[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). ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-27 23:00 UTC)