Newby; Would like to try and build a plugin.

[RemcoHekker]

Hi everyone,

I recently started working on a Jellyfin plugin project and wanted to briefly introduce myself and what I’m trying to do. I’m not a developer—just someone who loves Jellyfin and is trying to push it a little further with the help of ChatGPT. I’m figuring this out as I go and relying heavily on AI to help write and guide the code.

For now, I don’t plan to release the plugin publicly. Since I’m not a developer, I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting sub-par or barely maintained code out into the wild. That said, there are a couple of features I’ve always wanted in Jellyfin, and I’m giving it a shot.

I’d really appreciate your feedback. Specifically, do you see anything about this idea that you think would be fundamentally impossible within the Jellyfin ecosystem?

The core idea I’m currently working on is a Physical Media Collection Plugin. It allows users to add movies and TV shows to their Jellyfin library even if they only own them physically and don't have digital copies—without the hassle of ripping the discs.

This would let users:

Complete and organize their digital collections

Search across their entire library metadata (actors, directors, genres, etc.)

Browse all their media when deciding what to watch

Watch trailers (via YouTube)

And then... walk over to their shelf and pop the disc into their player

Additionally, I would ideally like to add the corresponding disc logo (Blu-ray, DVD, 4K Ultra HD, etc.) or at least tag each entry with the quality information (like 4K, Dolby Vision, HDR, DVD, etc.)—similar to how Jellyfin currently collects media info from actual digital files. I'd love for the library view to clearly show the available quality for each physical title.

Thanks a lot for your time and any advice you might have, it is greatly appreciated!

[Emailluka]

I cannot help you building a plugin or giving any advice doing so.

But you can already do "Fake"-Entrys pretty simple.
Just make a folder and name it "Pyhsical Media" or something you like and then just create a file (in windows f.ex. just an empty textfile) for every movie und rename it to -> moviename (year) - resolution.mkv/mp4/..
It should populate the database correctly -> you just cant actually watch it in jellyfin ofc.

[RemcoHekker]

Wow!
This is even better than helping me write a plugin! This is giving me all the results without any of the work.

Thanks!!

[thornbill]

Stub files are officially supported. Just make an empty file following the naming standards as outlined above but change the extension to ".disc". You can also specify the type by using an extension like ".dvd.disc" or ".bluray.disc". Jellyfin will recognize that it can’t play the files but otherwise they work like normal media files.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/blo...ons.cs#L95