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Jellyfin: Free Software Media System

317 points by marcodiego 5y ago

yetanother-1 5y ago
This is very nice, but still misses photos organiser. I wish I could have a photo viewer where I could specify a location, and it would show me all photos in folder view, and timeline of all photos in all folders and subfolders...
- mceachen 5y ago
  I'll be adding reverse geocoding in a version soon [1], but you can already browse by filesystem and timeline (and by camera, lens, file type, keyword, and Google Takeout metadata): https://photostructure.com/faq/why-photostructure/ https://photostructure.com/faq/why-photostructure/ (I'm the founder and solo author) [1] https://forum.photostructure.com/t/support-reverse-geocoding-to-automatically-tag-assets-with-location-names/231 https://forum.photostructure.com/t/support-reverse-geocoding...
reddog 5y ago
I have moved from Plex to Emby and finally to Jellyfin to run the Raspberry Pi media server in my camping van. The problem with Plex and Emby (other than their business model of wanting to collect a monthly fee for allowing you to watch your own media) was that they required the server to phone home before they would work. This isn't possible if you are camping and don't have a cell/wifi signal. And Jellyfin has worked well. The server and clients aren't as slick as Plex but they work just fine and give me a lot more flexiblity in moving media from my home server to the van since the way they store the media metainfo is the same on the Mac OS and the RPi OS.
- napkin 5y ago
  If you're looking for a slick cross-platform Jellyfin client in the Apple ecosphere, try Infuse. It's quite polished, and even available for tvOS- my personal motivation for using it.
  - Cyph0n 5y ago
    +1, Infuse is a great Jellyfin client (among other things).
  - sneak 5y ago
    Note also that Infuse is spyware, per its privacy label on the App Store. You pay for the privilege of having it upload your usage data to a remote server against your consent.
- calvano915 5y ago
  Plex charges a one time lifetime fee. Not monthly.
  - onedr0p 5y ago
    There's both actually.
jszymborski 5y ago
I've been a Plex-to-Jellyfin convert for a long while now, and I've nothing bad to say. I switched because Plex kept pushing their streaming services, and the fuzzy feeling I get from running FOSS. Jellyfin used to run on my desktop which has a beefy CPU/GPU, but runs fine on my puny Synology NAS.
- MikusR 5y ago
  Seeing how Jellyfin runs on raspberry pi 4 your Synology must be very fast with lots of ram.
  - y4mi 5y ago
    It might just have hardware support for relevant codecs. They often do, which gives them a massive advantage when playing media files.
    - MikusR 5y ago
      It only hosts the files.
      - fragmede 5y ago
        Plex, its costs-money competition, transcodes files for playback (using `ffmpeg` or `libav` iirc). Is `jellyfin` less capable in this department then or something else?
        boolemancer 5y ago
        Jellyfin does also support transcoding, also using ffmpeg.
      - wolrah 5y ago
        Hosting files takes almost no CPU power. If you're running in to trouble on anything you're transcoding, which means converting the files from the format they're in on disk to something else for streaming (usually to reduce the bitrate for internet transmission or because the player doesn't support the native format). If you aren't streaming over the internet, disable transcoding and you're more or less only limited by bandwidth.
clutch89 5y ago
I love Jellyfin, but its inability to Chromecast from iOS is a dealbreaker. I think they’re working on a whole new iOS app though that has a working chromecast button - https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin
- jacobmischka 5y ago
  Sadly, Chromecast is essentially broken on Android too and has been for about a year. Stable version of the Chromecast plugin in the app is ancient and the nightly version doesn't work with stable server.
cookiecaper 5y ago
Jellyfin doesn't run on FreeBSD because .NET doesn't run on FreeBSD. This is sad.
- ggm 5y ago
  I thought it ran under linuxulation
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Sort of. When you dig in you discover it that support isn't that great. There are efforts by the community, but Microsoft is doing nothing to help - in particular they regularly break things with each release, and once they do a stable release the previous release is no longer supported. There are some great efforts, the other comment linked one, but in the end forums are full of users asking for help with something not working and no getting any response. Not a situation that makes me willing to try at this time.
    - ggm 5y ago
      You made me go read. Its a shit-show of the complex packaging and build assumptions at source, the horrendous tooling, and the difficulty negotiating the changes. .NEt is up to 5 or 6 and the email/forum threads seem to be talking about 2.x and 3. I wish things weren't this complex. But then I remember how much I hate autoconf/configure/libtool, and think "hmm maybe it wasn't so bad after all" Re-implement .NET in RUST?
      - Goz3rr 5y ago
        FWIW .NET Core 2.1 and 3.1 are LTS versions, support for 2.1 ended last month and for 3.1 in December 2022. .NET 4 is not relevant in this context because of versioning changes over the years and can be ignored. .NET 6 will be the next LTS version, to be released later this year.
- crobibero 5y ago
  Here is a community member building Jellyfin for FreeBSD https://github.com/Thefrank/jellyfin-server-freebsd https://github.com/Thefrank/jellyfin-server-freebsd
comice 5y ago
I only use Plex because they have a native LG webos app. jellyfin has one too and are currently in the process of getting into the official LG app store, awesome! it was rejected a couple of times for some bugs the LG reviewers found, all of which are fixable and being worked on. looks pretty much a done deal.
- zain 5y ago
  Where do you keep track of the LG app status? I’d love to track the progress too
  - dtparr 5y ago
    The project is here: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos Unfortunately, it's been pretty quiet the last few months after seemingly getting close to a retry in the LG store.
    - crobibero 5y ago
      Most of the webOS development happens in the web repo, you can see some items with webOS tag. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/labels/p%3A%20webos https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/labels/p%3A%20webos
whoisburbansky 5y ago
Tangential note about Plex; if you're like me and are disappointed by the default buffering behavior in Plex basically making it near-impossible to seek between already-buffered positions easily, I've been using https://github.com/iwalton3/plex-mpv-shim https://github.com/iwalton3/plex-mpv-shim to cast Plex from my phone to mpv on my linux media box with great success.
- ggm 5y ago
  I'm also using this. Odd quirks, such as the device appearing twice as a fling/cast target, and apparent random net events which make the web client on OSX pop over the "do you want to continue here" pane. (I posted to the plex forums about this btw) the shim works fine. And, there appears to be a jellyfin shim in the same model.
- stavros 5y ago
  This is too excellent, thank you. Is there any way to do this without involving the phone? I watch Plex on my computer but I'd love to use MPV as a frontend for it, as Plex can't seek to save its life.
  - wingworks 5y ago
    How are you using Plex? Try access the UI via a different browser, or via the dedicated Plex app. Try a few different ones. Personally I use Safari and find I can scroll through my library much faster then the App, or in Chrome. I can also seek pretty quick, even 4k remux files. This is on an all gigabit network. (though client WiFi AC works great too). But transcoding and trying to seek... isn't the best. At least for my macmini plex server.
  - whoisburbansky 5y ago
    I believe the shim is basically set up like a Chromecast receiver, so you can use anything that will cast to it. It should be possible to do that from the browser as well (hit the Cast icon in the upper right and the shim receiver should pop up).
sergiotapia 5y ago
I've used Plex, currently on Emby - why should I switch to Jellyfin, they seem identical? Almost a fork really. Appreciate the info, this is a real question and I can make the switch easily enough :)
- cmeacham98 5y ago
  Jellyfin is an OSS fork of Emby, which went proprietary and stopped distributing source code.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Jellyfin is an Emby fork as the other said. However they are diverging over time, each some some features that the other doesn't, or things that work better in one than the other. Both are moving targets.
- Mashimo 5y ago
  Jellyfin forked from Emby about 2 years ago and are still rewriting the spaghetti code from emby. You can use hardware decoding for free on jellyfin. It's open source. Emby is now closed source.
hbcondo714 5y ago
One feature I would like to see catch on is having media center software installable on a router. Plex does this[1] which means you can use the USB drive on a router to store and stream your media files without a NAS / media server. Simple setup, I would like to see routers as clients[2] for Jellyfin. [1] https://support.plex.tv/articles/230934267-netgear-nighthawk-x10-router/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/230934267-netgear-nighthawk... [2] https://jellyfin.org/clients/ https://jellyfin.org/clients/
- onedr0p 5y ago
  VyOS can run containers with podman, maybe Jellyfin or Plex would work on that. Honestly I think the job of a router should not include running a those kinds of apps.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Too right! I want my router rock-solid. I won't run software on it that isn't mission-critical router software.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I don't see why it wouldn't work if you can get ssh access to your router, assuming you grab an ARM build with the right dependencies. Most consumer routers are absolutely terrible though, so I'd expect such a device to run out of resources very quickly, particularly while transcoding.
jchw 5y ago
I switched off of Emby to Jellyfin a fairly long time ago. It’s pretty good. I’ve had some annoying issues upgrading my instance over time, but otherwise it generally works. The ecosystem is also a bit young, but I have no huge complaint about the apps. Finamp is pretty nice for example; it’s a Jellyfin client optimized for music playback.
querez 5y ago
In contrast to most people in this thread, I don't find Jellyfin to be an all-around great experience. Maybe because I run the JF client on a Google Chromecast, and the "Jellyfin for Android TV" app is very unstable. I get roughly one crash a day, mostly when restarting a movie-watching. The UI is okay, but there are a lot of small annoyances (why is there no "restart from beginning" button? Why can't I use the "wheel/cursor thing" on my remote to go forward/back?, why does it so often fail to automatically recognize/parse filenames, or download cover art? Why can't a folder contain both movies and tv series?).... All in all, it's mediocre at best, but I'm still glad it exists: despite everything, I still use it over other alternatives, because it's open source and works well enough. I can live with having to restart the client every now and then.
- klahaha 5y ago
  > Why can't a folder contain both movies and tv series? i don't understand this too... i just want to respect folder not have simple metadata control all also subtitle SRT upload is broken (maybe fixed in source now) and jellyfin want to own media plays ok with nextcloud but when i have permissions broken, after i fix chown jellyfin was 100% broken delete/add library didn't work (scan never started) had to entirely delete jellyfin db to work it again jellyfin is good software, better to alternative, but needs work for improve
- parineum 5y ago
  I would recommend installing Kodi on your chromecast and using the jellyfin addon[1] into Kodi instead. The app is garbage and Kodi is awesome. (Don't use the Jellyfin Connect addon, it's different and I wouldn't recommend it) [1]https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi
  - yownie 5y ago
    I'll check this out, thanks!
  - 3np 5y ago
    What makes you not recommend Jellyfin Connect? I've been on Connect ~1y now and I found it a smoother and hassle-free experience compared to Jellyfin Kodi (which I was on for ~1y prior to switching). JC has less bells and whistles with library integration and metadata but I'm not missing anything, really.
ajnin 5y ago
I've setup jellyfin on my media server but I barely use it because the web player bugs make it unusable for me. I think most issues are due to the fact my hardware is underpowered for the task, and the player gets confused when the server replies come slow and not in the same order as they were requested. In practice subtitles go out of sync regularly, I get "codec not supported by browser" messages with the actual video playing fine behind it when seeking and frequently enough to make watching videos too annoying to bother. There are also other annoyances like the player forgetting my subtitle selection when jumping to the next video of the same season of a show. There's also no quality setting that is just "stream the source file directly". It seems to always want to transcode when embedding subtitles, which I guess is done by ffmpeg on the server but is really the player's job. I know they're working on a new player, though it's not included in jellyfin yet.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  In my experience, the "codec not supported by browser" error generally means that transcoding either failed or stalled. I get the error message when ffmpeg dies in the middle of a transcode myself. The transcoder still has the file cached on disk as far as it has transcoded it, but Jellyfin notices that the process has died and throws errors. I don't think a new player will fix that issue, it's usually a resource problem on the server side. There is a "stream the source directly" option, it's the default even, but only when it's possible to do so (i.e. the media is in a streaming container and not AVI or DivX). You can copy the download URL and paste it into your favorite native player if you want to force it, but that will probably lead to a full file download if the web player doesn't stream the file already. The only way I can think of to avoid this issue is to pre-transcode the media on your NAS to a streamable format. As for the subtitles, I'm a little annoyed as well that the setting doesn't always stick (it works sometimes, which is even worse). I've never had desync issues though, that's probably more of an issue with the transcode lagging and confusing the player or just mismatched subtitle files.
- klahaha 5y ago
  > subtitles go out of sync regularly can be problem with subtitle source? > "codec not supported by browser" probable problem with browser not jellyfin? > There are also other annoyances like the player forgetting my subtitle selection when jumping to the next video of the same season of a show. +1 > There's also no quality setting that is just "stream the source file directly". It seems to always want to transcode when embedding subtitles, which I guess is done by ffmpeg on the server but is really the player's job. Direct source file is download button it can play in vlc, or can use FTP. why embed subtitles? here i think jellyfin use external track for subtitle (default parametres)
newbie789 5y ago
Does anyone have any experience with their Firestick app? I’m seeing some complaints about Chromecast devices but they’re pretty different.
steviedotboston 5y ago
Does anyone know if Jellyfin lets you share an OTA TV connection with friends/family?
- m0ngr31 5y ago
  It does
  - steviedotboston 5y ago
    So in theory someone could use it to build their own mini Locast?
    - m0ngr31 5y ago
      I don't see why not
- NortySpock 5y ago
  I believe it does allow OTA, though when I tried to, Jellyfin seemed to try to transcode the video regardless of what "please don't transcode" settings I had on video transcoding. (And the RPi4 couldn't keep up with transcoding video via software) Still working on getting that sorted out but in the meantime I've got VLC that I can point at my HDHomerun.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Jellyfin will transcode the moment it determines the source isn't directly streamable. Broken headers, weird containers or general MP4 weirdness can fail the test and make it transcode, but usually direct streaming is the default. If that happens to me, I just copy the download URL from the Jellyfin client and paste it into VLC. That method causes major network traffic (so it doesn't work great on mobile networks on the move) but it'll work fine from home. Transcodes without hardware acceleration are pretty slow and the transcodes themselves aren't cached which can be a major pain, but with some effort I've managed to get hardware encoding and decoding working through Intel Quicksync (on an entirely separate device, even, through rffmpeg.py!) and things seem to be working great. The isolation Docker provides will make enabling hardware support a pain if you're using that, but if you're running the native package then I'd definitely recommend trying to get hardware acceleration support working.
firefwing24 5y ago
Jellyfin is awesome, but there's a few caveats for me. - Android TV app is quite unstable. Even if you make it do direct streaming, it's not a flawless playback - Sometimes hangs when clicking next episode. I also kind of wish the login experience was a bit better. - Android App is decent, but for music it's unusable. I'm still using plex + plexamp because that experience is just so much better for me. But, I don't regret moving my videos to JF. Plex Android app had terrible QA/QC where it would have regressions consistently every month. A bug where rewinding 30 seconds would push you forward instead of backwards would return at least 1 update every 2 months and that was frustrating.
- tw04 5y ago
  Appreciate the info. I tried it with a shield a while back and the experience was awful. Haven't tried again recently and it sounds like it's not worth the effort. I have endless issues from a business and go-to-market perspective with Plex, but it's tough to switch when the server and video playback have remained mostly bulletproof the last 18 months.
- wingworks 5y ago
  Yeah, when I started out on Plex, I tried the other services (Jellyfin and Kodi and this other dedi music one), and while they all did what was advertised more or less, Plex was by far the more polished solution with the least bugs for my setup. I also really like the Plex UI, feels well thought out and easy to navigate. Having said that, I keep an open mind, and every few years check out Jellyfin/Kodi etc.
  - katbyte 5y ago
    Have you given Emby a try? I find it’s basically the same as plex without some of the headaches
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  It will also completely delete any local assets if you're using NFS and a mount disappears during a scan. This has happened to me a few times, very frustrating.
f0e4c2f7 5y ago
Big fan of Jellyfin. I see a lot of comments mentioning problems with the client. I use it on an Amazon FireTV (you can download jellyfin directly from Amazon's app store, no side loading needed). It seems to work well on that platform (at least for me).
bbertelsen 5y ago
Jellyfin + tailscale. Easy mode.
- wingworks 5y ago
  tailscale! I love it! So flexible.
marcodiego 5y ago
I simply wanted a personal netflix for the local network. Best fit I could find.
m0ngr31 5y ago
I love Jellyfin. The clients aren't super mature, but the addon for Kodi works great for me so that's what I use. The only thing I missed about Plex was having Plexamp, but now there is Finamp and Gelli for Android and I wrote one called Jellyamp for desktop and now all my media needs are covered
shimonabi 5y ago
It's not mature enough. The media server has a misconfigured path to the web server on Ubuntu, so it won't start after installation. I created a symbolic link to the web server folder. The Android client on my Xiaomi Mibox crashes after it comes to the end of every video.
pixxel 5y ago
Heavy user here for 2 years (web/iOS/Roku). Works really well, never crashes. <3
lbqjfw 5y ago
I set up a Mac mini as my HTPC about a year ago, and settled on Jellyfin to manage my media. Overall it's been great, and I'm really happy that Jellyfin exists. I use Kodi for the TV interface, with the Jellyfin for Kodi add-on to link the two [1]. I looked into Plex, but was turned off by how commercial it was and how hard they tried to push their paid services. The big advantage to Jellyfin is that I can start watching a show on my TV, and pick up exactly where I left off on any of my devices (I use the Jellyfin iPhone and iPad apps, as well as the web interface). I can also access my music library through Jellyfin, and at the recommendation of a comment on this post I just downloaded finamp, which seems like a great music player [2]. The initial setup took a bit of work, and there are definitely some quirks, but all-in-all it's worked for me really well. I would wholeheartedly recommend both Jellyfin and Kodi for anyone interested in a HTPC/home streaming setup. [1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi [2] https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp
m0zg 5y ago
Trivially deployed using Docker compose as well. I've been using this for quite some time. iPad app works great too.
japanuspus 5y ago
For serving local music, the free and open source "Logitech Media Server"[0] is a great solution -- main weakness is the lack of a central organization promoting it. In addition to working smoothly with dedicated ("squeeze") clients which can be Logitech-brand or DIY[1, 2], it has a massive plugin catalog that allows e.g. - airPlay integration: stream to your squeeze-clients via airPlay, stream to your airPlay clients from squeezebox. - chromeCast integration: stream to chromeCast devices from squeezeBox. - upNp integration: stream to upNp clients. The system was originally developed by "SqueezeBox" who also made (awesome) physical devices. SqueezeBox was acquired by Logitech many years ago. Logitech put out one or two devices before giving up, but they are actually playing really nice by continuing to support development on the server (see [0]). [0]: https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver [1]: https://github.com/ralph-irving/squeezelite https://github.com/ralph-irving/squeezelite [2]: https://www.picoreplayer.org/ https://www.picoreplayer.org/
klahaha 5y ago
anyone know good solution for share media library with people in different language? we have 3 principal languages here in house (russian english french) not all people is good with audio/subtitle in different lang i know jellyfin has subtitles but i dont see filter by audio/sub language in list, and metadata is one lang only no translate for synopsis/poster
- Mashimo 5y ago
  You could put the movie files in different folders. And thus create different libraries inside jellyfin.
  - klahaha 5y ago
    you mean symlink? or i need 3 times big HDD for 3 language?
    - Mashimo 5y ago
      Symlink could work, but I thought just move the file itself. If the movie is in Russian, move it to the "russian movie" folder. Problem is if a movie has multiple languages. A metadata filter would be better. Looks like there is a feature request: https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/39/filter-videos-by-audio-stream-language https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/39/filter-videos-by-audi...
      - klahaha 5y ago
        > Problem is if a movie has multiple languages. Yes thats my problem multiple audio or multiple subtitles. thanks for link
kls0e 5y ago
jellyfin on rpi4 with official docker image runs great. just hw encoding acceleration i was not able to set up smoothly.
SCLeo 5y ago
Although I cannot complain too much since it is open source, I have to say, my experience with Jellyfin is very painful. After fiddling with it for more than 10 hours, I still cannot get .ass subtitles to work on my Android Jellyfin client. :( (My NAS isn't strong enough to burn subtitles in real time. Even it does, I just cannot get the fonts to work. All CJK characters are displayed as squares.)
- katbyte 5y ago
  I still use Emby, I’d like to use a free solution like jelly but it’s just not there
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    That's interesting. Jellyfin forked from Emby when the developers went closed source, so I'd be interested to learn what the Emby side has fixed that Jellyfin still lacks. I switched from Emby to Jellyfin and I found them to be generally equally stable.
bobuk 5y ago
I've read the whole thread and am absolutely surprised. Why is nobody telling about plex's ditching of their plugin system? Have invested a lot of time in developing plex's plugin for youtube, twitch, and my favorite streaming services, paid a lifetime fee to plex. And now the whole plugins system is disabled. That's the only reason why I've switched to Jellyfin. It's not better than plex. It's definitely worse, but it's open, and that's how I am sure it will work forever.
- input_sh 5y ago
  > but it's open, and that's how I am sure it will work forever. Why are you so sure about it? IIRC Emby was also open sourced before it wasn't, at which point it was forked into Jellyfin. Based on that alone, I wouldn't be too surprised if Jellyfin pulls the same thing down the road, forcing you to move to yet another fork down the line.
  - anaganisk 5y ago
    Well you just described most of the hipster open source projects these days. I’ve been burned by multiple projects. At the beginning they’re all we love open source, take all the bug fixes and feature enhancements. And sell their product to some corporate, or start a subscription as a service and close source it.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    It's a community project started after Emby became closed source. They have multiple contributors who don't assign copyright. They legally can't become closed source even if someone wanted to. No one owns the whole code.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      Who’s going to sue someone taking it closed source?
      - addingnumbers 5y ago
antihero 5y ago
Are there any ways to get something like XBMC running directly on an LG Smart TV? Currently I am finding that having MP4 files on a pen drive is actually far less hassle. However, the TV's lack of support for MKV files is frustrating - trying to simply rewrap them as MP4 using FFMpeg doesn't seem to work for some reason.
- lardo 5y ago
  https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos looks promising
azinman2 5y ago
Do these systems largely expect you to have a big NAS with pirated media? The evolution of the media landscape seems to be away from things like this except for people digitizing their blue ray / dvd collections, but it’s otherwise difficult to comprehend why one wouldn’t want a Netflix subscription instead.
- RealStickman_ 5y ago
  By putting my media on my own server I can be certain it won't just disappear for no reason or be restricted to certain geographical areas only. Sure, having everything on local media also works, but a streaming server is definitely more convenient.
jonathantf2 5y ago
I'm a big Emby user with a large library - trying Jellyfin and it just doesn't compare, feels like a cheap knock off. It crashes quite often requiring a reboot of the service, the client apps hang a lot and the plugin support isn't the same.
- hansihe 5y ago
  Jellyfin user with a relatively large library here. I am not having any crashing or hanging issues, did you use the Docker image when you tried it? Can't really speak about the plugin support since I haven't used Emby.
  - jonathantf2 5y ago
    Haven't tried Docker, ran it on both Windows and Linux, on the same machines that Emby ran on. I tried it for a while but it was too unstable and I kinda gave up - switched back to Emby.
matips 5y ago
I tried Jellyfin as Plex alternative, but Android App is bugged or under development: not all codecs are supported, HDR is not implemented.
Xen0byte 5y ago
I've just given this a try, and it's a fantastic bit of software. I'll definitely be switching over to it.

317 points by marcodiego 5y ago

This is very nice, but still misses photos organiser. I wish I could have a photo viewer where I could specify a location, and it would show me all photos in folder view, and timeline of all photos in all folders and subfolders...

mceachen 5y ago
I'll be adding reverse geocoding in a version soon [1], but you can already browse by filesystem and timeline (and by camera, lens, file type, keyword, and Google Takeout metadata): https://photostructure.com/faq/why-photostructure/ https://photostructure.com/faq/why-photostructure/ (I'm the founder and solo author) [1] https://forum.photostructure.com/t/support-reverse-geocoding-to-automatically-tag-assets-with-location-names/231 https://forum.photostructure.com/t/support-reverse-geocoding...

reddog 5y ago

I have moved from Plex to Emby and finally to Jellyfin to run the Raspberry Pi media server in my camping van. The problem with Plex and Emby (other than their business model of wanting to collect a monthly fee for allowing you to watch your own media) was that they required the server to phone home before they would work. This isn't possible if you are camping and don't have a cell/wifi signal. And Jellyfin has worked well. The server and clients aren't as slick as Plex but they work just fine and give me a lot more flexiblity in moving media from my home server to the van since the way they store the media metainfo is the same on the Mac OS and the RPi OS.

napkin 5y ago
If you're looking for a slick cross-platform Jellyfin client in the Apple ecosphere, try Infuse. It's quite polished, and even available for tvOS- my personal motivation for using it.
- Cyph0n 5y ago
  +1, Infuse is a great Jellyfin client (among other things).
- sneak 5y ago
  Note also that Infuse is spyware, per its privacy label on the App Store. You pay for the privilege of having it upload your usage data to a remote server against your consent.
calvano915 5y ago
Plex charges a one time lifetime fee. Not monthly.
- onedr0p 5y ago
  There's both actually.

jszymborski 5y ago

I've been a Plex-to-Jellyfin convert for a long while now, and I've nothing bad to say. I switched because Plex kept pushing their streaming services, and the fuzzy feeling I get from running FOSS. Jellyfin used to run on my desktop which has a beefy CPU/GPU, but runs fine on my puny Synology NAS.

MikusR 5y ago
Seeing how Jellyfin runs on raspberry pi 4 your Synology must be very fast with lots of ram.
- y4mi 5y ago
  It might just have hardware support for relevant codecs. They often do, which gives them a massive advantage when playing media files.
  - MikusR 5y ago
    It only hosts the files.
    - fragmede 5y ago
      Plex, its costs-money competition, transcodes files for playback (using `ffmpeg` or `libav` iirc). Is `jellyfin` less capable in this department then or something else?
      - boolemancer 5y ago
        Jellyfin does also support transcoding, also using ffmpeg.
    - wolrah 5y ago
      Hosting files takes almost no CPU power. If you're running in to trouble on anything you're transcoding, which means converting the files from the format they're in on disk to something else for streaming (usually to reduce the bitrate for internet transmission or because the player doesn't support the native format). If you aren't streaming over the internet, disable transcoding and you're more or less only limited by bandwidth.

clutch89 5y ago

I love Jellyfin, but its inability to Chromecast from iOS is a dealbreaker. I think they’re working on a whole new iOS app though that has a working chromecast button - https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin https://github.com/jellyfin/Swiftfin

jacobmischka 5y ago
Sadly, Chromecast is essentially broken on Android too and has been for about a year. Stable version of the Chromecast plugin in the app is ancient and the nightly version doesn't work with stable server.

cookiecaper 5y ago

Jellyfin doesn't run on FreeBSD because .NET doesn't run on FreeBSD. This is sad.

ggm 5y ago
I thought it ran under linuxulation
- bluGill 5y ago
  Sort of. When you dig in you discover it that support isn't that great. There are efforts by the community, but Microsoft is doing nothing to help - in particular they regularly break things with each release, and once they do a stable release the previous release is no longer supported. There are some great efforts, the other comment linked one, but in the end forums are full of users asking for help with something not working and no getting any response. Not a situation that makes me willing to try at this time.
  - ggm 5y ago
    You made me go read. Its a shit-show of the complex packaging and build assumptions at source, the horrendous tooling, and the difficulty negotiating the changes. .NEt is up to 5 or 6 and the email/forum threads seem to be talking about 2.x and 3. I wish things weren't this complex. But then I remember how much I hate autoconf/configure/libtool, and think "hmm maybe it wasn't so bad after all" Re-implement .NET in RUST?
    - Goz3rr 5y ago
      FWIW .NET Core 2.1 and 3.1 are LTS versions, support for 2.1 ended last month and for 3.1 in December 2022. .NET 4 is not relevant in this context because of versioning changes over the years and can be ignored. .NET 6 will be the next LTS version, to be released later this year.
crobibero 5y ago
Here is a community member building Jellyfin for FreeBSD https://github.com/Thefrank/jellyfin-server-freebsd https://github.com/Thefrank/jellyfin-server-freebsd

comice 5y ago

I only use Plex because they have a native LG webos app. jellyfin has one too and are currently in the process of getting into the official LG app store, awesome! it was rejected a couple of times for some bugs the LG reviewers found, all of which are fixable and being worked on. looks pretty much a done deal.

zain 5y ago
Where do you keep track of the LG app status? I’d love to track the progress too
- dtparr 5y ago
  The project is here: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos Unfortunately, it's been pretty quiet the last few months after seemingly getting close to a retry in the LG store.
  - crobibero 5y ago
    Most of the webOS development happens in the web repo, you can see some items with webOS tag. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/labels/p%3A%20webos https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/labels/p%3A%20webos

whoisburbansky 5y ago

Tangential note about Plex; if you're like me and are disappointed by the default buffering behavior in Plex basically making it near-impossible to seek between already-buffered positions easily, I've been using https://github.com/iwalton3/plex-mpv-shim https://github.com/iwalton3/plex-mpv-shim to cast Plex from my phone to mpv on my linux media box with great success.

ggm 5y ago
I'm also using this. Odd quirks, such as the device appearing twice as a fling/cast target, and apparent random net events which make the web client on OSX pop over the "do you want to continue here" pane. (I posted to the plex forums about this btw) the shim works fine. And, there appears to be a jellyfin shim in the same model.
stavros 5y ago
This is too excellent, thank you. Is there any way to do this without involving the phone? I watch Plex on my computer but I'd love to use MPV as a frontend for it, as Plex can't seek to save its life.
- wingworks 5y ago
  How are you using Plex? Try access the UI via a different browser, or via the dedicated Plex app. Try a few different ones. Personally I use Safari and find I can scroll through my library much faster then the App, or in Chrome. I can also seek pretty quick, even 4k remux files. This is on an all gigabit network. (though client WiFi AC works great too). But transcoding and trying to seek... isn't the best. At least for my macmini plex server.
- whoisburbansky 5y ago
  I believe the shim is basically set up like a Chromecast receiver, so you can use anything that will cast to it. It should be possible to do that from the browser as well (hit the Cast icon in the upper right and the shim receiver should pop up).

sergiotapia 5y ago

I've used Plex, currently on Emby - why should I switch to Jellyfin, they seem identical? Almost a fork really. Appreciate the info, this is a real question and I can make the switch easily enough :)

cmeacham98 5y ago
Jellyfin is an OSS fork of Emby, which went proprietary and stopped distributing source code.
bluGill 5y ago
Jellyfin is an Emby fork as the other said. However they are diverging over time, each some some features that the other doesn't, or things that work better in one than the other. Both are moving targets.
Mashimo 5y ago
Jellyfin forked from Emby about 2 years ago and are still rewriting the spaghetti code from emby. You can use hardware decoding for free on jellyfin. It's open source. Emby is now closed source.

hbcondo714 5y ago

One feature I would like to see catch on is having media center software installable on a router. Plex does this[1] which means you can use the USB drive on a router to store and stream your media files without a NAS / media server. Simple setup, I would like to see routers as clients[2] for Jellyfin. [1] https://support.plex.tv/articles/230934267-netgear-nighthawk-x10-router/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/230934267-netgear-nighthawk... [2] https://jellyfin.org/clients/ https://jellyfin.org/clients/

onedr0p 5y ago
VyOS can run containers with podman, maybe Jellyfin or Plex would work on that. Honestly I think the job of a router should not include running a those kinds of apps.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Too right! I want my router rock-solid. I won't run software on it that isn't mission-critical router software.
jeroenhd 5y ago
I don't see why it wouldn't work if you can get ssh access to your router, assuming you grab an ARM build with the right dependencies. Most consumer routers are absolutely terrible though, so I'd expect such a device to run out of resources very quickly, particularly while transcoding.

jchw 5y ago

I switched off of Emby to Jellyfin a fairly long time ago. It’s pretty good. I’ve had some annoying issues upgrading my instance over time, but otherwise it generally works. The ecosystem is also a bit young, but I have no huge complaint about the apps. Finamp is pretty nice for example; it’s a Jellyfin client optimized for music playback.

querez 5y ago

In contrast to most people in this thread, I don't find Jellyfin to be an all-around great experience. Maybe because I run the JF client on a Google Chromecast, and the "Jellyfin for Android TV" app is very unstable. I get roughly one crash a day, mostly when restarting a movie-watching. The UI is okay, but there are a lot of small annoyances (why is there no "restart from beginning" button? Why can't I use the "wheel/cursor thing" on my remote to go forward/back?, why does it so often fail to automatically recognize/parse filenames, or download cover art? Why can't a folder contain both movies and tv series?).... All in all, it's mediocre at best, but I'm still glad it exists: despite everything, I still use it over other alternatives, because it's open source and works well enough. I can live with having to restart the client every now and then.

klahaha 5y ago
> Why can't a folder contain both movies and tv series? i don't understand this too... i just want to respect folder not have simple metadata control all also subtitle SRT upload is broken (maybe fixed in source now) and jellyfin want to own media plays ok with nextcloud but when i have permissions broken, after i fix chown jellyfin was 100% broken delete/add library didn't work (scan never started) had to entirely delete jellyfin db to work it again jellyfin is good software, better to alternative, but needs work for improve
parineum 5y ago
I would recommend installing Kodi on your chromecast and using the jellyfin addon[1] into Kodi instead. The app is garbage and Kodi is awesome. (Don't use the Jellyfin Connect addon, it's different and I wouldn't recommend it) [1]https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi
- yownie 5y ago
  I'll check this out, thanks!
- 3np 5y ago
  What makes you not recommend Jellyfin Connect? I've been on Connect ~1y now and I found it a smoother and hassle-free experience compared to Jellyfin Kodi (which I was on for ~1y prior to switching). JC has less bells and whistles with library integration and metadata but I'm not missing anything, really.

ajnin 5y ago

I've setup jellyfin on my media server but I barely use it because the web player bugs make it unusable for me. I think most issues are due to the fact my hardware is underpowered for the task, and the player gets confused when the server replies come slow and not in the same order as they were requested. In practice subtitles go out of sync regularly, I get "codec not supported by browser" messages with the actual video playing fine behind it when seeking and frequently enough to make watching videos too annoying to bother. There are also other annoyances like the player forgetting my subtitle selection when jumping to the next video of the same season of a show. There's also no quality setting that is just "stream the source file directly". It seems to always want to transcode when embedding subtitles, which I guess is done by ffmpeg on the server but is really the player's job. I know they're working on a new player, though it's not included in jellyfin yet.

jeroenhd 5y ago
In my experience, the "codec not supported by browser" error generally means that transcoding either failed or stalled. I get the error message when ffmpeg dies in the middle of a transcode myself. The transcoder still has the file cached on disk as far as it has transcoded it, but Jellyfin notices that the process has died and throws errors. I don't think a new player will fix that issue, it's usually a resource problem on the server side. There is a "stream the source directly" option, it's the default even, but only when it's possible to do so (i.e. the media is in a streaming container and not AVI or DivX). You can copy the download URL and paste it into your favorite native player if you want to force it, but that will probably lead to a full file download if the web player doesn't stream the file already. The only way I can think of to avoid this issue is to pre-transcode the media on your NAS to a streamable format. As for the subtitles, I'm a little annoyed as well that the setting doesn't always stick (it works sometimes, which is even worse). I've never had desync issues though, that's probably more of an issue with the transcode lagging and confusing the player or just mismatched subtitle files.
klahaha 5y ago
> subtitles go out of sync regularly can be problem with subtitle source? > "codec not supported by browser" probable problem with browser not jellyfin? > There are also other annoyances like the player forgetting my subtitle selection when jumping to the next video of the same season of a show. +1 > There's also no quality setting that is just "stream the source file directly". It seems to always want to transcode when embedding subtitles, which I guess is done by ffmpeg on the server but is really the player's job. Direct source file is download button it can play in vlc, or can use FTP. why embed subtitles? here i think jellyfin use external track for subtitle (default parametres)

newbie789 5y ago

Does anyone have any experience with their Firestick app? I’m seeing some complaints about Chromecast devices but they’re pretty different.

steviedotboston 5y ago

Does anyone know if Jellyfin lets you share an OTA TV connection with friends/family?

m0ngr31 5y ago
It does
- steviedotboston 5y ago
  So in theory someone could use it to build their own mini Locast?
  - m0ngr31 5y ago
    I don't see why not
NortySpock 5y ago
I believe it does allow OTA, though when I tried to, Jellyfin seemed to try to transcode the video regardless of what "please don't transcode" settings I had on video transcoding. (And the RPi4 couldn't keep up with transcoding video via software) Still working on getting that sorted out but in the meantime I've got VLC that I can point at my HDHomerun.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Jellyfin will transcode the moment it determines the source isn't directly streamable. Broken headers, weird containers or general MP4 weirdness can fail the test and make it transcode, but usually direct streaming is the default. If that happens to me, I just copy the download URL from the Jellyfin client and paste it into VLC. That method causes major network traffic (so it doesn't work great on mobile networks on the move) but it'll work fine from home. Transcodes without hardware acceleration are pretty slow and the transcodes themselves aren't cached which can be a major pain, but with some effort I've managed to get hardware encoding and decoding working through Intel Quicksync (on an entirely separate device, even, through rffmpeg.py!) and things seem to be working great. The isolation Docker provides will make enabling hardware support a pain if you're using that, but if you're running the native package then I'd definitely recommend trying to get hardware acceleration support working.

firefwing24 5y ago

Jellyfin is awesome, but there's a few caveats for me. - Android TV app is quite unstable. Even if you make it do direct streaming, it's not a flawless playback - Sometimes hangs when clicking next episode. I also kind of wish the login experience was a bit better. - Android App is decent, but for music it's unusable. I'm still using plex + plexamp because that experience is just so much better for me. But, I don't regret moving my videos to JF. Plex Android app had terrible QA/QC where it would have regressions consistently every month. A bug where rewinding 30 seconds would push you forward instead of backwards would return at least 1 update every 2 months and that was frustrating.

tw04 5y ago
Appreciate the info. I tried it with a shield a while back and the experience was awful. Haven't tried again recently and it sounds like it's not worth the effort. I have endless issues from a business and go-to-market perspective with Plex, but it's tough to switch when the server and video playback have remained mostly bulletproof the last 18 months.
wingworks 5y ago
Yeah, when I started out on Plex, I tried the other services (Jellyfin and Kodi and this other dedi music one), and while they all did what was advertised more or less, Plex was by far the more polished solution with the least bugs for my setup. I also really like the Plex UI, feels well thought out and easy to navigate. Having said that, I keep an open mind, and every few years check out Jellyfin/Kodi etc.
- katbyte 5y ago
  Have you given Emby a try? I find it’s basically the same as plex without some of the headaches
tomnipotent 5y ago
It will also completely delete any local assets if you're using NFS and a mount disappears during a scan. This has happened to me a few times, very frustrating.

f0e4c2f7 5y ago

Big fan of Jellyfin. I see a lot of comments mentioning problems with the client. I use it on an Amazon FireTV (you can download jellyfin directly from Amazon's app store, no side loading needed). It seems to work well on that platform (at least for me).

bbertelsen 5y ago

Jellyfin + tailscale. Easy mode.

wingworks 5y ago
tailscale! I love it! So flexible.

marcodiego 5y ago

I simply wanted a personal netflix for the local network. Best fit I could find.

m0ngr31 5y ago

I love Jellyfin. The clients aren't super mature, but the addon for Kodi works great for me so that's what I use. The only thing I missed about Plex was having Plexamp, but now there is Finamp and Gelli for Android and I wrote one called Jellyamp for desktop and now all my media needs are covered

shimonabi 5y ago

It's not mature enough. The media server has a misconfigured path to the web server on Ubuntu, so it won't start after installation. I created a symbolic link to the web server folder. The Android client on my Xiaomi Mibox crashes after it comes to the end of every video.

pixxel 5y ago

Heavy user here for 2 years (web/iOS/Roku). Works really well, never crashes. <3

lbqjfw 5y ago

I set up a Mac mini as my HTPC about a year ago, and settled on Jellyfin to manage my media. Overall it's been great, and I'm really happy that Jellyfin exists. I use Kodi for the TV interface, with the Jellyfin for Kodi add-on to link the two [1]. I looked into Plex, but was turned off by how commercial it was and how hard they tried to push their paid services. The big advantage to Jellyfin is that I can start watching a show on my TV, and pick up exactly where I left off on any of my devices (I use the Jellyfin iPhone and iPad apps, as well as the web interface). I can also access my music library through Jellyfin, and at the recommendation of a comment on this post I just downloaded finamp, which seems like a great music player [2]. The initial setup took a bit of work, and there are definitely some quirks, but all-in-all it's worked for me really well. I would wholeheartedly recommend both Jellyfin and Kodi for anyone interested in a HTPC/home streaming setup. [1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi [2] https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp

m0zg 5y ago

Trivially deployed using Docker compose as well. I've been using this for quite some time. iPad app works great too.

japanuspus 5y ago

For serving local music, the free and open source "Logitech Media Server"[0] is a great solution -- main weakness is the lack of a central organization promoting it. In addition to working smoothly with dedicated ("squeeze") clients which can be Logitech-brand or DIY[1, 2], it has a massive plugin catalog that allows e.g. - airPlay integration: stream to your squeeze-clients via airPlay, stream to your airPlay clients from squeezebox. - chromeCast integration: stream to chromeCast devices from squeezeBox. - upNp integration: stream to upNp clients. The system was originally developed by "SqueezeBox" who also made (awesome) physical devices. SqueezeBox was acquired by Logitech many years ago. Logitech put out one or two devices before giving up, but they are actually playing really nice by continuing to support development on the server (see [0]). [0]: https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver [1]: https://github.com/ralph-irving/squeezelite https://github.com/ralph-irving/squeezelite [2]: https://www.picoreplayer.org/ https://www.picoreplayer.org/

klahaha 5y ago

anyone know good solution for share media library with people in different language? we have 3 principal languages here in house (russian english french) not all people is good with audio/subtitle in different lang i know jellyfin has subtitles but i dont see filter by audio/sub language in list, and metadata is one lang only no translate for synopsis/poster

Mashimo 5y ago
You could put the movie files in different folders. And thus create different libraries inside jellyfin.
- klahaha 5y ago
  you mean symlink? or i need 3 times big HDD for 3 language?
  - Mashimo 5y ago
    Symlink could work, but I thought just move the file itself. If the movie is in Russian, move it to the "russian movie" folder. Problem is if a movie has multiple languages. A metadata filter would be better. Looks like there is a feature request: https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/39/filter-videos-by-audio-stream-language https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/39/filter-videos-by-audi...
    - klahaha 5y ago
      > Problem is if a movie has multiple languages. Yes thats my problem multiple audio or multiple subtitles. thanks for link

kls0e 5y ago

jellyfin on rpi4 with official docker image runs great. just hw encoding acceleration i was not able to set up smoothly.

SCLeo 5y ago

Although I cannot complain too much since it is open source, I have to say, my experience with Jellyfin is very painful. After fiddling with it for more than 10 hours, I still cannot get .ass subtitles to work on my Android Jellyfin client. :( (My NAS isn't strong enough to burn subtitles in real time. Even it does, I just cannot get the fonts to work. All CJK characters are displayed as squares.)

katbyte 5y ago
I still use Emby, I’d like to use a free solution like jelly but it’s just not there
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  That's interesting. Jellyfin forked from Emby when the developers went closed source, so I'd be interested to learn what the Emby side has fixed that Jellyfin still lacks. I switched from Emby to Jellyfin and I found them to be generally equally stable.

bobuk 5y ago

I've read the whole thread and am absolutely surprised. Why is nobody telling about plex's ditching of their plugin system? Have invested a lot of time in developing plex's plugin for youtube, twitch, and my favorite streaming services, paid a lifetime fee to plex. And now the whole plugins system is disabled. That's the only reason why I've switched to Jellyfin. It's not better than plex. It's definitely worse, but it's open, and that's how I am sure it will work forever.

input_sh 5y ago
> but it's open, and that's how I am sure it will work forever. Why are you so sure about it? IIRC Emby was also open sourced before it wasn't, at which point it was forked into Jellyfin. Based on that alone, I wouldn't be too surprised if Jellyfin pulls the same thing down the road, forcing you to move to yet another fork down the line.
- anaganisk 5y ago
  Well you just described most of the hipster open source projects these days. I’ve been burned by multiple projects. At the beginning they’re all we love open source, take all the bug fixes and feature enhancements. And sell their product to some corporate, or start a subscription as a service and close source it.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  It's a community project started after Emby became closed source. They have multiple contributors who don't assign copyright. They legally can't become closed source even if someone wanted to. No one owns the whole code.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Who’s going to sue someone taking it closed source?
    - addingnumbers 5y ago

antihero 5y ago

Are there any ways to get something like XBMC running directly on an LG Smart TV? Currently I am finding that having MP4 files on a pen drive is actually far less hassle. However, the TV's lack of support for MKV files is frustrating - trying to simply rewrap them as MP4 using FFMpeg doesn't seem to work for some reason.

lardo 5y ago
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-webos looks promising

azinman2 5y ago

Do these systems largely expect you to have a big NAS with pirated media? The evolution of the media landscape seems to be away from things like this except for people digitizing their blue ray / dvd collections, but it’s otherwise difficult to comprehend why one wouldn’t want a Netflix subscription instead.

RealStickman_ 5y ago
By putting my media on my own server I can be certain it won't just disappear for no reason or be restricted to certain geographical areas only. Sure, having everything on local media also works, but a streaming server is definitely more convenient.

jonathantf2 5y ago

I'm a big Emby user with a large library - trying Jellyfin and it just doesn't compare, feels like a cheap knock off. It crashes quite often requiring a reboot of the service, the client apps hang a lot and the plugin support isn't the same.

hansihe 5y ago
Jellyfin user with a relatively large library here. I am not having any crashing or hanging issues, did you use the Docker image when you tried it? Can't really speak about the plugin support since I haven't used Emby.
- jonathantf2 5y ago
  Haven't tried Docker, ran it on both Windows and Linux, on the same machines that Emby ran on. I tried it for a while but it was too unstable and I kinda gave up - switched back to Emby.

matips 5y ago

I tried Jellyfin as Plex alternative, but Android App is bugged or under development: not all codecs are supported, HDR is not implemented.

Xen0byte 5y ago

I've just given this a try, and it's a fantastic bit of software. I'll definitely be switching over to it.