This is something that’s been muddling around in my mind for a bit, in part because I now have a decent collection of DVDs, and I am starting get a digital collection of shows that are a bit hard to find. I’m also interested in the fact that there’s a TubeArchivist plugin for Jellyfin, as media archival interests me and YouTube is starting to suck with Google’s position on ad-blocking. It would be nice to be able to access this stuff anywhere as well, so creating a media/Jellyfin server seems like a good solution.
Thing is I’d rather have a physical server than pay a bunch of monthly fees for VPS hosting. Not knocking it of course, but on top of monthly fees I also have my skepticism about VPS hosts and if they’re sharing data with people regarding my use of their service.
Completely wishful thinking setup
I’m not so much of a hardware guy as I am a software guy, funnily enough, but to give you an idea of what I would like here’s my admittedly wishful thinking of what I’d like for a setup:
DragonflyBSD as the server OS, utilizing it’s HAMMER2 filesystem and swapcache as I’ve heard great things about those.
Jellyfin, obviously.
NVMe SSD storage with some level of RAID.
Intel GPU, as I’ve heard they’re very good at video decoding, but I’ve not looked into evidence of this.
Whatever CPU and RAM I can get good performance out of without wasting money.
Add it to the Wireguard network so I can watch stuff anywhere.
A few things with this:
I don’t know how up-to-date DragonflyBSD’s dport of Jellyfin is, but maybe this is something worth contributing to.
God only knows if the new Intel graphics card drivers work well on the BSDs. I know all of the BSDs basically just pull from the official Linux firmware for graphics (I think?).
I’d have to figure out if any other hardware would not play well with DragonflyBSD, probably not too big of an issue but it’s still something to look out for.
Cost of hardware.
Wrap up
Overall it probably be just me and my wife who would use the server, mostly me. Maybe some immediate family, a few friends, maybe down the line use it for kids when we have them.
If you really want Intel, just get an N100 or N300. Low power, Intel HW transcoding on iGPU on Linux kernels 6.3+, and can handle Jellyfin no problem. You can get a minipc with everything you for $175 for a no name brand, or maybe $250 for a more well-known brand.
Feels like some of that stuff, like the SSD’s are a bit overkill for a media server. Most of them still use spinning disks to maximize size vs. cost.
Additionally, the CPU/GPU needs of a media server are pretty minor, unless you need to transcode on the fly, and even then, single streams aren’t very intensive either.
So unless you’re capping the outgoing bandwidth to multiple external sources, you’re most likely just streaming the video source as-is to the destination, which just needs a stable network stream. If you don’t need to transcode at all, you don’t really even need a GPU on the hardware.
I’m beginning to realize I haven’t looked into this as much as I should’ve. 😅 So for most people, with what @AtariDump@lemmy.world has mentioned, a raspberry pi with 1 or multiple hard drives (if you really want) is a good start.
Price in a backup solution too, you don’t want to have all your movies disappear because of one hard drive crash, or an accidental reformat gone wrong.
Basically anything will work if you pop an Intel A380 in there and set up hardware encoding.
Honestly, a decently fast CPU with QuickSync will work just fine without a GPU. Something like a mini PC with an Intel N100 would work great.
There’s also no reason to use an NVMe RAID. Either just buy a big NVMe or use a HDD raid. Either way, have a backup solution if that’s what you’re going for, cause RAID is not backup.
As far as BSD, I have no idea if that will work. I guess if it runs Docker, you can use the Jellyfin Docker image. What makes you want to use it over Linux?
It’s the interest in how well the HAMMER2 filesystem works for everyday storage, as well as how swapcache performs. Not much besides that, plus I’ve generally decent experiences with Net and OpenBSD.
Even though there are builds available online for these platforms, they are unofficial and from a separate project. If you do encounter issues on these platforms, please ask for support in their respective support channels first.
If all you’re looking to do is setup a Jellyfin server that won’t do any transcoding, you could very easily use a raspberry pi with an external Hard Drive.
Ah, okay. So, if I understand correctly, unless I’m trying to have Jellyfin do what YouTube does with offering multiple resolutions and bitrates for video, I don’t need to bother with looking for a GPU that’s good at video transcoding?
If you want to serve multiple resolutions and bitrates you will probably want hardware that can do transcoding. However basically any graphics card (even integrated) will be able to transcode a video stream in real-time at a decent quality.
(If you wanted you can try to pre-transcode offline, but Jellyfin doesn’t support this well)
Hardware support can be a bit of an issue with bsd in my experience. But if you’re asking for hardware it doesn’t take as much as you may think for jellyfin.
It can transcode just fine with Intel quic sync.
So basically any moden Intel CPU or slightly older.
What you need to consider more is storage space for your system and if your system will do more than just Jellyfin.
I would recommend a bare bones server from super micro. Something you could throw in a few SSDs.
If you are not too stuck on bsd maybe have a look at Debian or proxmox. Either way I would recommend docker-ce. Mostly because this particular jellyfin instance is very well maintained.
Not really. It’s more out of the curious of how DragonflyBSDs HAMMER2 filesystem works. I’ve good things about it and ZFS on FreeBSD. ZFS on Linux I’ve heard is still getting up to where it is on FreeBSD.
That’s somewhat true. However, the hardware support in bsd especially around video has been blah. If you are interesting in playing with zfs on linux I would recommend proxmox. That particular os is one of the few that allows you to install on a zfs rpool from the installer. Proxmox is basically a debian kernel that’s been modified a bit more for virtualization. One of the mods made was including zfs support from the installer.
Depending on what you get if you go the prox route you could still install bsd in a vm and play with filesystem. You may even find some other methods to get jellyfin the way you like it with lxc, vm, or docker.
I started out on various operating systems and settled on debian for a long time. The only reason I use prox is the web interface is nice for management and the native zfs support. I change things from time to time and snapshots have saved me from myself.
Slightly unrelated, but one of my recommendations would be to buy a VPN for a month and download all the movies instead of ripping DVDs. Unless you care about the extras of course.
I’ve recently digitized my DVD collection with MakeMKV(best tool for this) and boy is it hit and miss quality wise. Some are very watchable on a 1080p tv, while others look like a pixel mess. And I’m not that much of a purist when it comes to quality. But DVD is 480p (which is watchable) but when the movie is made from a VHS copy (which happened sometimes back then) it is… an unpleasant watching experience
Also, mpeg2(which dvds are encoded in) are huge filesize wise for what quality they offer.
AND mpeg2 is not supported by stuff like a chromecast…so not great.
I, as a European, had double trouble: our PAL dvd movies actually run slightly faster than American dvd’s, so most subs found online simply won’t synchronize. So that meant ripping the subs, converting them to a sensible format, finding all the spelling mistakes from converting… A pain.
If I’d do it over again, I’d pay 5 bucks for a VPN and download some bluray rips. Even stuff that is deemed low quality by the pirate community (YIFY rips) are better AND 1/4th the size than your DVD rips will ever be.
You could go the ISO route, which preserves the menus. You can open ISO files with Kodi.
Or rip your dvds if you want to make sure it’s all legal. You do you 😜
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If you really want Intel, just get an N100 or N300. Low power, Intel HW transcoding on iGPU on Linux kernels 6.3+, and can handle Jellyfin no problem. You can get a minipc with everything you for $175 for a no name brand, or maybe $250 for a more well-known brand.
Didn’t think about that either. I’m finding I didn’t give this as much thought as I should’ve.
But why do that when I could spend +$600? 😜
I have a few random brand ones that run just fine. Just keep backups.
Feels like some of that stuff, like the SSD’s are a bit overkill for a media server. Most of them still use spinning disks to maximize size vs. cost.
Additionally, the CPU/GPU needs of a media server are pretty minor, unless you need to transcode on the fly, and even then, single streams aren’t very intensive either.
So unless you’re capping the outgoing bandwidth to multiple external sources, you’re most likely just streaming the video source as-is to the destination, which just needs a stable network stream. If you don’t need to transcode at all, you don’t really even need a GPU on the hardware.
I’m beginning to realize I haven’t looked into this as much as I should’ve. 😅 So for most people, with what @AtariDump@lemmy.world has mentioned, a raspberry pi with 1 or multiple hard drives (if you really want) is a good start.
Price in a backup solution too, you don’t want to have all your movies disappear because of one hard drive crash, or an accidental reformat gone wrong.
RAID is not a backup.
Good point. So what we’re really talking about then is
That would be a great platform to start with.
Agreed
Hey, it happens. That’s why it’s great to be able to ask others for suggestions :)
Why NVME for storage? Why not NVME for OS and Hard Drives for storage?
Great point. I don’t know why I didn’t think about that.
Video serving is a very sequential workload so hard drives will be more than sufficient and you can typically get storage at a lower price.
SSD may give you slightly faster start and seeking but it is unlikely to be noticeable.
Agreed, you’re probably going to run into network bottlenecks before storage read times become an issue
Basically anything will work if you pop an Intel A380 in there and set up hardware encoding.
Honestly, a decently fast CPU with QuickSync will work just fine without a GPU. Something like a mini PC with an Intel N100 would work great.
There’s also no reason to use an NVMe RAID. Either just buy a big NVMe or use a HDD raid. Either way, have a backup solution if that’s what you’re going for, cause RAID is not backup.
As far as BSD, I have no idea if that will work. I guess if it runs Docker, you can use the Jellyfin Docker image. What makes you want to use it over Linux?
It’s the interest in how well the HAMMER2 filesystem works for everyday storage, as well as how swapcache performs. Not much besides that, plus I’ve generally decent experiences with Net and OpenBSD.
https://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/
I don’t think that should worry you for what you want to do with it. Ext4 or btrfs will work fine for your use case.
Does Jellyfin support BSD?
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/
As the project mentions:
This that project:
https://github.com/Thefrank/jellyfin-server-freebsd
So, not officially.
Which would be enough for me to not use an officially unsupported OS.
If all you’re looking to do is setup a Jellyfin server that won’t do any transcoding, you could very easily use a raspberry pi with an external Hard Drive.
https://xyproblem.info/
Ah, okay. So, if I understand correctly, unless I’m trying to have Jellyfin do what YouTube does with offering multiple resolutions and bitrates for video, I don’t need to bother with looking for a GPU that’s good at video transcoding?
Pretty much, so long as your clients support the
bitrate and resolution. (As others have said)see belowIf you want to serve multiple resolutions and bitrates you will probably want hardware that can do transcoding. However basically any graphics card (even integrated) will be able to transcode a video stream in real-time at a decent quality.
(If you wanted you can try to pre-transcode offline, but Jellyfin doesn’t support this well)
Hardware support can be a bit of an issue with bsd in my experience. But if you’re asking for hardware it doesn’t take as much as you may think for jellyfin.
It can transcode just fine with Intel quic sync.
So basically any moden Intel CPU or slightly older.
What you need to consider more is storage space for your system and if your system will do more than just Jellyfin.
I would recommend a bare bones server from super micro. Something you could throw in a few SSDs.
If you are not too stuck on bsd maybe have a look at Debian or proxmox. Either way I would recommend docker-ce. Mostly because this particular jellyfin instance is very well maintained.
https://fleet.linuxserver.io/image?name=linuxserver/jellyfin
Not really. It’s more out of the curious of how DragonflyBSDs HAMMER2 filesystem works. I’ve good things about it and ZFS on FreeBSD. ZFS on Linux I’ve heard is still getting up to where it is on FreeBSD.
That’s somewhat true. However, the hardware support in bsd especially around video has been blah. If you are interesting in playing with zfs on linux I would recommend proxmox. That particular os is one of the few that allows you to install on a zfs rpool from the installer. Proxmox is basically a debian kernel that’s been modified a bit more for virtualization. One of the mods made was including zfs support from the installer.
Depending on what you get if you go the prox route you could still install bsd in a vm and play with filesystem. You may even find some other methods to get jellyfin the way you like it with lxc, vm, or docker.
I started out on various operating systems and settled on debian for a long time. The only reason I use prox is the web interface is nice for management and the native zfs support. I change things from time to time and snapshots have saved me from myself.
Slightly unrelated, but one of my recommendations would be to buy a VPN for a month and download all the movies instead of ripping DVDs. Unless you care about the extras of course.
I’ve recently digitized my DVD collection with MakeMKV(best tool for this) and boy is it hit and miss quality wise. Some are very watchable on a 1080p tv, while others look like a pixel mess. And I’m not that much of a purist when it comes to quality. But DVD is 480p (which is watchable) but when the movie is made from a VHS copy (which happened sometimes back then) it is… an unpleasant watching experience
Also, mpeg2(which dvds are encoded in) are huge filesize wise for what quality they offer. AND mpeg2 is not supported by stuff like a chromecast…so not great.
I, as a European, had double trouble: our PAL dvd movies actually run slightly faster than American dvd’s, so most subs found online simply won’t synchronize. So that meant ripping the subs, converting them to a sensible format, finding all the spelling mistakes from converting… A pain.
If I’d do it over again, I’d pay 5 bucks for a VPN and download some bluray rips. Even stuff that is deemed low quality by the pirate community (YIFY rips) are better AND 1/4th the size than your DVD rips will ever be.
You could go the ISO route, which preserves the menus. You can open ISO files with Kodi.
Or rip your dvds if you want to make sure it’s all legal. You do you 😜