2024-12-16, 08:35 AM
I will try to answer your quest the best I can, like i said I am still fairly new to Jellyfin but have ran servers for years so i understand what it does just not the specifics on how it does it. If you know what I mean.
So as for hardware, I for example am running Jellyfin in a Proxmox LXC container. The server had dual Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2690 v3 @ 2.60GHz, and 256GB ram (basically 48 cores 256 GB ram, from CPUs around 10 years old give or take). The container however only is given 8 cores and 32GB ram however. and i am sure if you ask anyone here that really knows about JellyFin and its requirements that is probably overkill, by a long shot. I also put an Intel ARC A310 gfx card in the server to off load all of the video trans coding. Other then set up issues (not a Jellyfin issue but a bug in the Linux kernel for intel GPU support at the time) everything has worked great. So the computer you mentioned should be more then sufficient to run a server. the RTX 1060 should be sufficient for most trans coding as well.
As for you NAS, you should not have do change that in any way. on your Jellyfin server just mount the drives, then in the Jellyfin interface point to the folder your video media is in and Jellyfin does the rest. so as long as the OS that the Jellyfin server is able to mount, and read the video off of your NAS everything should work as is.
By update I am assuming you mean adding files to your Librarys, and such, not updating the server software.
So Jellyfin support automated tasks. some of the defaults are things like scan for new media, extract keyframes, etc. and you can set these to run as often as you would like. I have my server scan for new media every hour, and do things like trickplay, keyframes, and metadata scraping every 24h. You can also start any of these tasks manually when ever you want. To trigger a job manually I find it the easiest to just log on to the web interface with the admin account and 2 or 3 clicks later I am scanning the library. I have done this from my android phone, laptop, desktop, really anything that has a web browser "should" at least get into the admin menu and click the start task button.
Sure it can, install windows, then RDP into the server should not need a gfx card. Though might have to get a little tricky with the initial install. I know some of those older computers with Xeon CPUs have basic VGA video out on the motherboard and don't require CPU gfx or an add on card. the only thing you wont be able to do is GPU HW trans coding, but if you are just doing 1 user at a time the CPU should be able to handle the load just fine. 90% of what you will need to do in Jellyfin can be done via the web interface. The only thing you need to access the main OS for is Initial setup, Updating Jellyfin, and tweaking settings. I have not touched my OS in 1 to 2 months.
This is the Big question, and the one I have the least technical knowledge about. but i will use my setup as an example.
You are partly correct here. Jellyfin is the server with ACCESS to the media files, the files do not have to be on the server it self. I have multiple NAS supplying media to my Jellyfin server, Your current NAS setup should work perfectly fine.
Also the Jellyfin server does not do ALL of the video work, but can do some/most of it. for example, lets take your 10k kbps HDR video, if you are watching that file on a modern gaming computer with HDR monitor, and the power to watch it in all of its glory, then Jellyfin does next to nothing and simply sends the data over the network and your computer does the heavy lifting. Again Jellyfin is probably doing something here, but at your end it will/should be in Full HDR glory. Jellyfin refers to this as Direct play mode. Now if you play this same file on, say a chrome book, the chrome book is not capable of playing that file to its fullest extent (OK, some might be, but not the $100 chrome books people buy for school, etc.). Jellyfin at this point will start to on the fly transcode that video down to what ever resolution, and audio format that it thinks will be best for the chrome book based on network, and computer hardware. This transcode is stored in a temporary folder that gets deleted after a given amount of time (that you can set your self). Also like any other streaming service you can manually override what settings are chosen and chose a higher, or lower resolution. So the client device will still have to process the video, but the video it is sent is custom tailored to the device that is accessing the Jellyfin server.
Now if the TV app or the n100 mini PC would be better for your TV, I cant really say. I would suspect that the n100 is far more powerful then the TV processing, so the TV may try to transcode the video down so it can process the file. Most "smart" TVs in my experience are more of a gimmick then anything. they tend to have under powered hardware, and lose support far to quickly, but that is another subject. I know on the new 4k Roku I have seen no noticeable issues running 4k remote over the internet. At the same time, I can 100% say you care far more about video quality then I do, because if its not a pixelated mess its fine to me, that is all personal preference.
Hope that helps, if you want a more detailed explanation of how and why about bitrate stuff, someone else will have to step in, because that is out of my wheel house.
So as for hardware, I for example am running Jellyfin in a Proxmox LXC container. The server had dual Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2690 v3 @ 2.60GHz, and 256GB ram (basically 48 cores 256 GB ram, from CPUs around 10 years old give or take). The container however only is given 8 cores and 32GB ram however. and i am sure if you ask anyone here that really knows about JellyFin and its requirements that is probably overkill, by a long shot. I also put an Intel ARC A310 gfx card in the server to off load all of the video trans coding. Other then set up issues (not a Jellyfin issue but a bug in the Linux kernel for intel GPU support at the time) everything has worked great. So the computer you mentioned should be more then sufficient to run a server. the RTX 1060 should be sufficient for most trans coding as well.
As for you NAS, you should not have do change that in any way. on your Jellyfin server just mount the drives, then in the Jellyfin interface point to the folder your video media is in and Jellyfin does the rest. so as long as the OS that the Jellyfin server is able to mount, and read the video off of your NAS everything should work as is.
Quote: What I don't get though is, how does the server update?
When I turn on Kodi, it scrapes the NAS looking for new files added. With Jellyfin server, do I need to access it constantly to update? or will it just detect files on its own and update? I don't want to have a server that I have to connect to the TV and constantly open up with a wireless keyboard to scrape and update... maybe can be done remotely on my new PC with the browser?
By update I am assuming you mean adding files to your Librarys, and such, not updating the server software.
So Jellyfin support automated tasks. some of the defaults are things like scan for new media, extract keyframes, etc. and you can set these to run as often as you would like. I have my server scan for new media every hour, and do things like trickplay, keyframes, and metadata scraping every 24h. You can also start any of these tasks manually when ever you want. To trigger a job manually I find it the easiest to just log on to the web interface with the admin account and 2 or 3 clicks later I am scanning the library. I have done this from my android phone, laptop, desktop, really anything that has a web browser "should" at least get into the admin menu and click the start task button.
Quote: The GTX1060 is in my new PC right now, until hopefully boxing week when I buy a new 4070Super... so until then, the old PC can't be used so can't play around with this stuff yet.
Sure it can, install windows, then RDP into the server should not need a gfx card. Though might have to get a little tricky with the initial install. I know some of those older computers with Xeon CPUs have basic VGA video out on the motherboard and don't require CPU gfx or an add on card. the only thing you wont be able to do is GPU HW trans coding, but if you are just doing 1 user at a time the CPU should be able to handle the load just fine. 90% of what you will need to do in Jellyfin can be done via the web interface. The only thing you need to access the main OS for is Initial setup, Updating Jellyfin, and tweaking settings. I have not touched my OS in 1 to 2 months.
Quote: Jellyfin, the server with the media files, does all the work? Using the Jellyfin app on a smart TV will work just as well as an N100 running the app?
I think that's where I'm mostly unclear. My concern is having a large 4K video on the server with a 10,000kbps bitrate and HDR colour, and it streams and looks about the same as a 1080p 4,000kbps video... phones/tablets, whatever... I can see why it'll compress for those, but on a 65" 4K HDR TV, I want to make sure I'm getting full quality from the files.
This is the Big question, and the one I have the least technical knowledge about. but i will use my setup as an example.
You are partly correct here. Jellyfin is the server with ACCESS to the media files, the files do not have to be on the server it self. I have multiple NAS supplying media to my Jellyfin server, Your current NAS setup should work perfectly fine.
Also the Jellyfin server does not do ALL of the video work, but can do some/most of it. for example, lets take your 10k kbps HDR video, if you are watching that file on a modern gaming computer with HDR monitor, and the power to watch it in all of its glory, then Jellyfin does next to nothing and simply sends the data over the network and your computer does the heavy lifting. Again Jellyfin is probably doing something here, but at your end it will/should be in Full HDR glory. Jellyfin refers to this as Direct play mode. Now if you play this same file on, say a chrome book, the chrome book is not capable of playing that file to its fullest extent (OK, some might be, but not the $100 chrome books people buy for school, etc.). Jellyfin at this point will start to on the fly transcode that video down to what ever resolution, and audio format that it thinks will be best for the chrome book based on network, and computer hardware. This transcode is stored in a temporary folder that gets deleted after a given amount of time (that you can set your self). Also like any other streaming service you can manually override what settings are chosen and chose a higher, or lower resolution. So the client device will still have to process the video, but the video it is sent is custom tailored to the device that is accessing the Jellyfin server.
Now if the TV app or the n100 mini PC would be better for your TV, I cant really say. I would suspect that the n100 is far more powerful then the TV processing, so the TV may try to transcode the video down so it can process the file. Most "smart" TVs in my experience are more of a gimmick then anything. they tend to have under powered hardware, and lose support far to quickly, but that is another subject. I know on the new 4k Roku I have seen no noticeable issues running 4k remote over the internet. At the same time, I can 100% say you care far more about video quality then I do, because if its not a pixelated mess its fine to me, that is all personal preference.
Hope that helps, if you want a more detailed explanation of how and why about bitrate stuff, someone else will have to step in, because that is out of my wheel house.