In a follow-up to my 16GB Mac Mini review last week, I tested the Mac Mini M6’s viability as a Plex media server. Plex recently released several updates for the Mac version of its server software that specifically target hardware efficiency and new codec support.
See how it works in my latest monthly sponsored Plex video!
One recent addition to the Mac server is hardware tone mapping. This feature allows the server to take an HDR video and convert it to SDR in real time using the hardware transcoder. During my testing with a Blu-Ray 4K HDR film, I transcoded from a direct stream at 150+ megabits per second to a 1080p stream at 10 megabits per second. The system maintained HEVC compression throughout the process, which resulted in consistent visual quality at a significantly lower bit rate. While this was running, the color remained accurate, matching the performance of other dedicated hardware tone mapping devices.
Monitoring the system resources showed that the 16-gigabyte Mac Mini handles these workloads with minimal impact on the CPU and RAM. A single 4K transcode required approximately 700 megabytes of memory. Even when I initiated a second simultaneous 4K transcode with tone mapping, the memory pressure remained low and CPU utilization did not increase to a level that would hinder other tasks.
Subtitle burn-in has also been integrated into the hardware transcoding pipeline on the Mac. Subtitle burn-in is required for playback devices that cannot overlay subtitles natively. Traditionally, burning subtitles into a video file can be a resource-intensive process. I tested this by enabling subtitles on a 4K Blu-ray rip while transcoding. While there was a slight uptick in system activity, it managed two concurrent sessions of hardware-transcoded subtitle burn-in without performance degradation.
The update also introduces AV1 hardware decoding, a feature compatible with M3 processors and newer. I tested a 4K60 video encoded in AV1 and observed the system successfully decoding the file in hardware and transcoding it to HEVC for browser playback while the other two transcodes were still ongoing. Although older Apple Silicon chips like the M1 and M2 do not support this specific AV1 feature, they still benefit from the expanded HEVC support and general hardware transcoding improvements included in this release.
The efficiency of these chips allows the Mac Mini to function as a primary desktop while serving a media library to a moderate number of users. The hardware remains quiet even when the active cooling system is engaged during heavy transcoding sessions. With these software optimizations, the Mac Mini platform, from the older M4 models to the current M6, serves as a functional and energy-efficient option for media management.
Disclosure: This was a paid sponsorship from Plex, however they did not review or approve this content prior to uploading.