I have been testing ACD + odrive for past couple days to see if the combo would fit my daily workflow. While I have found solutions to most of my requirement, one thing I’m trying to achieve is to use Plex with ACD+odrive. This is something that occurred to me after finding out about odrive. My initial intend was to upload videos to ACD, have Plex build the video database while the videos are still at local storage, then unsync the folder to save space. Plex would then trigger the download/stream/sync when I browse to the video. Then I found out once I unsynced the folders, the folders and file become placeholder with cloudf and cloud extension thus caused Plex to lose the database because the files (mp4, m4v) are no longer there.
I’m curious if there’s any workaround to it? Such as keeping the folders and files with it’s original file extension while being 0-byte placeholder files? Thanks!
Plex recently announced a new service called Plex Cloud which is currently in Invite-only Beta, but you could try registering for it to see if you can get a Beta invite.
Basically it will allow you to run a Plex media server in the cloud and stream the video off your ACD storage. (They also recently announced a partnership with other providers besides ACD as well). That way you don’t need to run a local Plex media server at all.
How does odrive play into this? We make it a lot easier to get your files into your ACD account. This techcrunch article mentions users having problems getting their files up to ACD.
So basically, the way I see it working is like this:
Use Plex Cloud to have your Plex media server running in the cloud instead of your local machine. This Plex Cloud server will be able to play your files off ACD.
Use odrive to upload your files to ACD and to manage it more easily (since all you have to do is use Finder / Windows Explorer). The odrive sync app will intelligently try to upload the files for you and should circumvent the upload problems that are causing other users to fail.
Since your Plex media server is no longer on your local machine, you can unsync files locally just fine without affecting your ability to play stuff off the Plex Cloud server instance.
If you manage to get this up and running, we’d love to hear about how it goes!
Ah okay. I can see why you’re asking for that very specific request now… encryption would require that you run your plex media server on your computer and keep the files locally. You wanted some way to trick Plex into not detecting a change when we converted our files to placeholders…
Yeah, there’s not currently a great way to be able to do this so you’ll have to keep everything local for now (or deal with Plex updating its database until some other way surfaces, perhaps either on our end or Plex’s end).
In some ways, this is sort of a feature request for odrive to be able to support streaming of encrypted files–which has come up a few times before (and which we’d love to do once we lay the groundwork potentially with some other changes first). If we supported that on our own platform first, it’s possible that Plex would be interested in integrating with us.
Hi Jeff, yes because I personally rip my own BDs and old DVDs just for the sack of easy access. But I believe those are not legal even if I own the physical disc. Plus I do not want Amazon to confuse my own collection with pirated movie and inadvertently suspend my account. I wanted to utilize my Mac Mini + Plex + odrive as media server, and Apple TVs as content consumption device with Plex’s Apple TV app. This is what I had setup before my Drobo died.
Streaming the encrypted video files will definitely be a great feature, but I only have couple of my favorite movies ripped, so space is not a concern at the moment.
I am using a low-cost VPS for Plex and mounting my ACD as a volume on the virtual machine. Then any new content syncs via odrive to ACD. Once that sync is completed I delete the local file. Works like a charm for me! Here’s the article that got me started:
Any progress on this? This would be the PERFECT solution for building a personal Plex or Emby cloud! I currently have 250GB worth of Box.com accounts and an unlimited Google drive account but these will require encryption.