5 ms·

I switched to Jellyfin from Plex cause of it being open source and having AMD/VA-API transcoding support I’ve enjoyed it a but more cause I feel like I can do

I switched to Jellyfin from Plex cause of it being open source and having AMD/VA-API transcoding support I’ve enjoyed it a but more cause I feel like I can do more on the server end. I recently started to use Infuse on my Apple TV for it cause turns out that Swiftfin, still in development, doesn’t have a license for Dolby Audio formats. But the development cycle for Jellyfin and the clients looks healthy, unlike Plex which seems to have stagnated. The next gen Jellyfin Web UI (Jellyfin Vue) is looking good too Jellyfin is also pretty forgiving about my file names but I am meticulous at making sure the structure and filenames are correct before dumping anything new to the library to the point where I have a complex script to process movie and tv show filenames and folders. You can also override the metadata with the Identify function on the media page context menu.

manmal 3y ago
Plex might have been stagnating, but it works kinda flawlessly for me. I run it in Docker at home and through a reverse proxy on a cheap VPS (don’t want to expose any ports at home) and even that works really well - the iOS app automagically switches between remote and local networks. Hardware transcoding (Intel) just works, even in Docker. Media scanning is very snappy. User management and parental controls look powerful enough, at least after having bought Plex Pass.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > Plex might have been stagnating, It's not stagnating, so much as they have decided that their initial market doesn't interest them. They were writing software for end users that let end users set up their own person Netflix. But maybe the revenue was unexciting or just insufficient, and now they want to be their own streaming service. Their streaming service sucks (they're probably at least two orders of magnitude too small to be able to afford to do it right, maybe even 3 or 4), and contaminates the searches on my server with their junk. Also, it might be true that they're just afraid of the liability of doubling down on their original market. Contributory infringement and all that. This is almost certainly the reason they haven't expanded to include media like ebooks and audio books and karaoke. I mean they have the perfect paradigm for all of these things... the same software that keeps track of where I am in a season of shows, or halfway through a movie could definitely keep track of where I am in a book, if they wanted to. This isn't entirely speculation on my part... at some point someone had asked them about preroll trailers for new seasons (Archer might be the most fun for these), but they said that they wouldn't add the feature because there was no legitimate source for those videos (even though just ripping them with youtube-dl is dead simple).
  - manmal 3y ago
    Insightful points, thank you. I only don’t know about the infringement part - Hollywood seems to be the most litigative group, and Plex has them fully covered.
  - thrashh 3y ago
    I paid Plex for a lifetime pass a long time ago and unless something changes, I will likely never pay them again and somehow I expect more features. So it’s not surprising they’re looking at other sources of revenue if they expect to continue paying for developers, hosting and the entire company. I also don’t see how ripping with youtube-dl is relevant. They need a legal source from somebody, maybe with a SLA, that they can sign a contract with, not set up some hack.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      > They need a legal source from somebody, maybe with a SLA, that they can sign a contract with, not set up some hack. I'm not asking them to provide the video files. I'm asking for the feature. And if someone doesn't understand that's what I'm asking for, then I have to conclude that what they think Plex is supposed to be is very different from what I think it's supposed to be. That'd make me wrong, except that 10 years ago everyone who knew about Plex agreed with me. Including the original developers.
      - LeFantome 3y ago
        I think it is fine for Open Source software to behave as you describe. It is much more difficult for a commercial service. Any kind is service would be borderline but charging money for it pushes it over the edge in my view. At the very least, I think you would need two entities where one creates the software and other one hosts it. That way “the service” is hosting the software and not the specific features that the software provides. Plex mixes both and so downloading the video files becomes part of the commercial service they are offering. Providing commercial access to somebody else’s copyright sounds illegal to me.
  - Arn_Thor 3y ago
- epcoa 3y ago
  > I run it in Docker at home and through a reverse proxy on a cheap VPS (don’t want to expose any ports at home) What is the benefit of running the reverse proxy vs just opening the port? It would seem whatever attacks viable on the directly opened port could just as well be carried out on the proxy port.
  - manmal 3y ago
    If the attack is an application layer (Plex) exploit, then yes, I'll still have a problem. But, having a reverse proxy which handles TLS handshakes does provide extra security against a lot of attacks. I trust nginx to be better hardened than the Plex server. Also, all traffic is tunneled through wireguard and my home IP has no ports open. Since I'm behind CGNAT, my home is really hard to DDoS now. If I'm ever attacked, I'll just turn off the VPS. Ultimately, I had the choice between paying €2/month for a fixed IPv4 at my ISP, or spend a little more (€5) on a Hetzner VPS that would also give me space for hosting some websites with a great uplink. So I went with the latter. I will likely add CrowdSec soon which will give additional protection. To my knowledge, it's not available for Plex without a reverse proxy. I've also contemplated using Cloudflare Zero Trust (Cloudflare Access) instead, and might yet switch to it - I just refrained from it for now because I read on Reddit that running Plex through that might be a ToS violation (streaming). I've to check the ToS and see if that's true. Also, I run a Minecraft server for my kids and their friends, which isn't compatible with Cloudflare ZT, so - I need the reverse proxy anyway.
beeb 3y ago
Unfortunately I had a pretty bad experience with jellyfin when trying to switch from plex. Plex works for me in almost all scenarios, mobile, desktop, chromecast, what have you. And I can play multiple feeds simultaneously from my cheap Nuc server. With Jellyfin I had trouble to get video even playing without stuttering/buffering on my phone when on the same network, let alone on mobile internet. I'll probably give it another go in a few months to see how they evolved.
- newsclues 3y ago
  Sounds like a setup issue, which can be tricky on Jellyfin to get transcoding properly working.
  - zeekaran 3y ago
    Classic open source alternative feeling. I hope the near future of open source software is more stable and feels identical or better than the closed source options.
- FractalParadigm 3y ago
  That about lines up with my Jellyfin experience ~18 months ago, although I was coming from (and switched back to) Emby at the time, which Jellyfin was forked from (still evident by all the Emby/MediaBrowser references in folder and file names). Which, IMO, was really interesting, because the codebases were very close to identical for some time yet Emby was orders of magnitude more reliable. I have more and more family accessing my server each month to the point I've almost run out of 'devices' allowed by an Emby 'license,' making Jellyfin a more attractive offering going forward... assuming they've fixed the problems they had at the start.
- growingentropy 3y ago
  Hmmm...I might suggest looking into the transcoding settings and changing some things next time you take a look. Because I run Plex alongside Jellyfin (the wife prefers Plex's UI once I tweak it), and it typically runs just as efficiently if not a bit more.
- 3y ago
Musky 3y ago
> I am meticulous at making sure the structure and filenames are correct before dumping anything new to the library to the point where I have a complex script to process movie and tv show filenames and folders. I'm curious to know why you chose to write a custom (and complex) script yourself instead of using something like Sonarr/Radarr for this task? Does your script do something that the *arr apps are not capable off or is there another reason?
- growingentropy 3y ago
  I hand-change every file name. Please tell me I'm an idiot and show me a better way. Lol it won't save me the hundreds of movies I've put in "Title (year).type" format, but it will save some future work.
  - ThatMedicIsASpy 3y ago
    something like tinymediamanager?
    - growingentropy 3y ago
      I'll look into it as well. Thank you.
  - Musky 3y ago
    The *arr suite of apps is made to automate the whole process of building up your media library. You have Prowlarr for managing your download sites and clients, Sonarr/Radarr for TV shows/movies, Lidarr for music, Readarr for books, etc. These apps can be self hosted and are fully open source. The basic workflow is that you add a movie/show, it automatically searches all of your download sites for the title, chooses the best download based on your filter criteria (resolution, size, etc.), sends it to your download client and then places the movie/show into your library based on the folder/file naming pattern you specified previously. You can choose to automate as much of the process as you want or do most of it manually. E.g. grabbing new episodes as soon as they air vs supplying your own files (if you rip your media yourself for example) and only letting the program do the part of renaming and moving your files.
29083011397778 3y ago
> Plex which seems to have stagnated Besides a pointless re-arranging of the UI, which we all hate, what should they be doing? I'll grant you "Bugs to be quashed", but fewer features to fill, fewer devs on the payroll, and less selling out to make payroll sounds perfect to me.
crispyambulance 3y ago
> ...am meticulous at making sure the structure and filenames are correct before dumping anything new to the library to the point where I have a complex script to... I am the exact opposite, partly because I feel like it SHOULD BE the responsibility of the media library to maintain associations between the media files and their metadata, regardless of the filename. It seems crazy to me that Plex and other media libraries effectively require you to follow persnickety file-naming conventions. I am very much in the minority of folks who think that you should just be able to point these media servers to a file, tell it what that file is, and then have it maintain associations so you can query your media in arbitrary ways to make a playlist or whatever-- no filenames changes needed.
- ubercow13 3y ago
  I think you can do that, there is an informal standard for xml files which can live alongside the media with metadata info. I'm not sure if Jellyfin can create them directly but it can read them. See for example tinymediamanager https://www.tinymediamanager.org/ https://www.tinymediamanager.org/
  - crispyambulance 3y ago
    Tinymediamanager looks really cool. Much nicer than filebot!
aorth 3y ago
> am meticulous at making sure the structure and filenames are correct before dumping anything new to the library Me too! General rules of thumb: as long as your content matches the name on https://www.themoviedb.org/ https://www.themoviedb.org/ Jellyfin will recognize it and have excellent metadata, posters, etc. Even if you change the filenames later you can re-scan the library and it will be updated to reflect the new names. Also see the Jellyfin documentation about media naming for TV series https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows/ https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows/ and movies https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/movies/ https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/movies/.

manmal 3y ago

Plex might have been stagnating, but it works kinda flawlessly for me. I run it in Docker at home and through a reverse proxy on a cheap VPS (don’t want to expose any ports at home) and even that works really well - the iOS app automagically switches between remote and local networks. Hardware transcoding (Intel) just works, even in Docker. Media scanning is very snappy. User management and parental controls look powerful enough, at least after having bought Plex Pass.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> Plex might have been stagnating, It's not stagnating, so much as they have decided that their initial market doesn't interest them. They were writing software for end users that let end users set up their own person Netflix. But maybe the revenue was unexciting or just insufficient, and now they want to be their own streaming service. Their streaming service sucks (they're probably at least two orders of magnitude too small to be able to afford to do it right, maybe even 3 or 4), and contaminates the searches on my server with their junk. Also, it might be true that they're just afraid of the liability of doubling down on their original market. Contributory infringement and all that. This is almost certainly the reason they haven't expanded to include media like ebooks and audio books and karaoke. I mean they have the perfect paradigm for all of these things... the same software that keeps track of where I am in a season of shows, or halfway through a movie could definitely keep track of where I am in a book, if they wanted to. This isn't entirely speculation on my part... at some point someone had asked them about preroll trailers for new seasons (Archer might be the most fun for these), but they said that they wouldn't add the feature because there was no legitimate source for those videos (even though just ripping them with youtube-dl is dead simple).
- manmal 3y ago
  Insightful points, thank you. I only don’t know about the infringement part - Hollywood seems to be the most litigative group, and Plex has them fully covered.
- thrashh 3y ago
  I paid Plex for a lifetime pass a long time ago and unless something changes, I will likely never pay them again and somehow I expect more features. So it’s not surprising they’re looking at other sources of revenue if they expect to continue paying for developers, hosting and the entire company. I also don’t see how ripping with youtube-dl is relevant. They need a legal source from somebody, maybe with a SLA, that they can sign a contract with, not set up some hack.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > They need a legal source from somebody, maybe with a SLA, that they can sign a contract with, not set up some hack. I'm not asking them to provide the video files. I'm asking for the feature. And if someone doesn't understand that's what I'm asking for, then I have to conclude that what they think Plex is supposed to be is very different from what I think it's supposed to be. That'd make me wrong, except that 10 years ago everyone who knew about Plex agreed with me. Including the original developers.
    - LeFantome 3y ago
      I think it is fine for Open Source software to behave as you describe. It is much more difficult for a commercial service. Any kind is service would be borderline but charging money for it pushes it over the edge in my view. At the very least, I think you would need two entities where one creates the software and other one hosts it. That way “the service” is hosting the software and not the specific features that the software provides. Plex mixes both and so downloading the video files becomes part of the commercial service they are offering. Providing commercial access to somebody else’s copyright sounds illegal to me.
- Arn_Thor 3y ago
epcoa 3y ago
> I run it in Docker at home and through a reverse proxy on a cheap VPS (don’t want to expose any ports at home) What is the benefit of running the reverse proxy vs just opening the port? It would seem whatever attacks viable on the directly opened port could just as well be carried out on the proxy port.
- manmal 3y ago
  If the attack is an application layer (Plex) exploit, then yes, I'll still have a problem. But, having a reverse proxy which handles TLS handshakes does provide extra security against a lot of attacks. I trust nginx to be better hardened than the Plex server. Also, all traffic is tunneled through wireguard and my home IP has no ports open. Since I'm behind CGNAT, my home is really hard to DDoS now. If I'm ever attacked, I'll just turn off the VPS. Ultimately, I had the choice between paying €2/month for a fixed IPv4 at my ISP, or spend a little more (€5) on a Hetzner VPS that would also give me space for hosting some websites with a great uplink. So I went with the latter. I will likely add CrowdSec soon which will give additional protection. To my knowledge, it's not available for Plex without a reverse proxy. I've also contemplated using Cloudflare Zero Trust (Cloudflare Access) instead, and might yet switch to it - I just refrained from it for now because I read on Reddit that running Plex through that might be a ToS violation (streaming). I've to check the ToS and see if that's true. Also, I run a Minecraft server for my kids and their friends, which isn't compatible with Cloudflare ZT, so - I need the reverse proxy anyway.

beeb 3y ago

Unfortunately I had a pretty bad experience with jellyfin when trying to switch from plex. Plex works for me in almost all scenarios, mobile, desktop, chromecast, what have you. And I can play multiple feeds simultaneously from my cheap Nuc server. With Jellyfin I had trouble to get video even playing without stuttering/buffering on my phone when on the same network, let alone on mobile internet. I'll probably give it another go in a few months to see how they evolved.

newsclues 3y ago
Sounds like a setup issue, which can be tricky on Jellyfin to get transcoding properly working.
- zeekaran 3y ago
  Classic open source alternative feeling. I hope the near future of open source software is more stable and feels identical or better than the closed source options.
FractalParadigm 3y ago
That about lines up with my Jellyfin experience ~18 months ago, although I was coming from (and switched back to) Emby at the time, which Jellyfin was forked from (still evident by all the Emby/MediaBrowser references in folder and file names). Which, IMO, was really interesting, because the codebases were very close to identical for some time yet Emby was orders of magnitude more reliable. I have more and more family accessing my server each month to the point I've almost run out of 'devices' allowed by an Emby 'license,' making Jellyfin a more attractive offering going forward... assuming they've fixed the problems they had at the start.
growingentropy 3y ago
Hmmm...I might suggest looking into the transcoding settings and changing some things next time you take a look. Because I run Plex alongside Jellyfin (the wife prefers Plex's UI once I tweak it), and it typically runs just as efficiently if not a bit more.
3y ago

Musky 3y ago

> I am meticulous at making sure the structure and filenames are correct before dumping anything new to the library to the point where I have a complex script to process movie and tv show filenames and folders. I'm curious to know why you chose to write a custom (and complex) script yourself instead of using something like Sonarr/Radarr for this task? Does your script do something that the *arr apps are not capable off or is there another reason?

growingentropy 3y ago
I hand-change every file name. Please tell me I'm an idiot and show me a better way. Lol it won't save me the hundreds of movies I've put in "Title (year).type" format, but it will save some future work.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 3y ago
  something like tinymediamanager?
  - growingentropy 3y ago
    I'll look into it as well. Thank you.
- Musky 3y ago
  The *arr suite of apps is made to automate the whole process of building up your media library. You have Prowlarr for managing your download sites and clients, Sonarr/Radarr for TV shows/movies, Lidarr for music, Readarr for books, etc. These apps can be self hosted and are fully open source. The basic workflow is that you add a movie/show, it automatically searches all of your download sites for the title, chooses the best download based on your filter criteria (resolution, size, etc.), sends it to your download client and then places the movie/show into your library based on the folder/file naming pattern you specified previously. You can choose to automate as much of the process as you want or do most of it manually. E.g. grabbing new episodes as soon as they air vs supplying your own files (if you rip your media yourself for example) and only letting the program do the part of renaming and moving your files.

29083011397778 3y ago

> Plex which seems to have stagnated Besides a pointless re-arranging of the UI, which we all hate, what should they be doing? I'll grant you "Bugs to be quashed", but fewer features to fill, fewer devs on the payroll, and less selling out to make payroll sounds perfect to me.

crispyambulance 3y ago

> ...am meticulous at making sure the structure and filenames are correct before dumping anything new to the library to the point where I have a complex script to... I am the exact opposite, partly because I feel like it SHOULD BE the responsibility of the media library to maintain associations between the media files and their metadata, regardless of the filename. It seems crazy to me that Plex and other media libraries effectively require you to follow persnickety file-naming conventions. I am very much in the minority of folks who think that you should just be able to point these media servers to a file, tell it what that file is, and then have it maintain associations so you can query your media in arbitrary ways to make a playlist or whatever-- no filenames changes needed.

ubercow13 3y ago
I think you can do that, there is an informal standard for xml files which can live alongside the media with metadata info. I'm not sure if Jellyfin can create them directly but it can read them. See for example tinymediamanager https://www.tinymediamanager.org/ https://www.tinymediamanager.org/
- crispyambulance 3y ago
  Tinymediamanager looks really cool. Much nicer than filebot!

aorth 3y ago

> am meticulous at making sure the structure and filenames are correct before dumping anything new to the library Me too! General rules of thumb: as long as your content matches the name on https://www.themoviedb.org/ https://www.themoviedb.org/ Jellyfin will recognize it and have excellent metadata, posters, etc. Even if you change the filenames later you can re-scan the library and it will be updated to reflect the new names. Also see the Jellyfin documentation about media naming for TV series https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows/ https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/shows/ and movies https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/movies/ https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/server/media/movies/.