Turns out it wasn’t actually some weird LXC-related permissions thing, which is a bit of a bummer, but it was most definitely file system-related. My Plex server’s data volume was a single monolithic 12TB volume, and when I did anything that caused significant I/O, that resulted in high load for some reason. I split my collection apart into multiple smaller volumes, with the largest being 5TB, used rsync to transfer everything over, and deleted the 12TB volume. No issues since the rsync finished. I’m still going to keep an eye on it for a few days, though.
Now, on to the next project: improving the quality of my home videos. I started with a OnePlus 7T, which does a decent job in its own right. Its image stabilization is surprisingly good, but my specific OnePlus 7T’s microphone was not behaving properly, forcing me to combine left and right channels to prevent audio drop-outs after every recording. My iPhone 12’s audio recording is great, but the color saturation is awful compared to the OnePlus, and there is no image stabilization, so I snagged a gimbal and some accessories for the iPhone. It’s been alright so far, but without HDR, the color saturation is still a problem. My existing Nikon D3100 is far too heavy to sit on the gimbal, so I’ve upgraded to a Sony A6400. The video quality is above and beyond the iPhone’s, and with the Rode VideoMic GO II attached, the audio quality is right up there with the video. At this time the only drawback is that the kit lens is 16-50mm and I have no zoom controls from the gimbal; an 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 lens is on its way, as well as the gimbal’s zoom control module, and that’ll complete the kit. All this to shoot better video of my kids’ sporting events.
On the software side I do my editing in DaVinci Resolve or kdenlive running on EndeavourOS. This is the only distro I was able to get the proprietary OpenCL stack working with alongside the open source video drivers, as I am running an AMD GPU; without proprietary OpenCL, Resolve won’t run properly. I render them to disk with x265 encoding to maximize quality and minimize disk usage and dump them onto the Plex server, which has a Quadro P2200 passed through to it for transcoding purposes.
This is also where the VHS tapes I capture go, though I used h264 for the first 8 tapes; those files aren’t as big because they’re quite low-resolution at, only because the source medium is at quite low resolution. Unfortunately the BlackMagic Intensity Pro 4k can’t capture at that resolution, so I have to use 720×576 when ingesting the footage and scale it down in post.