damn mini-series and comedy specials yes!, and figuring out paths, and making the Nvidia talk to the external hard drive talk to the Mac, and... I have no regrets, I love Plex, but, yeah. Flashbacks.

(The Shield is far less powerful than some other setups, like the Dell, would be, but since it's just me and my mom (occasionally) streaming, and I'm not attempting 4k, it works for me.)

[seperis]

The NVIDIA Shield though is one of the top choices for Plex. That was on my short list, but getting an enclosure for the hard drive and that woudl be aobut the same price as the computer.

and the sheer amount of swearing I did with having to sort my movie metadata, and the damn mini-series and comedy specials yes!, and figuring out paths, and making the Nvidia talk to the external hard drive talk to the Mac, and... I have no regrets, I love Plex, but, yeah. Flashbacks.

God, all the googling on how to do the names so it'd find them! I'm still not sure I finished all of Dr. Who, and why for the love of God stand up comedian specials count as movies but miniseries don't is beyond me.

[neonhummingbird]

Hours of googling!!!! And the Doctor Who specials! And the GBBO specials! Argh!

[seperis]

ACK THOSE GODDAMN SPECIALS. And going to the movie database website to have to look up exactly how it is supposed to be and still not working. Syfy movies, British miniseries, just...at this point, you'd think Plex would have added a category for TV Miniseries or TV Movie instead these workarounds to make them fit into an organization that was only made for American network TV and is now probably way less than a third of total TV.

*high fives in solidarity*

[arduinna]

I did debate for a while which to go with, but I liked the Synology for several specific-to-me reasons and went with that in the end (well, the 718+). Turns out it's worth it to me just for Download Station (zomg best) and easy file management. I do miss being able to give people outside access to watch things, which I could do when I originally had Plex installed on my desktop with a much better processor, but so far the in-house speeds are still great. And I'm weak for hot-swappable RAID drives, given the size of my collection. :)

[seperis]

I don't deny the convenience, though; that's why I was shopping them for an all-in-one solution (and yeah, can't deny the hot-swapping attraction). My problem is I prefer subtitles running on everything--even with the new sonos beam and its actually really good dialogue emphasis, which really does help, I can't easily differentiate dialogue, and the text also helps me focus on the screen more easily. Which is the reason I only go to the movies these days as a social event; even Alamo Drafthouse speakers are set to 'loud' and without way too much concentration, I lose dialogue.

(This is why I rip lossless and don't compress or re-encode anymore; I need sound as clear as possible especially when shows have a bad habit of background overwhelming dialogue. Huge-ass files and more hard drives, yeah.)

Right now, 4K with subtitles on is a no-go, and even 1080p with subtitles means noting else can be running on my server at all, and that assumes no transcoding--the subtitles aren't burned into the movie. I had to google the minimum processor needed and this price point is my best bet.

[maristu]

Interesting. I usually have subtitles on everything as well, as I keep missing English dialogues (depending on the accent or on how my brain is feeling that day I'll literally not understand ANYTHING).

[seperis]

Oh, its not just you or ESL; mother tongue, bilingual, polygot, perfect fluency, does not even matter, the way they mix sound in media (at least in the US) is why it's hard to work out dialogue. And any American non-Midwest English accent is a goddamn toss-up. I'm from Texas, English from Georgia drawl to Arkansas and Texas twang down to the Valley Tex-Mex English, I understand and can speak or understand them all, but you put it on TV, it's slurred into a foreign language.

I have Indian coworkers who have live in Texas for a decade, have a twang or drawl (we can make Texans out of people very fast, it's our way), and same problem.

If you can afford or budget for the expense, a mid to high end speaker set with dialogue functionality does help (a lot) but I still keep subtitles on.

[maristu]

When I studied film one of my focuses was on sound recording, and I remember being really pissed off that I went to all the trouble of getting excellent quality dialogue audio and then the mixers would mess it up. I don't know what it is, if they just make the background too loud or if the soundtrack is the wrong pitch or what. It's really annoying. When I go to the movies in the US (with no subtitles) I probably understand about... 60%-70%? And the rest is just guessing from context.

As for accents, I'm actually really good with them in person (not so much on the phone). Only accents I've ever had issues with were northern Australian (Darwin) and Scouse (Liverpool). They didn't sound like English at all!

[maristu]

I just finished moving all my media to a dedicated plex hd (because I originally didn't think I'd have that much media and was just throwing stuff in a 1TB hd that had a bunch of photos on it) and that was a PITA. Doctor Who Specials! They say the numbering follows the Movie Database, but it doesn't! I was literally renaming files and refreshing the metadata until I found the right one. But it's getting there. I'm working on music now (I ripped all my CDs a couple years ago but it's one big mess) and getting up the courage for fanvids (other than my own). That's gonna be... interesting.

I'm also thinking of getting a macmini for plex so I can get my big screen back. Although I've also thought of just vidding on my laptop and connecting it to the tv so I can use that for playback. It just seems a waste to have a beautiful massive screen and only use it to organize files...

Reading your post made me miss playing around with OS configs but then I remembered all the stress and hair pulling and the reasons WHY I decided to leave programming and go into web design instead, so I'll just live vicariously through you :)

[seperis]

Reading your post made me miss playing around with OS configs but then I remembered all the stress and hair pulling and the reasons WHY I decided to leave programming and go into web design instead, so I'll just live vicariously through you :)

This is why I'm a QA Analyst and not in dev or web design or anything involving database analysis or networking. I love doing them, and I want it to stay that way. If this was my job, I'd go crazy. Fortunately, my server helps; every time I see an opening and think 'well, maybe' my server crashes and I'm like "RIGHT THIS IS WHY". You can't just 'welp, nuke it and start over!' when it comes to corporate or government server farms.

I'm also thinking of getting a macmini for plex so I can get my big screen back. Although I've also thought of just vidding on my laptop and connecting it to the tv so I can use that for playback. It just seems a waste to have a beautiful massive screen and only use it to organize files...

Duuude, talk about getting the microdetail down; my laptop screen is 4K and honestly wasted on me sometimes since a.) I don't vid or do fine graphic work and b.) I can't VPN into work because the screen diffrential is insane.

Question? Do you vid in 4K or still 1080p and down? I don't see a lot yet out there. I know it'd be a pain for vidders, but I seriously dream of some of my favorites remastering with 4K source.

[maristu]

I vid in 1080p right now, I'm just starting to download 4K source. I need to figure out some settings and re-export my source, although theoretically Premiere now works with mkv files so I wouldn't need to use handbreak anymore. I've just been lazy with reading up on new video formats since I came back to vidding last year. The real issue is how well Premiere deals with the source. When they announced that Premiere would be able to work with mkv files I was so excited, but it was just sooooo sloooooooow that sometimes it felt like I was back in 2003. But once Premiere works, trust me, I will remaster ALL my vids. And possibly a few of my old favorites as well :)

[sparkswolf]

This whole post just speaks to the person I want to be in five years. Like if I weren't a broke grad student I would a hundred percent try to take you up on the offer to teach people how to do all this, plus Good Omens and vodka should not be discounted. Right now, give me an enormous pile of genetic or genomic data and ask me to do some type of bioinformatic analysis, I'm good (or can at least figure it out). Try to get my system set up or custom-designed for me, and I will break it.