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+--- Thread: New to all this several questions (/t-new-to-all-this-several-questions)
New to all this several questions - bathtub_gin - 2024-02-13
SO as my title says I am new to the whole media server thing. I upgraded my HT to a 4K projector and a 7.3.4 Atmos surround and I have decide to rip all my Blu-rays and UHD 4k disks and serve them up on demand. I was going to go with Zidoo and one of their z20pro server systems but some friends recommended i try plex or Jellyfin and so I installed them both. Plex ios not for me as the interface is just to clunky and it always seems to be a big pain to do anything. Jelly fin seems to be very close to what I wanbt but I do have a few questions but first where I am .
I have installed it and also the Jellyfin media player on a HTPC that feeds my Processor/amp via HDMI. If it matters the pc has an Nvidia RTX 2070 super in it and a rayzen 3600x cpu and 16 gb RAM.
I need to use the media player because it seems to be the only way to bitstream to my avr. If I use the web browser interface that went along with my set-up I just get decoded multi-channel pcm.
Media is going to be stored on my NAS (Buffalo LS220D) - it had 2x 2TB drives in iot that were set-up in a raid 1 config (mirrored drive) however I just pulled on of the drives (1.8tb full) and rebuilt the array with the other 2TB drive and a 8tb HDD. I then formatted the pulled 2 tb drive and put it in a usb enclosuure and am currently copying the contents onto that drive which contains photos and some home media (drone footage, 4k mirrorless DSLR footage etc). After that I can then pull the other 2 TB drive and put in the other 8tb drive I have at that point. I am still undecided at that point if I want to go striped RAID 0 (more on maybe why later), raid 1 or JBOD. I have had this NAS for a while and the performance isn't that great. Currently I have some rips I downloaded from elsewhere on-line and these have been reduced in size/quality and seem to playfine. If I rip one of my 4k-discs uncompressed onto the NAS 2 things occur. There is buffering at certain times, certain scenes it is simply unwatchable. However I have been experimenting with handbrake and compressing the size gives me full pasthrough audio and allows me to stream the video. SOp far I am experimenting with different formats H.264, H.265, AV1 etc. I really don't understan it all that much other than supposedly H.265 is better quality and more efficient than h.264 and AV1 is better yet but sometimes takes forever to encode and sometimes not which brings me to somethingf I am not sure of but I think I understand. Some of my files won't play in the web browser even if I wanted them too but they play fine in the media player (i wrap them all in MKV). I am assuming this is wher eI would have to allow transcoding in order for the web browser to play them. WHere I think this might matter is that I understanmd I can allow other family members to log into my machine remotely and watch media - this is where I would need to transcode in order for them to watch. Am i understanding this correctly? Also would the specs on ,my computer allow me to transcode effectively? how much of a performance hit wopuld I notice if I was using it?
I tried to install jellyscrub but it doesn't seem to work so I must have done something wrong - my understanding is that this gives you a thumbnail preview on the searchable bar so you can find a spot in a movie where you want. I am sure I can follow some tutorials for all that.
Circling back to the nas situation. here is a url that shows performance specs for my NAS in different modes
https://www.servethehome.com/buffalo-ls220d-2-drive-nas-review/
Would I be better off just getting a different NAS and putting in the two 8tb drives and running them Raid 1?
In plex there wa san option to have a trailer (or 2 or 3 etc) play before my movie when I chose one. Is that feature in jellyfin anywhere.
FInally is there a way that I could put an app/client on an android tablet and use a GUI on it to control the media player on my pc allowing me to acees it via web or my mesh network and control it form my seating?
Being able to do everything by remote with a lot of the server set-up config is why I was thinking zidoo to begin with but I think I can work thorugh most of this stuff.
If I am able to run it remotely that woukld be freat and if friends/family can log-in and watch stuff remotely that would be amazing.
I have built my own pc's for a long time and am a tech kind of guy but not really familiar with networking and server outside of the basics. Any advice or guidance is truly appreciated.
RE: New to all this several questions - tmsrxzar - 2024-02-13
i use jellyfin in the way you are trying
1 jellyfin server
1 home theatre
multiple "remote" clients, tablets, phones etc
i think you're trying to do too much with 1 machine
i have a single home server
a single home theater client (zidoo z9x pro) which handles full 4K bluray remux backups, because you don't want to sacrifice anything in your home theater
then there are the clients that need transcoding features from jellyfin, samsung tvs+jellyfin client, android tv clients, android tablets and phones
most of my local clients (lan) only need audio transcoding, it's when i use remote clients that i need to limit bandwidth
storage - your NAS should be fast enough, you only need enough bandwidth to serve a single file's bitrate and even with 4K that barely makes it over 100Mbps on the worst days
i believe you're having issues with playback because of the client, try Kodi as a client as it supports more
a PC for playback will limit you to 10bit HDR (on a good day) and no Dolby Vision, consider an android based client
forget about browsers, they're rather terrible with jellyfin
i would not recommend pre-encoding anything, that's what transcoding is there for, no point in pre-doing something that the server can do on the fly
RE: New to all this several questions - bathtub_gin - 2024-02-13
I tried Kodi and I was aable to stream even wirelessly across my house wthout issue so it must be the player. This will save me the hassle or re-ecoding with compression to get smaller files. I am not a fan of the KODI interface/GUI but I think I'll set it up for now and give it a try. I am still leaning towards a zidoo box but at the moment I am waiting fore my old 7.1 Marantz AVR I was using before upgrading to a Onkyo TX-RZ50 to sell to fund the zidoo box
RE: New to all this several questions - tmsrxzar - 2024-02-13
(2024-02-13, 11:46 AM)bathtub_gin Wrote: I tried Kodi and I was aable to stream even wirelessly across my house wthout issue so it must be the player. This will save me the hassle or re-ecoding with compression to get smaller files. I am not a fan of the KODI interface/GUI but I think I'll set it up for now and give it a try. I am still leaning towards a zidoo box but at the moment I am waiting fore my old 7.1 Marantz AVR I was using before upgrading to a Onkyo TX-RZ50 to sell to fund the zidoo box
i have the same opinion of Kodi tbh but until other players come along to support everything it does i haven't been able to get rid of it yet, getting close though
if you go Zidoo you will need the Zidoo fork of the jellyfin client https://github.com/Andy2244/jellyfin-androidtv-zidoo
or just run jellyfin "in addition to" zidoo but not on the zidoo and then manage multiple libraries, zidoo itself has a nice ui and scrapes everything pretty much like Kodi but with a nicer modern ui
RE: New to all this several questions - bathtub_gin - 2024-02-13
If I get a zidoo I won't need Jellyfin. I will put an 8TB hdd in it and and rip movies to there. Anything not there (i.e. on my NAS). I would assume it could just access directly via SMB share.
RE: New to all this several questions - tmsrxzar - 2024-02-13
i see, you wanted to use jellyfin as a Home Theater interface instead of a streaming media server
unfortunately, it's really better at the latter, as server it's solid but as a client not so much
i use mine with zidoo so i can have as much metadata in the same place as possible along with watch state tracking where i can continue watching from anywhere
there is a possibility to facilitate this through trakt since Zidoo has trakt as well but i haven't tried
but i still maintain a "BluRay"+"4K BluRay" library separately just for Zidoo to play on my home theater which are BDMV backups which Jellyfin is not good at
those are stored outside of jellyfin and would not be resumeable from any other client (because they don't exist in those clients) but if needed i have digital copies on movies anywhere for mobile use
if you have no remote clients and no desire to continue watching remotely then i do see where jellyfin may not fit in your environment
RE: New to all this several questions - bathtub_gin - 2024-02-15
^This is spot on. I will have to look into Trakt as I am new to this and hadn't given it much thought.
I am not sure if this counts but the server situation was/is retrieving the media from the nas. My ultimate goal is to get and display/navigate on my projector screen using the poster wall set-up like you would in zidoo (it is fed from my AVR which the pc is plugged into via HDMI). If I could do this to a satisfactory extent with jellyfish alone then I wouldn't need to spend $400 on a Zidoo Z20 pro.
It is nearly there just the stuttering streaming full 1:1 blu-ray and 4k rips if I use the jellyfin media player running on the pc. If I habndbrake them they work and most actually work if I drop from TrueHD atmos tracks to a lower bitstream audio codec. Those last few mbps involved in the bitstream seems to push it over the top for the jellyfin player.
VLC and Plex can play fine over the network but I hate the plex interface- too clunky and requires kb+m. VLC doesn't give me that poster wall gui I want with Metadata and preview options.
If I can get everything working for me in my HT that is the goal but if there was a way that friends and family could log in and watch remotely from their house that would be icing on the cake. My internet connection is 100 downstream and 20 upstream so for remote user they would need a transcode both for bandwidth issues and as I understand format issues as the web client won't play my rips without transcoding as it says the format is incompatible. With the transcoding there is no bitstream but my family wouldn't know or care. Zidoo and Jellyfin may end up being the answer.