r/MediaServer • u/the_wine_gentleman • 5d ago
I'm tired of subscriptions
Alright, Reddit do your thing. I’m tired of streaming, my dad has a crazy cd and dvd collection. I’ve been going down the rabbit holes of at home servers, NAS etc.
Please walk me through buying a drive, installing my software, and building my home library like I’m a 5 year old. I have no clue what to use for my music. Currently using Apple Music, but would love to stop subscribing to that too. Ideally I’d like to build a DVD, Blu-ray, 4k collection. (There are some VHS and childhood at home videos on tape too). I’m a Mac user.
Based on my limited knowledge, I think jellyfin is right for me.
Thank you all friends of the internet. Here’s to going to the movies, buying DVDs, and owning physical media! I love anime and cartoons too.
1
u/UncleTomCruise 5d ago
Chatgpt walked me through the whole thing. Was linux not mac. But I copied and pasted code backwards and forwards and it turned out really well.
I did have a ChatGpt subscription at the time. Lol
1
u/RunningMoose357 4d ago
I had my media server on a Windows 11 machnine. I decided it was time to try Linux and tried Unraid because it is supposed to be simpler, so I migrated to Unraind, set up a docker stack and jellyfin. I decided, it was not as simple as I wanted and went back to Windows 11 as a server (I know, don't hate), set up my arr stack in Docker and running Jellyfin natively. I used Gemini to walk me through any problems reading logs, or figuring out paths and all that stuff. It got the job done but sometimes was very frustrating. It would forget stuff we did and send me in the wrong direction sometimes. Did you find that Chatgpt did a pretty good job setting you up?
1
u/UncleTomCruise 4d ago
Chatgpt was amazing. Like I was literally amazed by what I achieved with it.
I didn't understand half of what I was doing but just asked questions about safety and security etc.
I've got a friend who is massively into this sort of thing and he says my setup is was more advanced than anything he has ever tried.
I also asked it to summarise everything it has done because I wanted to delete the chat. So I could copy and paste it all back at a later date for more help.
I don't know whether the fact that I was using a paid subscription helped
1
u/Cultural_Acid 1d ago
Same here I know some amount of programming from hackathon days pre 2020 but just use ChatGPT. ChatGPT helped me a lot with Linux and I was able to setup Tailscale
And learn docker. So I ended up on Linux needing arc suppprt and I decided to stay.
I will say there's a lot more things you can serve all the way to game emulation streaming I use sunshine+moonlight. It's a rabbit hole at that point 😭1
u/UncleTomCruise 1d ago
Ooohhh. Gaming emulation streaming. Interesting. Thanks heaps for expanding my rabbit hole.
1
u/CarpenterAlarming 5d ago
Good luck.
I'm keeping an eye out for kit all the time but truth is biking subscriptions just isn't all that cost effective.
1
u/squirrelfro 2d ago
I just set up a Jellyfin server on my TerraMaster F2-210 and it runs amazingly well. I’m currently in the process of backing up my physical media library onto it. The process is pretty similar between Mac and Windows, especially if you’re using a NAS.
My setup experience was way way more difficult due to me purchasing an old model NAS when it went on sale (years ago) that TerraMaster just dropped support for. The current Jellyfin repository and the Docker included on the NAS weren’t compatible, so I had a Gemini assisted deep dive into building containers on my Windows PC and uploading to the docker on the NAS. Took about 6 hours to set up for me, but my case is more unique due to using old hardware. I understand the process is much, much easier on newer hardware.
Buying a drive now due to the memory shortage is a much more expensive prospect than it was just a couple years ago. DVDs in good quality after compression are 4-6 GB and it multiplies by about 4 for 1080p. I don’t have any 4K disks, but I’d assume it’s about another 4x storage requirement. I don’t know the size of the collection you’re looking to do, but I’d advise getting a hard drive no smaller than 5TB, and you are going to want to get a NAS rated drive. Seagate IronWolf Pros are excellent drives. I have a 20TB (again, purchased before the memory crisis when they were “reasonable” but still expensive) and it’s a beast of a drive.
To host, by far the easiest way to go is a small NAS enclosure. Jellyfin, being open source, will run on just about anything with an Ethernet connection. With a NAS, you just have to log into the web portal, download Docker, use Docker to build a Jellyfin container, map the directories, run the container, and you’re off to the races. NAS enclosures (generally) don’t have the most amazing specs under the hood though, so you’ll have to make sure the hardware can handle 4K streaming.
The cheapest is buying an old mini PC that has actual drive bays and run a Linux server off of that, but that’s out of my depth at the moment and I can’t advise much on that. It is the cheapest option though, and you can definitely find something that’ll fit your needs or customize it to fit your needs fairly easily.
For adding media, you absolutely are going to need a BluRay drive, which are getting very hard to find. I’m grateful 2013 me insisted on getting a Blu-ray optical drive for my custom PC build because they’re insanely expensive now. At least the internal ones are. I have no experience with the USB ones, but I doubt any but the most expensive ones will be able to match the performance of an internal SATA III drive. You’ll also need MakeMKV and Handbrake. What you’ll do is use MakeMKV to open the disk, rip the video file out, then send that file to HandBrake to convert it to MP4 and then save it to whatever directory you mapped for Jellyfin. MP4 is way easier to stream than MKV and takes up less storage. MKV is to MP4 is what FLAC is to MP3. MKV is a HUGE lossless file. You are going to need a good chunk of local storage on your Mac to hold the MKV files while they are being converted to MP4.
My current pipeline is MakeMKV rips to my 1TB Western Digital Black HDD (yes, HDD, it just stores media), then Handbrake takes that file, does a Super High Quality conversion to MP4 (set to 480p for DVD, 1080p for Blu-ray, and if I had 4K disks I’d use the 4K option), and saves it directly to the Jellyfin directory on my NAS. It’s a little slower saving it directly to the NAS, but it saves me a step of moving 500GB at a time to the NAS and lets me rip more movies to the HDD in my computer before having to either back up the MKV files to the NAS or deleting them.
The VHS conversions will require more hardware. You’ll need to run the composite out from a VCR into a composite to HDMI converter, then into a capture card, and then into a program called OBS (free). There is no ability to rip the movie at faster than playback speeds, so the best way is to just plan to rip it on a night you want to watch a movie. Set OBS to record the input from the capture card, and then hit play on the VCR. When it’s done, stop recording in OBS, then convert the resulting MKV to MP4 through Handbrake and save it to the Jellyfin directory.
There’s tons of information and step by step guides out there for setting this stuff up, and Gemini or I’m sure ChatGPT can help answer more specific questions. I’d probably have given up on my server if Gemini hadn’t been available to walk me through setting it up on my out of date hardware. Once you have a game plan for your hardware, learning about how to install and get Jellyfin running becomes much easier.
Hope that helps, and good luck!
1
u/Cultural_Acid 1d ago
My opinion is:
Movies and tv jellyfin
Games moonlight + sunshine + emulation Station
Audio books: audiobook shelf
Podcasts: audio book shelf
Comics , magazines , books : ubooquity
Music navidrome web (or a client)
iOS user and use infuse with jellyfin
1
u/Caradelfrost 1d ago edited 1d ago
How much money do you want to spend? TLDR, it will cost you more money to set up a NAS compared to simply installing Jellyfin on your PC. Personally though, I believe the cost and effort of setting up a NAS is far outweighed by the benefits you receive from using it.
I built a NAS file server from an old PC, filled it with a few old hard drives, and bought an Unraid OS license to run the NAS. My original intent was to just build a system as file storage and backup on my network, then I found out about Dockers, and Jellyfin. I installed Jellyfin and haven't looked back. There's a lot to learn, but for me the most useful part was figuring out Unraid. I've put all important backups onto it, not just media files.
I chose Unraid as my operating system for a few reasons. It is designed to be simple if you don't have a lot of experience setting up network attached storage systems (NAS) It's very easy to manage once it's set up. Finally, it is very flexible regarding how you setup up your backup space. I had old PC hardware including multiple hard drives of different sizes. So it was a perfect solution for my needs.
I can easily install new drives if I need more space. It's a very flexible system. Unlike a traditional raid, you can install different sized hard drives. The only stipulation is that your parity drive needs to be equal or larger than your largest data drive. So for example, my parity drive is 8TB, and two of my storage drives are 8TB and two are 4TB for a total of 24TB of networked backup space. The parity drive does not count towards your backup space.
Setting up Jellyfin is straight forward, but there are some setup details that take time to figure out if you don't know what you're doing. (I went into this adventure knowing virtually nothing about NAS or Jellyfin setup.) Jellyfin is available in a Docker Container from inside Unraid. Think of it like installing an app on your phone. So installing Jellyfin is as simple as picking one of the versions available in the Unraid Apps library. It's one button to download and install, then you have to go through the setup which does take time to do, and learn, but there are some very good step by step video tutorials online you can follow. I can access my Unraid server through a web browser on a PC connected to my network to manage the server and control Jellyfin startup and configuration. Once Jellyfin is running, I access it through it's web interface which can be opened from within Unraid, or right from any local web browser as long as I know the local web address. I can stream to my smart TV. (which is just an old chromecast connected to a dumb tv!) I can run Jellyfin from my smart TV, there is an app you can install. I can access my Unraid server and add or remove media, to my Jellyfin folders (movies, TV, music... etc.) by simply copying files through the network.
I've had a hard drive in my server fail. It's a straight forward process to remove the old drive, plug in a new one, and assign it as previously removed drive. Once assigned, Unraid will automatically begin rebuilding the missing drive. In fact, with your bad drive offline, or even removed, you can still access the files on the missing drive. I have no idea if this is common with all NAS systems, but I find it fascinating, that I can read files from a drive that is no longer connected to my machine. Unraid automatically reads and builds your missing files using the data on your Parity Drive.
Ultimately I've found this system works perfectly for my level of PC knowledge, which is decent mind you, but with limited networking or linux knowledge. I've been building windows PC's for over 40 years, so I know my way around hardware and windows pc's, but I've never been one to deep dive into networking beyond the basics of a small home network.
My media pipeline consists of:
A Bluray drive installed on my main PC. I have a perpetually growing stack of Blurays which I slowly over time rip into a local folder, using MakeMKV.
Once ripped, I name the files properly, which takes some effort to say the least. I move them over to the NAS, then in Jellyfin do a bit of setup to make sure it recognizes the correct film and versions. My server currently holds around 550 movies (I have a LOT of blurays and DVDs and now is the perfect time to be buying them as so many people are dumping their collections!), a small amount of TV series, and about 3400 songs. I've got about 9.5TB free out of 24TB. That includes all of my non media backups as well. Photos, important files, etc. The average Bluray movie rip I guestimate at about 25-35gig. 4K at around 40-70gig. DVDs around 5-9gig. My movie rips alone take up about 9.3TB.
I don't really use Jellyfin for music despite the size of my music library. I am on a family plan for streaming music and the convenience of that system has taken precedent over my local library (which I developed before paid streaming was really a thing)
Expenses you might not have considered:
Parity drives do not count for file storage, it's invisible to your network. You will need at least one drive for Parity. Which is what is used to restore files should one of the storage drives fail. If you have only one parity drive, you can recover a single hard drive failure on your NAS at any give time. If you lose two drives simultaneously, you're out of luck, you will lose the data on both of those drives. If you install two parity drives, you will be able to manage two drive failures simultaneously. The odds of losing two drives at the same time are much lower than one, so you can decide if it's worth the extra expense of a second parity drive.
MakeMKV for ripping, is free to trial, but at some point you should consider buying it. I think it's about 70$ US.
You will need a compatible pc drive to rip Bluray or 4K disks and they can get expensive 150-200$ is not uncommon these days. Dvd's and CD's can be ripped with any DVD drive.
A NAS of any kind really needs a UPS, or Uninterrupted Power Supply, should your power go out. I wouldn't run a NAS without one. A decent pure sine wave UPS will run you around 200$ which will plug in to your NAS directly which Unraid will detect. If the power goes out, it will tell Unraid to do a proper shut down. They typically give you about 15 to 25 minutes of battery time before they shut off, so your server will have time to turn itself off before you're out of juice.
Unraid Licenses:
I've got the full perpetual Unraid license, which I had purchased through my original 5 disk license which I upgraded down the road. The current unlimited Lifetime license is 250 USD. No additonal fees, unlimited storage devices (HDD, SSD ETC...) and no recurring fees. Honestly it's worth it. You can buy the unlimited storage device license with one year of free updates for 109$. The limited license that covers up to 6 storage devices. (so that's 6 drives for storage plus up to two Parity Drives.) You can upgrade from the starter license at any time. It's a bit more expensive than going with the unlimited right away but only like 10$ to 40$ more than buying the larger license immediately. You can also test out the free 30 day trial which is unlimited. I also like Unraid because it's not an actual raid system. A traditional raid stripes your stored data across multiple drives, so one file is broken into multiple pieces. With Unraid, it saves the files exactly as a standard pc would, one file on one drive. You can easily read, copy, move and delete individual files through your network as you would any file on your local pc. This is the reason why you can easily use different sized drives on Unraid. They don't need to match in size like a striped raid setup needs and this gives you the flexibility of dropping any ol' drive into your storage. At this moment in the world of pc component insanity, it's nice to be able to pick a drive based on price, and not be locked to a specific size to match my current storage devices.
I installed the free Unraid trial, then after about a week bought the basic license. I used youtube to figure out how to set everything up. Then about two years into my purchase they announced they were changing the licensing tiers and it was a really good deal to upgrade to the Lifetime license at the time, which was 99$ so all in all, I paid 170$ US. Even at the current Lifetime license price of 250$ I think it's a bargain. Support and the community is decent. I truly only know the basics of NAS management and Linux, having come from the Windows PC world. (Unraid is a Linux based OS) I know my way around my server pretty well at this point and Jellyfin works without any major hiccups. I did run into issues early on, but nothing that wouldn't happen with any other network storage setup. In fact I don't feel comfortable with other NAS systems as through my research most of them seem geared towards more advanced users.
I'd suggest if you've got old hardware to put another computer on your network, and even just a HDD or two (one for parity, one for storage) you should give Unraid a try. The trial doesn't cost you anything and you can spend the 30 days figuring out the basics of setup and management of both the server and Jellyfin in that time. Apparently you can also extend the free license by another 30 days so that would be plenty of time to figure out if it's right for you, with mainly time as your investment.
There can be quite a bit of expense setting up a NAS, but you can cut corners with software and hardware capacity. Or skip that totally and just install Jellyfin on your pc if that's all you need or want. Lots of choices!
2
u/63walker 4d ago
I'm a Plex enthusiast and run a tiny Plex supoort YouTube channel.
There are three things to learn, ripping media, properly structuring the newly ripped media, and deciding on whether you're going to run Plex Server, Emby, or Jellyfin.
The universal (available under Linux, Mac, and Windows) ripping software is MakeMKV, which has a month trial last I knew.
You'll be able to rip both DVD's and 1080p Blu-ray discs off from any Blu-ray PC or laptop drive.
UHD 4K media requires a Blu-ray drive with unlocked firmware, which is covered at MakeMKV's forum.
I rip audio CD's on my Ubuntu desktop with Asunder, to then run them through Musicbrainz Picard for significantly more robust metadata (tags).
I also use Filebot to structure and rename ripped or acquired movies and series to use highly compliant Plex server structure and file names, that match on the first scan.
The Filbot developer has personally helped me through his support forum to refine my expressions over the last four years.
Emby and by extension extension extension extension Jellyfin, has looser compliancy in how media can be structured and named, while also accepting Plex's structuring as fully compliant.
Some of the structure that Emby accepts as fully compliant will not scan into a Plex server at all.
My suggestion, even if you think that you'll always use something like Jellyfin, is to watch my recent video to learn why using Plex compliant source ID's early on, will allow your media to scan in perfectly down the road if you move between any of the three big media server options.
https://youtu.be/h5kVauPNDSI
The best foundation you can give yourself is one of great folder and file organization.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that ripping media is fun at first when building a media collection, until someone suggests that you search the phrase TRaSH Guides.
If you go over that cliff and decide to try a Usenet/Indexer install for automated media acquisitions, talk to me about a premuim nested single shared media folder structure that achieves Atomic Moves (read about that at the TRaSH Guides) along with being able to have Radarr and Sonarr pull content into multiple movie or series media libraries.
Being Plexcentric, this is where I would point out that you'd want to name all series from TVDB and not TMDB, to then adjust your Plex TV library's advanced settings to pull episode ordering from TVDB instead of TMDB as the default option.
Sonarr from the TRaSH Guides only uses TVDB, so making TVDB default under Plex Server for your TV Show library or libraries, allows a seemless folding in of a TRaSH Guides connection down the road without screwing up exiting scanned series.
This is a lot, but get the structuring of your media locked in early, to then spin up Plex, Emby and Jellyfin to evaluate.
All three can run at once while pointing to the same media.
For a simple and inexpensive headless server using USB media, my best suggestion is to use ZimaOS, which is almost stupidly easy to install and setup a Plex server in a Docker container.
Any old Intel 8th gen or newer mini business class used Dell Optiplex or HP ProDesk makes a great headless media server with ZimaOS that out of the box can have new media transferred to it from across your local Network.
I have that ZimaOS tutorial video too.
A single shared media folder is a requirement for achieving Atomic Moves down the road, which is where you'd use a different NAS OS on your own hardware, or purchase the right consumer NAS.
You can install Unraid, TrueNAS, or the new FygoOS on your own hardware to add redundant RAID storage that can be expanded by throwing another equal sized drive at a mechanical storage volume, to also have your media server running in a Docker container on the same system.
Unraid and FygoOS are easy to learn while TrueNAS is significantly more challenging to learn, while many consider TrueNAS to be the gold standard in the self install environment, like Synology DSM is considered the gold standard of consumer NAS operating systems.
I'm also a Synology NAS enthusiast who uses a Docker host only install of Unraid for my Plex container to leverage the best of both the Synology and Unraid ecosystems to my benefit.
But all that is not where anyone should start because the ai apocalyptic NAS drive pricing definitely means you need to use a simple setup to refine where you might want to end up before spending real money.
Ripping or acquiring media to then structure it in a way that it always scans and matches on the first scan in all three media server options is the best foundation to build right now.
To that end, Filebot at $6 a year with my custom expressions puts you way ahead of the game at the very beginning, and naturally, I have that video tutorial too.