5 ms·

Isn’t ripping your own media the sort of use case where Plex really shines as a solution and is fairly user friendly?

by krustyburger 3y ago

izacus 3y ago
That's that the original poster means with "Jellyfin", it's just an OSS version of the same type of software.
jokethrowaway 3y ago
Nowhere near user friendly for a large part of the population
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  True, but given legal constraints on ripping, etc. it would be nearly impossible for anyone to make it drop dead simple.
- account42 3y ago
  How much of that is just learned helplessness though? IME ordinary people can manage to surpass most technical hurdles if they have the motivation to do so.
tombert 3y ago
I mean, it's "user friendly" in the sense that it's the easiest solution, but it still requires understanding how servers work, knowing how to administer a RAID, knowing what kind of transcoding settings to set etc. Also, I think anyone that tells you that you can just have always-online media that you don't have to babysit is lying. As far as I can tell, that doesn't exist. Your server will break at some point, for no apparent reason, and you're going to have to fix it. Usually the fixes are easy on their own, but you end up accidentally nuking the RAID and losing all your rips. It's hardly "user friendly". This isn't crapping on Plex, it's sort of the nature of the beast
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  You don't need a RAID. Just have 2 hard drives and copy stuff from one folder to another. Click skip all for identical files that already exist. I've had jellyfin serving my music, family videos and youtube rips (e.g. university lectures) for years. Haven't had to touch it since I set it up. I just plop files into folders and it picks them up. I got a lot of family videos from my mom, who keeps them on her computer plus an external hard drive, which she brought to me to copy. Copying files to USB drives as a backup and sharing that is pretty understandable for non tech people.
  - account42 3y ago
    If you don't have raid you at least should have some application-level checksums - ideally error correction codes.
- mastax 3y ago
  There are NAS devices from a bunch of manufacturers where you can just buy them, plug them in, run through the setup wizard, and click install on the Plex app in their built in App Store. Not much more difficult than getting printer drivers installed. That’s certainly more than many people are able (or willing) to put up with, and it requires a several hundred dollar investment. But NAS ease of use for common tasks is pretty good theee days.
  - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
    > Not much more difficult than getting printer drivers installed. Dude, really bad example, printers are hell to set up.
    - ndriscoll 3y ago
      These days pretty much every printer should support IPP. You just plug it in and it shows up to devices on your network.
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
m463 3y ago
I think plex sort of sold out. Jellyfin is under your control.

Isn’t ripping your own media the sort of use case where Plex really shines as a solution and is fairly user friendly?

izacus 3y ago

That's that the original poster means with "Jellyfin", it's just an OSS version of the same type of software.

jokethrowaway 3y ago

Nowhere near user friendly for a large part of the population

HumblyTossed 3y ago
True, but given legal constraints on ripping, etc. it would be nearly impossible for anyone to make it drop dead simple.
account42 3y ago
How much of that is just learned helplessness though? IME ordinary people can manage to surpass most technical hurdles if they have the motivation to do so.

tombert 3y ago

I mean, it's "user friendly" in the sense that it's the easiest solution, but it still requires understanding how servers work, knowing how to administer a RAID, knowing what kind of transcoding settings to set etc. Also, I think anyone that tells you that you can just have always-online media that you don't have to babysit is lying. As far as I can tell, that doesn't exist. Your server will break at some point, for no apparent reason, and you're going to have to fix it. Usually the fixes are easy on their own, but you end up accidentally nuking the RAID and losing all your rips. It's hardly "user friendly". This isn't crapping on Plex, it's sort of the nature of the beast

ndriscoll 3y ago
You don't need a RAID. Just have 2 hard drives and copy stuff from one folder to another. Click skip all for identical files that already exist. I've had jellyfin serving my music, family videos and youtube rips (e.g. university lectures) for years. Haven't had to touch it since I set it up. I just plop files into folders and it picks them up. I got a lot of family videos from my mom, who keeps them on her computer plus an external hard drive, which she brought to me to copy. Copying files to USB drives as a backup and sharing that is pretty understandable for non tech people.
- account42 3y ago
  If you don't have raid you at least should have some application-level checksums - ideally error correction codes.
mastax 3y ago
There are NAS devices from a bunch of manufacturers where you can just buy them, plug them in, run through the setup wizard, and click install on the Plex app in their built in App Store. Not much more difficult than getting printer drivers installed. That’s certainly more than many people are able (or willing) to put up with, and it requires a several hundred dollar investment. But NAS ease of use for common tasks is pretty good theee days.
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  > Not much more difficult than getting printer drivers installed. Dude, really bad example, printers are hell to set up.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    These days pretty much every printer should support IPP. You just plug it in and it shows up to devices on your network.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago

m463 3y ago

I think plex sort of sold out. Jellyfin is under your control.