Jellyfin's an awesome open source home media server. I'll show you how I use it to organize my movies and TV shows.Part 1 (how I rip media to my computer) he...
Made the switch from Plex to jellyfin last week. Runs so much smoother, far fewer issues, my NAS isn’t lighting itself on fire, and I don’t have unwanted features being shoved down my throat every time I open the client app. A few small UI things I don’t like, but Plex had just fucked up the exact same UI element on me anyway.
I think it’s finally time I get around to setting up a second sonarr instance to customize for anime.
I’ve been running Plex on a Pi 3 and now Pi 4 along with multiple other containers with no real problems. I don’t transcode obviously but have no issues with performance.
I also installed Jellyfin last week to run side by side but ended up uninstalling as even when idle the memory usage went through the roof.
I’ve never considered a pi for this purpose. Assuming you have either one large or multiple smaller hard drives, physically how do you connect all that to your pi? Thanks!
Actually, the OS runs from SD and for mass storage I have a single USB drive. The container’s data is stored on the USB drive along with the docker-compose.yml file. So if I lose the SD it’s just a case of reloading the OS, installing docker and docker-compose. Configuring the disk to mount on boot and then running docker-compose to get back up and running.
Docker data is sent via rsync to a Pi Zero should the USB drive fail. Plex/Jellyfin content I don’t care too much about as they can be “obtained” again 😉
From the first boot it’s only a few lines to get docker installed ready for running containers. Containers are awesome!
Yeah my pi 4 works perfectly with Plex. The only issues I have with Plex is the apps on certain devices. For example on my Xbox it will stutter on a 4k movie but my TV app works fine. It’s pretty uncommon though. Also works great for everyone else I have on it. Just have them set the quality to original in the settings and smooth sailing from there. Barely uses any power from it. I can have multiple 4k HDR streams at one time
Well this is really strange. I kept trying to use jellyfin but it felt like a hammer in search of fingers, what with being unable to disable transcoding and the apps being unable to play basically anything. So my server was on fire. And two days ago I decided to try plex, and everything just works tm, I disabled transcoding, it’s like magic. Just wish it wasn’t trying to make me get a subscription so bad, but for me the experience was completely opposite
I used both of them for a long time. Plex(amp) for music because it just works for streaming my collection everywhere I go and has a good UI. My own personal Spotify… And Jellyfin for everything else.
Now I built a new homelab server with a beefier AMD and proxmox, and decided to just switch to Plex for all my content. It has a better UI to my taste at least, but it also has these weird glitches sometimes where the video playback stutters if watching 4k material (where Jellyfin just worked).
I don’t know really. For music Plex is definitely worth the subscription price, but these weird playback issues put me to consider alternatives for video content.
I just added jellyfin to my nas and deleted it again. It doesn’t work without transcoding and the replies to people asking for the option are idiotic to say the least. Sometimes opensource software can be proper crap, what can you do. And plex is obviously faster, a lot faster. Maybe because it’s not wasting resources on transcoding haha
I haven’t seen a specific way to explicitly disable transcoding, like I did on Plex. If I try to play a video in the browser, it obviously needs to transcode my hevc videos, and the CPU in my NAS gets demolished(though it does technically allow the video to play). But as long as I use a player that is capable of direct-play (so the desktop app, or the Android app), it will direct-play automatically, without transcoding. Hasn’t been a problem so far. I plan to upgrade my NAS at some point, and the new build will be more than capable of transcoding.
I guess it has a lot to do with hardware. The issue I have with this is mainly the lack of this option, I want to control what happens. But the weird thing is my devices are capable of playing the raw files over smb shares, using a regular player, no problems whatsoever. Then the jellyfin client decides that it can’t play these things and stuff goes downhill. It’s a shame, I’d always rather go with open things but there are limits.
Did you give up any Plex features you miss? I’ve been running a Plex server for years without serious issues, but I’m tired of seeing my CPUs getting hammered so bad when it doesn’t seem justifiable.
Nothing much that I can think of. Everything works just about as well as before. If I need/want to change a cover or other image manually, the jellyfin system is kind of trash, where the Plex system works really well. But that’s a fairly minor complaint, to be fair. My only other issue is the way the unwatched episode badge works. Plex had just changed theirs on me and made it worse. And jellyfin is even more useless than that. But those are the only things I can even think to complain about.
Made the switch from Plex to jellyfin last week. Runs so much smoother, far fewer issues, my NAS isn’t lighting itself on fire, and I don’t have unwanted features being shoved down my throat every time I open the client app. A few small UI things I don’t like, but Plex had just fucked up the exact same UI element on me anyway.
I think it’s finally time I get around to setting up a second sonarr instance to customize for anime.
I’ve been running Plex on a Pi 3 and now Pi 4 along with multiple other containers with no real problems. I don’t transcode obviously but have no issues with performance.
I also installed Jellyfin last week to run side by side but ended up uninstalling as even when idle the memory usage went through the roof.
I had jellyfin and 20+ more containers on rpi4 4GB and didnt have that problem.
Had you installed the native programs or everything on docker?
Almost everything in docker. Pihole and wireguard bare metal
There isn’t a problem. It just consumed more memory than I’d have liked.
I’ve just powered on the container and the system went from 1.75G to 2.47G consumed. This is when it’s idle.
I’ve just stopped the Plex container and memory usage is now 2.40G. Plex is definitely more lightweight in comparison.
I’ve never considered a pi for this purpose. Assuming you have either one large or multiple smaller hard drives, physically how do you connect all that to your pi? Thanks!
Actually, the OS runs from SD and for mass storage I have a single USB drive. The container’s data is stored on the USB drive along with the docker-compose.yml file. So if I lose the SD it’s just a case of reloading the OS, installing docker and docker-compose. Configuring the disk to mount on boot and then running docker-compose to get back up and running.
Docker data is sent via rsync to a Pi Zero should the USB drive fail. Plex/Jellyfin content I don’t care too much about as they can be “obtained” again 😉
From the first boot it’s only a few lines to get docker installed ready for running containers. Containers are awesome!
Yeah my pi 4 works perfectly with Plex. The only issues I have with Plex is the apps on certain devices. For example on my Xbox it will stutter on a 4k movie but my TV app works fine. It’s pretty uncommon though. Also works great for everyone else I have on it. Just have them set the quality to original in the settings and smooth sailing from there. Barely uses any power from it. I can have multiple 4k HDR streams at one time
Well this is really strange. I kept trying to use jellyfin but it felt like a hammer in search of fingers, what with being unable to disable transcoding and the apps being unable to play basically anything. So my server was on fire. And two days ago I decided to try plex, and everything just works tm, I disabled transcoding, it’s like magic. Just wish it wasn’t trying to make me get a subscription so bad, but for me the experience was completely opposite
I used both of them for a long time. Plex(amp) for music because it just works for streaming my collection everywhere I go and has a good UI. My own personal Spotify… And Jellyfin for everything else.
Now I built a new homelab server with a beefier AMD and proxmox, and decided to just switch to Plex for all my content. It has a better UI to my taste at least, but it also has these weird glitches sometimes where the video playback stutters if watching 4k material (where Jellyfin just worked).
I don’t know really. For music Plex is definitely worth the subscription price, but these weird playback issues put me to consider alternatives for video content.
I just added jellyfin to my nas and deleted it again. It doesn’t work without transcoding and the replies to people asking for the option are idiotic to say the least. Sometimes opensource software can be proper crap, what can you do. And plex is obviously faster, a lot faster. Maybe because it’s not wasting resources on transcoding haha
I haven’t seen a specific way to explicitly disable transcoding, like I did on Plex. If I try to play a video in the browser, it obviously needs to transcode my hevc videos, and the CPU in my NAS gets demolished(though it does technically allow the video to play). But as long as I use a player that is capable of direct-play (so the desktop app, or the Android app), it will direct-play automatically, without transcoding. Hasn’t been a problem so far. I plan to upgrade my NAS at some point, and the new build will be more than capable of transcoding.
I guess it has a lot to do with hardware. The issue I have with this is mainly the lack of this option, I want to control what happens. But the weird thing is my devices are capable of playing the raw files over smb shares, using a regular player, no problems whatsoever. Then the jellyfin client decides that it can’t play these things and stuff goes downhill. It’s a shame, I’d always rather go with open things but there are limits.
Did you give up any Plex features you miss? I’ve been running a Plex server for years without serious issues, but I’m tired of seeing my CPUs getting hammered so bad when it doesn’t seem justifiable.
Nothing much that I can think of. Everything works just about as well as before. If I need/want to change a cover or other image manually, the jellyfin system is kind of trash, where the Plex system works really well. But that’s a fairly minor complaint, to be fair. My only other issue is the way the unwatched episode badge works. Plex had just changed theirs on me and made it worse. And jellyfin is even more useless than that. But those are the only things I can even think to complain about.