Jellyfin: Free Software Media System
jellyfin.org
jellyfin.org
That's the only reason why I've switched to Jellyfin. It's not better than plex. It's definitely worse, but it's open, and that's how I am sure it will work forever.
Why are you so sure about it? IIRC Emby was also open sourced before it wasn't, at which point it was forked into Jellyfin. Based on that alone, I wouldn't be too surprised if Jellyfin pulls the same thing down the road, forcing you to move to yet another fork down the line.
Who's going to sue the rest of the developers who keep working on the open version we'd rather use?
But that doesn't guarantee they wouldn't if Jellyfin approached them like "here's $X for writing this code". Or try hiring them from the start and asking them to sign a contract that transfers their copyright over to the company. Or maybe the contributors would tell them no, make a media fuss about it, and then Jellyfin's team could track down their commits and just re-write them.
Of course, I'm not saying that this will happen, nor I am saying that the Jellyfin's team will even make an attempt at going down this road, but the fact that it's open sourced at the moment is not a guarantee that it wouldn't be in the future.
Emby had a fair amount of contributors as well (https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/graphs/contributors) and then they've just stopped pushing more commits to it. As far as I'm aware, none of those people sued them.
Sure you can find and rewrite that person's contributions, but that person can also fork again.
That's exactly OP's point, whereas I can't just switch to a fork of Plex.
If jellyfin ever becomes closed, people can continue the project from the last open release.
And we will keep moving to other oss forks until they realize that closing the source down will mean that they will never get our business.
There are better ways to make money than bait-and-switching with the licensing. It's not my responsibility to keep them working if what they are offering goes against what I value as a consumer.
(Don't use the Jellyfin Connect addon, it's different and I wouldn't recommend it)
JC has less bells and whistles with library integration and metadata but I'm not missing anything, really.
I had frequent connectivity and syncing issues with the other one but for me Connect Just Works. YMMV of course :)
I’m glad JF exists, but it needs so much work. From the server to the client, it’s an awful experience.
I want to leave Plex so badly, they introduce bugs more frequently than their useless “features”, but the experience is still streets ahead of JF.
For some there time every other release had something break bad while the team were all personally running test versions from the master branch...
After that settled down I've found it pretty much rock solid (since around June) and the team seem to have learned from the friction there and have a better release process now.
I still use emby as my primary server, but I keep Jellyfin around to keep tabs on the project
While your other points I'd mostly agree with, this one you're swimming against the stream here.
It's a pretty standard convention to separate episodic and feature content. There's usually different data sources for each, as well as episodic content being different in structure.
It's probably possible to get all of them to live in the one directory, but if you want a better experience from just about any of the media centre software - you're going to have to get used to separating them.
Ideally something like:
/data/movies/<movie name>/
/data/tv/<series name>/season <season number>/
i don't understand this too... i just want to respect folder not have simple metadata control all
also subtitle SRT upload is broken (maybe fixed in source now)
and jellyfin want to own media plays ok with nextcloud but when i have permissions broken, after i fix chown jellyfin was 100% broken delete/add library didn't work (scan never started) had to entirely delete jellyfin db to work it again
jellyfin is good software, better to alternative, but needs work for improve
I feel like Jellyfin GUI reminders me of XBMC/Kodi GUI a bit and might make it a better fit for home media setups/tvs
Jellyfin used to run on my desktop which has a beefy CPU/GPU, but runs fine on my puny Synology NAS.
If you aren't streaming over the internet, disable transcoding and you're more or less only limited by bandwidth.
Perhaps it'll use much more RAM transcoding, but I'd still expect a dedicated 2GiB to be plenty for Jellyfin even in extreme cases. I doubt you'll get any decent transcoding speed out of ffmpeg if you need a buffer that size anyway.
It's certainly not as quick as on my desktop, but it's rare if 2 people in my household stream video from it so no trouble so far.
I have only recently switched from desktop to NAS though, so perhaps I'll notice the performance later on.
I'm auditioning Subsonic at the moment, but I might give Ampache a go soon (it's apparently having a bit of a revival at the moment).
bonob acts as a media libary bridge so sonos can use navidrome as a media library (instead of having to use a janky old version of smb auth that sonos requires)
it supports browsing by folder
Disclaimer: I run this service: https://asti.ga/
I've written up some alternatives at https://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2021/0...
I'd love to know any feedback you have.
I check out Jellyfin periodically, but the last time I checked it isn't quite ready to replace Plex for me. All the apps (ios, Android, Android TV) aren't great, crash, and I don't think the codec support or audio passthrough support was that good. Hopefully in the future.
Look at the marketing materials and features from the last few years: Specifically trying to avoid any thought of pirated content.
The core problem is that Plex is a business, with investors. Depending on pirated content is not a good model for business success, so they’re trying to pivot. IMO Jellyfin has it right: a non profit, open source solution.
If they are low on income due to non-recurring life-time purchases (which I have made myself), and the streaming thingies offered is a income-driver...
I say it's both.
> Look at the marketing materials and features from the last few years: Specifically trying to avoid any thought of pirated content.
I realize this may not reflect the majority use-case, but using Plex for non-pirated content it's still absolutely something people do.
Personally on my Plex-server, I host Photos from all the family, music I've purchased either digitally, or ripped from CDs I own, more accessible copies of DVDs/Bluerays I've also bought and owned, not to mention other DRM-free movies, media and various courses I've bought online.
In my jurisdiction none of this is illegal, and using Plex to manage that media makes managing that media-collection so much better. Why everyone assumes Plex can only be used for pirated contents beats me.
Plex just works(tm), everywhere, no matter what I feed it, and I remember with great dismay how things used to be before I had Plex.
The day Jellyfin gets good enough, I might switch, because it's FOSS and I like FOSS, but for the time being, the simplicity and just-works-ness of Plex means I'll stick around.
This is a great point, and part of what I feel has been the core of the issue with Plex. Back when it started, they argued publicly that serving your own purchased content for personal use was morally (and should be legally) right. Yes, there were always people who shared things illegally using Plex (and sometimes on a large scale), but Plex themselves continued to work with the goal of letting people consume their own format-shifted content. Absolutely people still do it, but it's clear that Plex is no longer working for those people or working with that ability as a goal.
Also what's the fuzzy feeling you get running FOSS? Do you contribute to the project?
Granted, FOSS developers don't live off user feedback alone, but if you depend on 1% of your user base becoming faithful financial backers, the more users you have, the better it is.
If someone asks them "what are you using to solve problem X" and the answer involves my product, it's my product that gets exposed to another user, who might be interested in contributing...
Or perhaps I should also add "reasonable" to the list of qualifiers? I can see that a larger project might be overflowing with well-meaning but mostly clueless people with unreasonable requests.
- no offline download in iOS app. Can use browser UI and download mkv to device.
overall, not quite ready, but on it's way
You obviously need to setup a some new software, optionally on a new server/container, and need to reconfigure all your libraries.
Not a big deal IMO.
> do you lose any capabilities?
I had issues with HDR-output to my TV (on my AppleTV 4K), and that for me was a show-stopper. Also the application is generally not as smooth or polished.
It might improve though, so I'm sure I'll check it out again some time later.
> Also what's the fuzzy feeling you get running FOSS?
You know that the people making it want to solve the same problems you do. That they are not desperately seeking a way to make money, because that can often severely affect the direction the software is taking.
I have no problem with Plex doing this. They're trying to show value for a service rather than just gatekeeping premium convenience features.
My problem with Plex is the utter distain they show for users by not having any sort proper bug triage. Users throw themselves at a forum that staff members rarely interact with. It's desperate.
A bug that also affected me was reported at least twice (March 2019 and April 2019[1]).
After 5 months of wait, the OP posted a script he wrote to work around the issue.
A simple path building issue took 8-9 months to get pushed in the BETA channel.
[1] : https://forums.plex.tv/t/dvr-moving-files-from-grab-bug/3967...
For example: the long-term threads asking for a “TV” mode that will automatically play your library in channel format so that you can go channel surfing.
Even the very very basic version of this (the ability to automatically update playlists) is essentially a dead thread.
e.g. the auto updating playlist idea would be done reality easily with the python Plex api above.
The UI is great, transcoding and playback on a myriad of devices just works, sharing with other people is a few clicks. To me Plex is the perfect example of the Jim Gaffigan joke; everything is amazing and everyone is miserable.
But there are so many widespread issues that appear ignored. Things like AMD VCN support, Android clients forcing transcoding on some streams. The problem get acknowledged but there's no easy way to track progress. You don't have to dig far to find others users in there who feel habitually ignore, usually as replies ~"I reported the same thing 7 months ago, good luck getting an answer!", eg https://forums.plex.tv/t/is-anybody-working-at-plex-going-to...
It's a shame because it's not a bad product.
Ugly though, if you ask me ;)
and auto-metadata from IMDB and other API is bad if you have niche videos (me: documentaires for anarchism, feminism, anti-colonialism). so bad it can replace good data with bad data (example sub.media/c/trouble documentary series becomes "good trouble" series)
If you have say "movie.mp4" then make two copies of a jpeg named "movie.jpg" and "movie-fanart.jpg" alongside the movie file. Plex will then show this.
You could generate the jpeg using ImageMagick or similar from a base image (per show say) and with text overlay.
I have some scripts that does this and it's better than nothing.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200392126-using-the-library...
> The Folders option is available for all media types, and lets you browse the media folder structure directly based on the folder hierarchy on disk. Browse By Folder is a sticky setting, letting you use Grid, List, or Summary view to browse your drive’s directory structure.
I've accidentally put TV shows in the movies category and had them not show like you describe.
At least my movies are reasonably well-catalogued. My TV shows are still a mess because of how inflexible their naming policy is.
- airPlay integration: stream to your squeeze-clients via airPlay, stream to your airPlay clients from squeezebox.
- chromeCast integration: stream to chromeCast devices from squeezeBox.
- upNp integration: stream to upNp clients.
The system was originally developed by "SqueezeBox" who also made (awesome) physical devices. SqueezeBox was acquired by Logitech many years ago. Logitech put out one or two devices before giving up, but they are actually playing really nice by continuing to support development on the server (see [0]).
[0]: https://github.com/Logitech/slimserver [1]: https://github.com/ralph-irving/squeezelite [2]: https://www.picoreplayer.org/
But, I don't regret moving my videos to JF. Plex Android app had terrible QA/QC where it would have regressions consistently every month. A bug where rewinding 30 seconds would push you forward instead of backwards would return at least 1 update every 2 months and that was frustrating.
Having said that, I keep an open mind, and every few years check out Jellyfin/Kodi etc.
btw for Android TV i would recommend installing kodi and the jellyfin plugin
jellyfin has one too and are currently in the process of getting into the official LG app store, awesome!
it was rejected a couple of times for some bugs the LG reviewers found, all of which are fixable and being worked on. looks pretty much a done deal.
Unfortunately, it's been pretty quiet the last few months after seemingly getting close to a retry in the LG store.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web/labels/p%3A%20webos
And Jellyfin has worked well. The server and clients aren't as slick as Plex but they work just fine and give me a lot more flexiblity in moving media from my home server to the van since the way they store the media metainfo is the same on the Mac OS and the RPi OS.
You pay for the privilege of having it upload your usage data to a remote server against your consent.
The only thing I missed about Plex was having Plexamp, but now there is Finamp and Gelli for Android and I wrote one called Jellyamp for desktop and now all my media needs are covered
The initial setup took a bit of work, and there are definitely some quirks, but all-in-all it's worked for me really well. I would wholeheartedly recommend both Jellyfin and Kodi for anyone interested in a HTPC/home streaming setup.
[1] https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi [2] https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp
the shim works fine. And, there appears to be a jellyfin shim in the same model.
But transcoding and trying to seek... isn't the best. At least for my macmini plex server.
I use it on an Amazon FireTV (you can download jellyfin directly from Amazon's app store, no side loading needed).
It seems to work well on that platform (at least for me).
There are also other annoyances like the player forgetting my subtitle selection when jumping to the next video of the same season of a show.
There's also no quality setting that is just "stream the source file directly". It seems to always want to transcode when embedding subtitles, which I guess is done by ffmpeg on the server but is really the player's job.
I know they're working on a new player, though it's not included in jellyfin yet.
can be problem with subtitle source?
> "codec not supported by browser"
probable problem with browser not jellyfin?
> There are also other annoyances like the player forgetting my subtitle selection when jumping to the next video of the same season of a show.
+1
> There's also no quality setting that is just "stream the source file directly". It seems to always want to transcode when embedding subtitles, which I guess is done by ffmpeg on the server but is really the player's job.
Direct source file is download button it can play in vlc, or can use FTP. why embed subtitles? here i think jellyfin use external track for subtitle (default parametres)
Unless you're very specific and consistent with your source media codecs, I highly recommend using jellyfin-mpv-shim when streaming from the browser.
You just start the headless client wherever you want to play and it comes up as a "cast target" from the icon in the top right.
Much better performance and codec support. MPV also has great subtitle control and caching.
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-mpv-shim
Also, if you haven't, it may be worth updating to the latest point release. There have been a couple of bugs that have come and gone but I think it's in a good place right now.
I don't think a new player will fix that issue, it's usually a resource problem on the server side.
There is a "stream the source directly" option, it's the default even, but only when it's possible to do so (i.e. the media is in a streaming container and not AVI or DivX). You can copy the download URL and paste it into your favorite native player if you want to force it, but that will probably lead to a full file download if the web player doesn't stream the file already. The only way I can think of to avoid this issue is to pre-transcode the media on your NAS to a streamable format.
As for the subtitles, I'm a little annoyed as well that the setting doesn't always stick (it works sometimes, which is even worse). I've never had desync issues though, that's probably more of an issue with the transcode lagging and confusing the player or just mismatched subtitle files.
There are some great efforts, the other comment linked one, but in the end forums are full of users asking for help with something not working and no getting any response. Not a situation that makes me willing to try at this time.
I wish things weren't this complex. But then I remember how much I hate autoconf/configure/libtool, and think "hmm maybe it wasn't so bad after all"
Re-implement .NET in RUST?
[1] https://support.plex.tv/articles/230934267-netgear-nighthawk...
(My NAS isn't strong enough to burn subtitles in real time. Even it does, I just cannot get the fonts to work. All CJK characters are displayed as squares.)
I switched from Emby to Jellyfin and I found them to be generally equally stable.
Currently I am finding that having MP4 files on a pen drive is actually far less hassle.
However, the TV's lack of support for MKV files is frustrating - trying to simply rewrap them as MP4 using FFMpeg doesn't seem to work for some reason.
The media server has a misconfigured path to the web server on Ubuntu, so it won't start after installation. I created a symbolic link to the web server folder. The Android client on my Xiaomi Mibox crashes after it comes to the end of every video.
I wish I could have a photo viewer where I could specify a location, and it would show me all photos in folder view, and timeline of all photos in all folders and subfolders...
(I'm the founder and solo author)
[1] https://forum.photostructure.com/t/support-reverse-geocoding...
You can use hardware decoding for free on jellyfin. It's open source. Emby is now closed source.
i know jellyfin has subtitles but i dont see filter by audio/sub language in list, and metadata is one lang only no translate for synopsis/poster
Problem is if a movie has multiple languages. A metadata filter would be better.
Looks like there is a feature request: https://features.jellyfin.org/posts/39/filter-videos-by-audi...
Yes thats my problem multiple audio or multiple subtitles. thanks for link
Still working on getting that sorted out but in the meantime I've got VLC that I can point at my HDHomerun.
Transcodes without hardware acceleration are pretty slow and the transcodes themselves aren't cached which can be a major pain, but with some effort I've managed to get hardware encoding and decoding working through Intel Quicksync (on an entirely separate device, even, through rffmpeg.py!) and things seem to be working great. The isolation Docker provides will make enabling hardware support a pain if you're using that, but if you're running the native package then I'd definitely recommend trying to get hardware acceleration support working.
Sure, having everything on local media also works, but a streaming server is definitely more convenient.