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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Patrick Campanale says he used Codex to help convert his Plex library from H.264 to H.265/HEVC, reclaiming 8.5 TB in a run that took about 72 hours. That is one home-server owner’s reported result, not a guaranteed saving or an independently measured benchmark. The useful lesson is less “AI will shrink any library” than how he used it to coordinate Tdarr nodes, prepare conversion workflows, and deal with failed jobs.
What Campanale’s Plex conversion involved
In a September 21, 2026, How-To Geek account, Patrick Campanale describes using Codex to assist with a large Plex library cleanup and conversion. He moved from a 12-bay enterprise NAS with 80 TB to a six-bay UGREEN NAS populated with three drives and 40 TB total capacity. The media library had grown to well over 40 TB, so he addressed it in two separate stages.
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- Remove unwatched material: Campanale used Codex with Tautulli to identify items for deletion, taking the library from more than 40 TB to around 30 TB. He also mentions Maintainerr as another way to handle a similar cleanup.
- Convert remaining files: He used Codex over SSH to configure five Tdarr nodes and prepare node-specific FFmpeg scripts and Tdarr plugin flows to convert H.264 files to H.265/HEVC.
- Monitor and recover: He asked Codex to check status every 15 minutes, report progress, flag errors, and help fix scripts and re-queue failed jobs.
The nodes used a mix of NVIDIA CUDA and Intel integrated graphics. Campanale says his newer Plex server platform could handle HEVC natively, which was his reason for choosing that target. His setup is not evidence that every Plex server or playback client supports HEVC in every situation.
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How much space did the transcode save?
Campanale reports that the conversion run took about 72 hours and reclaimed 8.5 TB through transcoding. After the earlier deletion stage and the conversion, he says the library was around 16 TB. Keep those outcomes distinct: the 8.5 TB is the reported conversion saving, while the overall change also includes deleting unwatched material.
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His article also describes an earlier, more manual H.264-to-H.265 effort that he says reclaimed 7 TB and involved repeated debugging. That was a different attempt, not a controlled comparison: the account does not hold the library, configuration, hardware, or other conditions constant.
Campanale’s own summary was: “At the end of it all, I regained 8.5TB of space just from Codex transcoding my media.” The figure and the description of how hands-off the process felt should be read as his personal account, not as a typical result for Codex, Tdarr, or any particular media collection.
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What to check before converting your own library
This account shows one way to combine an AI assistant with established media-server tools; it does not establish a universal recipe. Before running a batch conversion, check the parts that determine whether it is safe and useful for your collection:
- Playback compatibility: Confirm that the server and the clients you actually use can play the chosen codec. A server’s ability to handle HEVC does not guarantee that every television, streaming box, browser, or remote-playback path will do so without transcoding.
- Recoverability: Keep a backup of media you cannot replace before allowing an automated process to overwrite or replace originals. Campanale says his backup remained on his old NAS and that he could re-rip media if needed; that safety net was part of his circumstances.
- Conversion validation: Test your own Tdarr and FFmpeg settings on a small sample and inspect the outputs before queuing a large library. Encoding settings and hardware differ, and this account does not provide a reproducible configuration or guarantee a particular quality or space reduction.
- Failure handling: Decide how jobs will be monitored and retried. Campanale’s workflow included periodic status checks and fixing and re-queuing failures, rather than assuming every unattended job would complete correctly.
What AI did—and what the account does not prove
In Campanale’s workflow, Codex acted as an assistant for remote configuration, script and plugin-flow preparation, monitoring, and troubleshooting across five Tdarr nodes. Tdarr and FFmpeg performed the media-processing work. The report supports the claim that this arrangement worked for his setup; it does not show that AI independently performs a transcode, that his configuration is safe to copy unchanged, or that other libraries will yield comparable savings.
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The article supplies no independent measurement or external benchmark for the 8.5 TB claim, and no detailed settings with which to reproduce the run. Treat the number as Campanale’s reported result and assess your own outcome from your files, playback requirements, backups, and validated conversion settings.
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