[HN Gopher] Why I use Jellyfin for my home media library
___________________________________________________________________
Why I use Jellyfin for my home media library
Author : ingve
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-10-27 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| This only partially related.
|
| I recently killed all my subscriptions and swapped over to a plex
| + seedbox + sonar/radarr set up.
|
| The experience is good but not quite up to par with real
| streaming service. There are still rough edges. I always have
| issues with plex subtitles.
|
| https://overseerr.dev/ is a nice addition for content exploration
| to the set up but for me the missing piece is being able to
| stream on demand.
|
| Does anyone know if it's possible to bridge the gap between
| streaming torrents and tv?
|
| Maybe webtorrents + casting?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| For subs you should use bazaar, it will download and even
| synchronize your subs automatically
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Seconded. Just setup Bazarr and disable all forms of subtitle
| grabbing in the arrs and your media server.
| Avamander wrote:
| On-demand is discouraged and bad for the swarm, sorry.
|
| Though with a fair connection the delay before a full download
| shouldn't be too long. With a nice native frontend to
| Jellyfin/Plex (ex. Infuse) maybe you don't really need that?
| Maybe, just asking.
| Fervicus wrote:
| Moved from Plex to Jellyfin and have never looked back.
| Vaslo wrote:
| I've wanted to love Jellyfin and it looks so nice but I have
| found for my Home Theater that Kodi is just better. I like
| Jellyfin for streaming on my iPad and for putting my downloaded
| tutorials. But Kodi just seems to have a lot more compatibility
| and handles HDR better. Just my 2 cents.
| 3np wrote:
| They play well enough together. You can use Kodi as a frontend
| to browse and stream from Jellyfin servers.
|
| https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/clients/kodi/
| colordrops wrote:
| The nice thing about Jellyfin is that you don't need a special
| box connected to your TV. Jellyfin has various apps (e.g. WebOS
| and Roku, iOS, and Android) and a web interface. I don't
| believe Kodi has those things but could be wrong.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I stopped trying to get it to work over a year ago. This old
| Reddit thread is one of many where users are asking why the scan
| is so awful:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/jellyfin/comments/q3k3be/how_to_tro...
|
| That's basically why I stopped trying: the media scanner was
| atrocious.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| How puzzling; full rescans take my old i3 server less than five
| minutes and incremental scans are done in minutes. I wonder
| what's making the scans so slow for some and so fast for me.
|
| Maybe it's the file system?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| A lot of people mount cloud storage for their media and scans
| take a long time to traverse and update that.
| rodgerd wrote:
| I generate NFO files with Ember Media Manager and that solves
| for anything that I want to use.
| GOATS- wrote:
| Jellyfin seems to struggle a bit with my anime library when the
| files don't follow a typical western TV show structure, but I'm
| otherwise very happy with it!
| Macha wrote:
| Huh, anime is my primary use for jellyfin, it seems pretty fine
| for me with a Show/Season X/SXXEYY - whatever you want.mp4
| structure.
|
| The one issue I've had is with Danganronpa but that's because
| the backing service for data (TheMovieDB) wants to insist that
| DR3 Future arc is part of DR1 and not related to DR3 Despair
| arc.
| GOATS- wrote:
| I don't bother renaming files after I download them so
| they're left looking something like this:
| [group] anime name - 01 [fileinfo] [crc32].mkv
|
| This becomes problematic when you have shows like New Game,
| where the first is stylized as NEW GAME! and the second
| season is NEW GAME!!. Jellyfin shows them both as the first
| season of the anime, where as Plex with the Hama TV scanner
| can distinguish between them.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I've had issues with seeking in Jellyfin that have kept me on
| plex (even though plex's codec support is much more limited)
| entropie wrote:
| I have written a telegram bot (via node-red) that is basically a
| proxy for yt-dlp that allows my mother to download audio only
| from youtube videos/audiobooks and sort them into jellyfin for
| later download or to just listen. She has downloaded like 250gb
| so far and loves it.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I migrated from Emby to Jellyfin pretty soon after the fork, and
| Jellyfin seemed a bit wobbly fit the first year and a bit, but
| then really kicked off and it's been stable for me for a long
| time.
|
| Primarily used through Android TV app connecting to a docker
| instance of the server.
| rodgerd wrote:
| It's interesting that he talks about anti-free software FUD
| with Plex vs Jellyfin, but Emby vs Jellyfin is pretty
| illuminating; I have a paid license of the former, and it's
| pretty telling that not only do they lag in many features, the
| support is remarkably for being unpleasant and rude, which is
| an interesting choice for paying customers.
|
| Even where they have a nominal advantage, such as clients,
| they're often remarkably limited in terms of things like Dolby
| playback or performance with UHD, so it's not clear what you're
| paying for.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Despite the others in this thread Jellyfin works fine for me
| basically out of the box.
|
| I just run it in docker compose and there have not really been
| any issues.
| NTARelix wrote:
| Over the last decade or so I've switched between Kodi (even back
| when it was XBMC on a literal Xbox [the original]), Plex, Emby,
| and Jellyfin; currently settled on Jellyfin for maybe a year and
| a half. I've also had a great experience with Jellyfin and love
| that it doesn't hide features behind a paywall. I agree that it
| has caught up with the competitors in terms of necessary
| features, but it occasionally feels a little buggy or in need of
| some UX polish. Perhaps one of my free weekends I'll see if I can
| contribute.
|
| One of the primary features I appreciate that the others have
| behind a paywall is the ability to download content for offline
| use. 1 less reason to open up my network's SSH port to the world.
| The feature is great for trips where connectivity is limited, or
| just at a friend's house with terribly unreliable wifi.
|
| I run Jellyfin on an Athlon II X4 (12 or 13 years old) with
| several other self-hosted services. Transcoding anything above
| 720p causes the entire system to come to a screeching halt, so
| I've pre-transcoded all of my content with handbrake to allow
| direct-play 4k content on all my home devices (Firefox, Shield
| TV, Chromecast, Android client, desktop client).
| marcrosoft wrote:
| I just dropped Plex for Jellyfin since they've been pushing their
| live crap in the menus and not focusing on user content. Jellyfin
| is awesome.
| contravariant wrote:
| I'm still somewhat unclear precisely what problem Jellyfin and
| Plex are supposed to solve. If you combine Jellyfin with
| something liks Radarr/Sonarr and Kodi then what do you need
| Jellyfin for? You could just cut out the middleman and connect
| Kodi to Radar/Sonarr directly.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Ha! I have the same question except for Kodi. Never could
| figure it out.
|
| My use case(s) for Plex:
|
| 1. I have media on my HD. Plex organizes it, figures out what
| show/movie it is, gets relevant metadata, and remembers how
| much I've watched it.
|
| 2. It lets me watch said media when I'm away from home (e.g.
| from a hotel room when I'm traveling). This is critical for me
| and what got me on to Plex.
|
| 3. It lets me share media with other users.
|
| 4. DVR: I pick the shows I like, and it records them for me.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Think of Jellyfin as a multi-user, centralized version of Kodi.
| Thanks to this, you get the ability to access (and give others
| access to) your Jellyfin instance remotely from virtually any
| device.
|
| Kodi can serve as either a Jellyfin client or as a local
| replacement. One thing to note is that the Kodi plugin
| ecosystem is much larger than that of Jellyfin, or any other
| media server solution for that matter.
| c0brac0bra wrote:
| This is like worlds colliding. I only know Jeff Geerling because
| he apparently wrote every Ansible role in existence.
| Daunk wrote:
| But I love my Plex! I can search for basically any movie, click
| "add to watchlist" and some magic happens behind the scenes and
| an hour or two later; that movie is in my library, ready to watch
| with subtitles and all. All my work buddies have the same system
| setup as well, so we're all sharing libraries to create an insane
| network of media, fit for any taste.
| budafish wrote:
| Is that by using that radarr watchlist integration?
| djhworld wrote:
| How does this work?
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Piracy. Specifically a bittorrent back-end that grabs
| torrents from a curated or auto-generated list then combined
| with data from a service like TVDB to make a nice front-end.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Or rips of your physical media. Which is nice since you can
| pick the language you want.
| acoard wrote:
| Have a docker-compose to share? I have Plex and love it too,
| but that "add to watchlist" type setup seems very interesting.
| Any links to point me in the right direction?
|
| I used to use sonarr and radarr in the past but used those
| directly, not via Plex, and to be honest I sometimes ran into
| issues with them but generally they worked fine.
| joshstrange wrote:
| It looks like Radarr (and I assume Sonarr) both have features
| to monitor that the watchlist in plex
| https://github.com/Radarr/Radarr/issues/5705
|
| It's a clever way to do this without leaving Plex. I've used
| Ombi or PlexRequests in the past but they weren't my favorite
| and I finally gave up and used the sonarr/radarr UI directly.
| tbyehl wrote:
| It's a feature recently added to Overseerr.
| curiousgal wrote:
| You can do the same with Jellyfin, to some extent. The free
| mobile app is the cherry on top.
| hatware wrote:
| Folks stuck on Plex don't know what they're missing, and
| usually pay for Plex Pass.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Jellyfin is very poor when it comes to EPG and DVR capabilities.
| Plex is king here, and is the main reason I paid for the Pass
| (very cheap for what you get).
|
| The last time I tried it was probably 6 months ago and it was
| still buggy for lots of basic playback - both on my Android and
| on my Roku.
| debacle wrote:
| I dislike Plex's deceitful in-app advertising, but when I tried
| to set up Jellyfin there were some issues.
|
| That was about a year ago, probably worth the revisit.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| It's in a much better state than a year ago
| philjohn wrote:
| Plex pass makes it worth it for me with the native app on my LG
| CX OLED - if JellyFin could crack that I'd look to switch in a
| heartbeat.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Kodi is pretty solid too but I'm not sure if they've added
| things like background music and other features yet.
| ecliptik wrote:
| I'm also waiting for the Jellyfin app on LG and following this
| issue: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos/issues/99
|
| Current status LG QA is testing it and if it passes should be
| available in the LG Content Store soon after that.
| xienze wrote:
| Might not be the answer you're looking for, but Apple TV +
| Infuse is a fantastic media player. It has support for
| basically every codec so your server doesn't have to be beefy
| -- you can just direct stream everything. I stream full 4K UHD
| rips this way. And it supports Jellyfin, naturally.
| phnofive wrote:
| Agreed, but just to note: it'll cost ya.
| izacus wrote:
| That's a lot of money to pay just to get back functionality
| the previous poster already has.
| Avamander wrote:
| It actually has slightly more features, it can play Dolby
| Vision and other HDR content that any regular reencoding
| process chokes on.
| xienze wrote:
| One might argue it's cheaper than paying for a beefy GPU to
| do transcoding.
| kodt wrote:
| True, unless you already have one..
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| No, unfortunately, it's not a great player. Speed wise and
| aesthetically, yes, but codecs...
|
| Blu-rays with Atmos use TrueHD Atmos, while streaming Atmos
| only supports Dolby Digital Atmos. Infuse does not support
| TrueHD Atmos, and there is no way to switch between the two,
| so giving up Atmos for the base 5.1 or 7.1 is your only
| option.
|
| Similar case with Dolby Vision. Blu-rays use Profile 7, Apple
| TV only supports Profiles 5 and 8.4. So no actual Dolby
| Vision streams for you, just HDR10.
| Avamander wrote:
| Does that profile limitation still apply with the latest
| Apple TV released? Now that they've added HDR10+ I'd
| imagine P7 is also doable?
| xienze wrote:
| Fair enough, though I figure those are "will work some day"
| limitations of the Apple TV.
| snoopy_telex wrote:
| I want to use Jellyfin, however, I require mobile app
| downloads/syncs. I load up my iPad with content for trips and I'm
| not willing to give that up.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| I do this with the infuse client on ios, and it works quite
| well.
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| You can download things in the Jellyfin app. You'll just have
| to use a different app to play the files (on Android at least.
| Not sure about iOS)
| syntaxing wrote:
| Jellyfin + Tailscale is absolutely fucking amazing. It easily
| replaces everything Plex does without any risk like Plex exposing
| your network from a bug.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Umm. Tailscale isn't going to offer a lot in terms of
| protection unless you're using a semi-reputable seedbox.
| contravariant wrote:
| You mean privacy wise?
|
| Because security wise I don't see how giving a third party
| access to your home network is better.
| chomp wrote:
| I want to move to Jellyfin, but the network effect is strong for
| me. I'm in a pool of about 10 of my former coworkers and we've
| all pooled our Plexes together for years. Moving to Jellyfin
| would cause me to lose access to that.
| nepthar wrote:
| Why's that? I use both.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Same. Jellyfin has been rapidly improving but I still mainly
| use Plex.
| dgllghr wrote:
| I just started using Jellyfin and have been loving it! It works
| great and it has an impressively professional and polished UI for
| an open source project. The Jellyfin team is doing great work!
| bayesianbot wrote:
| Just a heads-up if you need subtitles, for me and apparently many
| others with Jellyfin the subs get easily out of sync. The issue
| in Github[0] has been open for 2.5 years and seems dead.. Only
| option seems to be re-transcoding and burning the subtitles into
| the video (which is an option, but consumes some system
| resources).
|
| [0] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/2547
| hcurtiss wrote:
| With apologies for the diversion, may I ask why you like
| subtitles? I have a neighbor who watches every movie with
| subtitles. I've never understood it. When I ask him, it's
| usually something about seeing the words, but he's not hard of
| hearing, and they listen to their movies outrageously loud
| anyway. In any event, to me, it detracts from the
| cinematography, and absent some handicap, I can't understand
| why you'd want subtitles. But I'm fully aware there's a sizable
| contingent that prefers watching movies with subtitles. Why is
| that?
| googlryas wrote:
| I put on subtitles so I don't need to constantly adjust
| volume based on whether it is an action scene or a quiet
| conversation.
|
| But, I agree they are overall distracting - even when I can
| hear a conversation perfectly, I still find myself staring at
| the subtitles.
| bscphil wrote:
| Plenty of people watch movies in languages that they don't
| speak. Probably half the movies I see are foreign. Subtitles
| are obviously necessary in this case, and even if watching
| foreign films weren't extremely common, working subtitle
| support would be crucial for accessibility reasons.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > With apologies for the diversion, may I ask why you like
| subtitles?
|
| Because I like to watch movies in languages I do not
| understand.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Obviously needed in that scenario. That doesn't explain my
| neighbor, the Marvel Universe fan, but maybe he's an
| anomaly. I just had the sense there were a bunch of people
| out there like him who watched movies with subtitles as a
| matter of course.
| Avamander wrote:
| It doesn't take any noticeable effort or attention for me to
| read the subtitles. I've done it for simply so long.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Because, even though I'm a native English speaker, I can't
| fckn understand half of what people are saying either because
| of ascents, other noise, not understanding context, and
| generally having a hard time correctly decoding speech unless
| it's the only thing happening. Maybe it's a symptom of some
| sort of non-neuro-typical trait.
|
| Also, I've always had a tendancy to hear _egg corns_ where
| most people hear the correct words.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn
| code_biologist wrote:
| I'm mildly hard of hearing and the poor audio mixes in movies
| and shows are very difficult for me. For example with House
| of the Dragon, there is no volume where I can understand all
| the words in quiet conversations without blowing my ears out
| in battle scenes. Fiddling with the volume constantly is
| annoying. I've looked for dynamic volume features, but my TV
| doesn't have them and I'm not interested in a new TV or sound
| system.
|
| So it's subtitles -- especially for shows with poor audio
| mixes, where people whisper, talk quietly, or with heavy
| accents.
| atchoo wrote:
| I don't have any issues watching subtitled material straight
| through but I think I've seen it after skipping around and the
| workaround was to close the video and reopen it so it resumes
| from the right spot - not ideal but not a show-stopper at
| least.
| 3np wrote:
| Not saying this is not an issue but we've easily watched
| several hundreds of different releases, all with subtitles,
| never had the out-of-sync problem appear in Jellyfin and not in
| other players (that is, sometimes subs are just inherently off-
| sync to the video file if it's from a different release etc).
|
| The other subs-related annoyances (takes time to appear;
| transcoding/DS behave differently) appear in web client only
| and not when playing trough a "proper" player (mpv-shim/kodi),
| which also support convenient timing adjustments. Maybe
| switching clients is a work-around that works for you.
| jellyfin-mpv-shim would be the smoothest if you just want to
| continue issuing local playback ("cast") from the web
| interface.
| Avamander wrote:
| You can use an another player such as Infuse to avoid that
| issue.
| layer8 wrote:
| What's currently the best alternative for video with subtitles?
| Ideally with the ability to control the position (subtitle
| shift) and timing delay.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I've said it a million times before but I'll say it again:
|
| You cannot pay for an experience that rivals Plex (or in this
| case Jellyfin).
|
| It's not about being cheaper, that ship sailed for me a long time
| ago, I've easily spent over $10K on hardware alone over the years
| but being in total control of your media is amazing. Want to
| share a clip? Just cut it and share it. Want to watch media on
| any device online or offline? No problem. Want to share with
| friends/family? Easy.
|
| I buy all my audiobooks on Audible but I rip the DRM off them,
| put them in Plex, and then listen to them through Prologue
| (amazing iOS audiobook app) because it gives me full control.
|
| I know this method is not for everyone (it does require a non-
| zero amount of technical knowledge, though I have set up systems
| for others that have worked with nearly no issues for years) but
| it's by far the best watching experience. No ads ever, instant
| playback, 1 UI/UX to learn, never asking "What service was that
| show on?", etc.
|
| If there was 1 streaming service that had literally everything
| and I could pay $300+/mo or so for then I'd probably jump at the
| chance. Instead you have to piecemeal together a slew of services
| that all have different UIs/paradigms and they remove/shift
| around content. I had high hopes for Amazon's "Channels" and
| Apple TV (The app, not the device, not the service, come on
| Apple....) but neither really got all the way there for me. I'd
| even pay each individual company if they gave me (aka Plex) an
| API to suck down the content without using their apps/websites.
| [deleted]
| poglet wrote:
| > I have set up systems for others that have worked with nearly
| no issues for years
|
| The two issues I had over the years was: My SSL cert expiring
| (not really a Jellyfin issue).
|
| My FireTV updated the Jellyfun app to a version that no longer
| supported the server version, this was pretty frustrating
| becuase I just wanted to sit down and watch some TV instead of
| messing around with a upgrade.
|
| In saying that; Kodi also ran fine for years without issue. My
| main issues with Jellyfin are scrubbing difficulties and
| subtitles going out of sync or not being able to change their
| timings, same with audio timings.
| metadat wrote:
| Another annoying thing about Jellyfin is the inability to
| disable subtitles by default. Doing it manually every time
| gets old.
| onedr0p wrote:
| Another annoying bit on the client side, the Android app
| appears to choose audio tracks at random even though I have
| English preferred. I have all of a show ripped the same way
| with dual audio tracks and jellyfin can't be consistent.
| Plex never had this issue with this show.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Had the same with an LG TV. Workaround by running with http
| (not https) on local network.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| > The two issues I had over the years was: My SSL cert
| expiring (not really a Jellyfin issue).
|
| If your SSL cert is from Let's Encrypt, certbot will auto-
| renew it for you
| metadat wrote:
| How does this work on a LAN or other private network? Can
| it?
| Macha wrote:
| You can do DNS based challenges without exposing your
| network itself if you have a real domain name.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I mostly agree, but the Plex UI is infuriating.
|
| Adding a new users is harder to find than it should be. Force a
| particular resolution to a user (Original!) is too hard. The
| content they push - I don't want it.
|
| I like it, but it isn't perfect at any stretch.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| That's why I left plex. Every app changed interfaces around
| too much and resulted in frustration for everyone in my
| family.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I don't think it's perfect but I don't have the same
| complaints as others re: the UI. To me it's perfectly
| functional.
|
| Maybe I have Stockholm syndrome or I'm blind to what everyone
| else sees but I rarely suffer bad UI if I can help it. Plex
| has always just made sense to me for the most part. There
| have been some revisions that grated at first but as long as
| my media is only a few click away I'm happy.
| fredleblanc wrote:
| I do this with audiobooks, too, but consider libro.fm instead.
| Same pricing last I looked, and part of my monthly subscription
| goes towards my local bookseller.
|
| That said, a +1 to Prologue from me. Fantastic app.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I'll check that out. Sometimes when I'm moving between an
| audiobook and my kindle I use the official Audible app
| (WhisperSync is pretty freaking cool) which is the main
| reason I've kept my Audible subscription. Though there as
| some books I have no plan to read+listen so I'll look into
| libro.fm!
| stavros wrote:
| Hmm, I checked a book on libro.fm and it was $66 vs $22 on
| audible.com. That's a pretty big difference.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| You can get book credits with a monthly subscription, I
| think when I was doing that it was about as good a deal as
| audible. libro.fm also has the advantage of being DRM-free
| from the start
| hatware wrote:
| > You cannot pay for an experience that rivals Plex
|
| Ironic you say this, since Plex Pass is virtually required if
| you want full control over streaming your media. I'm not sure
| you quite get it yet.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I mean, I never said Plex was free. I paid for lifetime Plex
| Pass like 4+ years ago so I don't have any ongoing costs.
|
| I have no issue spending money (which is why I use Plex and
| not Emby/Jellyfin), I have a problem when you literally
| cannot spend any amount of money to get what I consider the
| best experience. Even if you pay for every streaming app on
| the planet you can't get the experience Plex can provide
| (with media acquired legally or otherwise).
| BeetleB wrote:
| Can you be more precise. I used Plex as a free user for a
| while before getting a Pass, and I seemed to have full
| control over my media - I could watch it remotely, etc.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I got so annoyed when Plex started bombarding me with spam for
| third-rate streaming services I'd never heard of. If I wanted to
| use a streaming service I wouldn't be using a home server to do
| it.
|
| Jellyfin is better in numerous ways but I can only get it to work
| sporadically with my Denon HEOS speakers, though it turned out I
| could just copy some music to a USB stick and stick it in my
| receiver to make a music server that works with HEOS.
| bshep wrote:
| FWIW you can now disable the other streaming services, they
| annoy me as well and just today found a way to do it ( Settings
| -> Online Media Sources -> set all to 'Disabled' ).
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Except it's per-user. There's no way for a Plex administrator
| to disable it for all users.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| So far I've been happy with Jellyfin with one exception - the
| lack of AppleTV app. I've been using a third-party tool (MrMC)
| with limited success.
| domy wrote:
| I'm very happy with the Infuse app connected to Jellyfin (also
| paying the $10/yr for the extra features).
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(page generated 2022-10-27 23:00 UTC)