Seeking Advice: Managing a Large Media Library with Limited Jellyfin Server Storage

[E4ntrail]

Hi Jellyfin Community,
I’m looking for advice on handling a unique challenge with my Jellyfin setup. Here’s the situation:
I have a large media library, but I’m constrained by limited storage on the VPS I use for Jellyfin. My goal is to allow my family to:

• Browse all the media I have available, including titles stored offline.
  
• Request specific offline media to be added to the server for streaming.
  
• Clearly distinguish between media currently available for streaming and media stored offline.
  

Current Approach
I’ve considered setting up four libraries:

• Movies: Contains movies currently available for streaming.
  
• Shows: Contains shows currently available for streaming.
  
• Movies_Clone: Placeholders for all movies stored offline.
  
• Shows_Clone: Placeholders for all shows stored offline.
  

While this approach lets users browse both available and offline media, there’s a major issue:
When I remove a movie or show from the "Movies" or "Shows" library (to make space for new requests), Jellyfin deletes all user-specific metadata, such as watched statuses and favorites (at least that is my assumption).
I’ve also thought about replacing unavailable media with placeholder files, but this has its own drawback: users can’t easily tell whether a title is currently available for streaming or not.
What I’m Looking For
I’m hoping for a more elegant solution that:

1. Allows users to browse and request offline media.
   
2. Clearly indicates which titles are currently available for streaming.
   
3. Retains user-specific metadata (e.g., watched statuses, favorites) when media is removed and later re-added.
   

Has anyone faced a similar situation or have ideas on how to address this? I’d love to hear your suggestions!
Thanks in advance for your help!

[TheDreadPirate]

Where do you keep your "offline media" at?

[xaque]

Seems like maybe rclone with a ftp mount could solve your entire situation.

[E4ntrail]

Where do you keep your "offline media" at?

Currently, all my media is stored on a simple external 8TB HDD. When I want to access the movies and shows personally, I attach it to my laptop and start a Jellyfin Docker container. 

My VPS is a 2.4TB server that I also use for other purposes like Nextcloud and other applications. As a result, I can only allocate 500-800GB to movies and shows on the VPS. 

Seems like maybe rclone with a FTP mount could solve your entire situation.

That’s a great idea if the media were on a NAS or similar. Unfortunately, in my case, the media is stored on an external HDD that I manually plug into my laptop when needed. 

Theoretically, I could rent a Hetzner storage box for around €20/month and set up an SFTP mount, but I’d prefer a simpler, cost-free solution. 

### My Current Approach
My goal is to allow the five users of my Jellyfin instance to: 
1. Watch movies and shows currently available on the Jellyfin server. 
2. Scroll through my entire collection of movies and shows, including those stored offline. 

To achieve this, I’ve set up four library folders as described in my original post. This setup allows users to distinguish between content that’s available for streaming and content that’s only available offline. 

### The Challenge
The main issue is that when I rotate content (removing available movies or shows to make space for new requests), Jellyfin deletes all user-specific metadata related to the removed titles (e.g., watched statuses, favorites). 

Ideally, I’d like a way to merge the user-title metadata from the actual movie in the "Movies" library with the corresponding placeholder in the "Movies_Clone" library, so this metadata is preserved even when the actual video file is removed. 

So essentially my question is, if there is already some existing way of merging the metadata between two Library folders, or if anyone could think of another approach to solve this issue retaining the metadata. Theoretically one could use trakt, which i also would like to avoid though.

[E4ntrail]

Another idea I just thought of is to simplify the setup by using only two library folders and leveraging Jellyfin’s support for multiple file versions under a single title.
In this case, I could have one file version act as a placeholder (e.g., a 0KB video file) and the second file version be the actual movie file when it's available. This approach seems like it would solve the metadata problem since the placeholder and the actual file would share the same metadata (I think).
However, this creates a different challenge: it becomes difficult for users to quickly distinguish which movies and TV shows are currently available for streaming and which ones are not.
Would this challenge be easier to address than the one I’m currently facing? If anyone has insights or suggestions on this approach, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

[TheDreadPirate]

It might be better to hookup your external HDD to a mini PC or RPi so that it is online all the time. Then use rclone to sshfs to remotely mount the external HDD to the VPS.