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VelociBacon posted:What's Kodi's thing? I use plex for tv/movies and Jellyfin for motorsport events/sports. Does Kodi let you set it to just display the filenames for the titles? Any specific reason for Jellyfin for sports or is it just handy separation? I'm thinking I might end up DVR'ing a bunch of next year's IndyCar season because of the time difference and Plex seems to be pretty unintuitive/poo poo at being able to handle P1/P2/P3/Q/R sessions of a weekend with F1.
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Dec 20, 2023 09:50
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Theophany posted:Any specific reason for Jellyfin for sports or is it just handy separation? I'm thinking I might end up DVR'ing a bunch of next year's IndyCar season because of the time difference and Plex seems to be pretty unintuitive/poo poo at being able to handle P1/P2/P3/Q/R sessions of a weekend with F1. I just didn't want it on plex because it would mess up the recently added filter for all the other users whenever I downloaded a race weekend.
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Dec 20, 2023 10:11
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Volguus posted:Yes, I just browse the movies folder and they're all nicely alphabetically arranged, in their own folder (in my case), ready to be played. If there is a cover image downloaded in there by the *arr app they'll show it, if not they won't. The movies don't need to be transcoded before that, it'll just play whatever format/codec they came in. Kodi will also generate cover images and episode titles itself if *arr doesn’t, if you go into the settings for the source folder and tell it what kind of media is in there it has scrapers built in. You don’t have to add it to the library thing for that part because I don’t do that either, it’s a separate option I can’t remember the specific name of but it’s in there. “Scan for new content” I think.
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Dec 20, 2023 11:28
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VelociBacon posted:What's Kodi's thing? I use plex for tv/movies and Jellyfin for motorsport events/sports. Does Kodi let you set it to just display the filenames for the titles? You add directories(*) as media libraries, and it can use imdb, themoviedb/thetvdb, or other sources (for example anidb, via a plugin) to index what you have and present it not unlike what Plex does. Unlike Plex, which expects everything to be transcoded for it, Kodi uses the same video decoding library that mpv (and vlc?) use, so it just plays files directly. Depending on how you get your sports TV, there might also be a plugin for Kodi. The killer feature, for me, is the ability to make it into a proper PVR with TVheadend as a backend which connects to my HDHomeRun DVB-C receiver that lives in the rack next to my server. This means that when I instant-record on something, it's actually TVheadend doing it - so I can just shut off the TV, and the HTPC goes into standby mode. And when I turn on the TV again, the HTPC starts up and I can play the program where I started recording. I can, of course, also schedule things either using the TVheadend web interface, or the mobile app - and via my VPN, I can even watch the TV I have at home on my phone. If you have multiple TVs with multiple HTPCs, you can even have all of them share a library - because it just uses MySQL as a backend. *: It also lets you natively browse HTTP(S) (such as RSS podcast feeds), NFS, SMB, and other shares without having to mount them in the OS (although this is done in userspace, so don't expect absolutely wild performance - although it's video and/or audio, so it probably maxes out at ~50Mbps anyway). BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 13:08
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I don't like plex but I use it. It's HTPC client is just a wrapper for mpv, and plex also apparently supports tv capture. So it can do a lot of what kodi does but you need an account and it's not open source and they keep trying to push lots of useless streaming features etc. I hope jellyfin gets better. The last time I tried it it felt quite rickety.
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Dec 20, 2023 13:37
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:Unlike Plex, which expects everything to be transcoded for it, Kodi uses the same video decoding library that mpv (and vlc?) use, so it just plays files directly. Appreciate the post about Kodi! However, this point about Plex is wrong, if I understand what you are saying correctly. Plex absolutely allows you to play files directly without transcoding. Even over the internet. It might require allowing direct play / original quality in the server and / or client, but it is capable of direct play without any transcoding.
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Dec 20, 2023 14:32
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No, *directly* directly. Plex will still always go from the app to the server (local or cloud). Jellyfin does the same, but without the cloud bloat. Kodi just plays it from the media storage almost like you would with a network sharedrive and does all the playback locally at the client. Plex and Jellyfin do this specifically so that the apps can run on minimalistic hardware like chromecasts and fire sticks.
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Dec 20, 2023 15:05
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Yeah Kodi is just opening the file like any other device on the network would. Plex wanting to charge me to use their mobile apps on my own local network killed my interest in looking into it any further than that the last time I went option shopping, so I stuck with running Kodi on appropriate single board HTPC setups for my tvs and vlc on mobile to access the network share all my poo poo lives on.
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Dec 20, 2023 15:23
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Kibner posted:Appreciate the post about Kodi! However, this point about Plex is wrong, if I understand what you are saying correctly. Plex absolutely allows you to play files directly without transcoding. Even over the internet. It might require allowing direct play / original quality in the server and / or client, but it is capable of direct play without any transcoding. Its developers and some users see that as its greatest strengths, which I don't disagree with - I just worry about the infosec aspects of it and that it's not opensource, as well as them increasingly charging for all that they can despite not having any real costs associated with actually hosting the video and such, nor any of the legal ramifications of what Plex gets used for. On Kodi, if I play a video, it issues a series of read(2) syscalls which gets translated by the VFS into reads on the NFS share, which means the files are read from the server. With Plex, the entire idea is that you have a custom daemon running on the server which interposes between the client and the storage of the server, and it's responsible for transcoding everything into h264/h265, so that all clients get the exact same datastream - even if you have the option of not doing that, that doesn't really get you anything on the thin devices, because as M_Gargantua said, Chromcasts and Firesticks, and even phones, wouldn't work - they're way too low-power to do anything but decode a h264/h265 stream in hardware (and I suspect they even offload the encryption in TLS and/or the entirety of HTTPS). Also, it occurs to me - but when Plex the company goes away, how many people will be directly impacted? I know there are people who'll be fine, because they've put in effort, but I find it hard to imagine that that's the majority. I get that I'm probably preaching to the choir here, since there's presumably a lot of overlap between folks who post here and in the self-hosting thread - but I think it's a legitimate argument against Plex. BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 17:19
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In Plex terms, the words "Direct" and "Transcode" have specific meanings that don't match the definitions you are using. I suspect some are using those terms in Plex words. https://support.plex.tv/articles/200430303-streaming-overview/ The original ask was how to share media with a friend across the internet with "minimal exposure to the internet as a whole." To me, Plex meets that requirement. I'm usually of the mindset that if someone had the ability to set up VPNs between the two, etc., then they probably would not need to ask how to achieve that. So Plex is an easy recommendation. VPNs are certainly a very valid alternative, and may even meet their requirements better if they are wanting to get that technical. As far as Plex not being open source, I would prefer it, but I don't only use FOSS software. If they go away, it is not a critical use case of mine and I think it is an acceptable risk to find a new solution at that time. Internet Explorer fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 18:05
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:Kodi's thing is being a stand-alone HTPC software that you either run on your existing machines, or set up a new one for (using something like LibreELEC - although as you might imagine, I'm using it on FreeBSD). You can think of it as a replacement for Windows Media Center - because it is, as it started life out as the XBox Media Center aka XBMC. Ah thank you for this. I don't think it'd be meaningfully better than what I'm currently doing then because if I'm at home I don't need any of these services - I prefer to just navigate to the folders and open the file with VLC.
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Dec 20, 2023 18:16
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Internet Explorer posted:In Plex terms, the words "Direct" and "Transcode" have specific meanings that don't match the definitions you are using. I suspect some are using those terms in Plex words. I honestly feel like a weirdo in looking at setting up Plex and not caring about transcode at all -- I'm single, I watch everything either on my computer or via Apple TV, and I don't watch anything remotely (when I'm on work travel, I'm usually busy / exhausted / out in a city, not watching media in the hotel room) or on my phone (small screen!). Are most people transcoding for watching on phones, or what? I imagine the resolution can be killer for upstream on a residential connection / killer on LTE, but the Apple SoCs have HW decode for ages. Am I missing something? (Also, reminder this is the NAS thread, but the overlap is such that this is almost unavoidable, but there is a Plex thread!) Slightly more NAS-topic.. I'm waiting eagerly in the mail for my SSDs and SATA DOMs so I can set up my NAS fully. I have my old drives sitting around (not powered on for 6-7 years) so once I get the new NAS up, I'm going to rescue the data I can: movax posted:FISHMANPET, they come stock in "IT" mode, no RAID firmware present. I got mine from eBay. Last powered on in 2015 or so I think. I bet the OCZ SSDs I had OpenSolaris on don't have any data left on them / are bricked at this point. The drives were a mix of the Seagate 1.5TB drives, and HGST 2 TB drives... I think I had 3x6 drive RAID-Z2s, if I recall correctly. Hoping they spin up + last long enough for me to start pulling data from... I have multiple 7.68 TB NVMe drives in my desktop I could just park data on in the meantime. I think I'll toss Plex into a container on my little Lenovo guy for now and then move it to a beefier host when the time comes -- yay Proxmox. e: Oh actually that was the first iteration of NAS... I moved it to a X58 board at some point with a i7-920, if I recall correctly. Wanted the PCIe lanes to add a 3rd HBA... movax fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 18:25
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movax posted:I honestly feel like a weirdo in looking at setting up Plex and not caring about transcode at all -- I'm single, I watch everything either on my computer or via Apple TV, and I don't watch anything remotely (when I'm on work travel, I'm usually busy / exhausted / out in a city, not watching media in the hotel room) or on my phone (small screen!). Are most people transcoding for watching on phones, or what? I imagine the resolution can be killer for upstream on a residential connection / killer on LTE, but the Apple SoCs have HW decode for ages. Am I missing something? I'm in the same boat. My take is that transcoding used to be more significant back when bandwidth was harder to come by and lots of devices weren't powerful enough to direct play. I had the same thought about a Plex thread and went to put a link in my reply and couldn't find it. Forgot it is in IYG. Not that the conversation isn't cool here from my perspective, but just in case anyone wants to get real into Plex - https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3620605
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Dec 20, 2023 18:37
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I just want to further echo that I've always felt that transcoding sucks and was only ever to make up for poor client device compatibility and poor quality mutt rips with a random grab bag of codecs and containers. If your users want to watch a 2mbps 720p stream, just get that in the first place. You won't get the extra quality hit of multiple rounds of lossy encoding, you'll save disk space, you'll reduce load on your server. I've also decided that this means I'll be skipping the move to HEVC, too many devices including browsers can't play it back and transcoding an already compressed HEVC video to H.264 looks like absolute rear end. For the small number of things I care about enough to spend my time loving with myself and ripping blus with my own two hands, I've actually been using VP9. Excellent compatibility on client devices and browsers, much better than H.264.
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Dec 20, 2023 18:47
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I only care about transcoding enough that I have a P400 in my TrueNAS Scale box assigned to the Plex container it runs. Mostly because I already had the GPU in the machine. movax: that's a fun throwback - Norco/Rosewill 20 bay case? I have* a very similar build, but with a Supermicro X8DT motherboard and two s1366 Xeons...  *It hasn't been in use for a while, used to hold 11x4TB in raid6 (mdadm), wiped the drives and pulled them out a while back, but haven't bothered actually pulling the machine apart yet.
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Dec 20, 2023 18:49
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Wibla posted:I only care about transcoding enough that I have a P400 in my TrueNAS Scale box assigned to the Plex container it runs. Mostly because I already had the GPU in the machine. Yep... RPC-4020. Honestly, I might keep the case around in the garage still... still functional, the backplanes are still solid (I think) for modern drives but it's been through many moves and has been pretty beat up over the ages. 2008-vintage I am pretty sure. The lesson learned from it was maintenance, for sure -- I just did not have the time to keep up with keeping OpenIndiana / Solaris happy, it was mostly set it and forget it, but as things started to break I just couldn't keep up. College life was very different from adult life. Hoping TrueNAS Core lessens that load for me now and I can keep it as a relatively stable appliance.
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Dec 20, 2023 18:57
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That's the one! I tried to fit 8TB drives into mine, but apparently newer high-capacity drives are taller, so that was a no-go  I never really had any problems with maintenance. Debian Linux + mdadm raid6 + XFS ... it just chugged along. Replaced two drives and added one over the life of the system, but that was entirely painless with so many drive bays available.
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Dec 20, 2023 19:25
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movax posted:Yep... RPC-4020. Honestly, I might keep the case around in the garage still... still functional, the backplanes are still solid (I think) for modern drives but it's been through many moves and has been pretty beat up over the ages. 2008-vintage I am pretty sure. Did you use SATA or SAS drives in it? I've had some real weirdness happen with SATA drives behind SAS expanders that have been hard to track down.
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Dec 20, 2023 19:27
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What kind of expanders did you run? I have one of those HP expanders and it never gave me any problems beyond being stuck at SATA1 speeds (iirc). That's using 1.5TB, 4TB and 8TB drives, though...
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Dec 20, 2023 19:32
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Twerk from Home posted:I just want to further echo that I've always felt that transcoding sucks and was only ever to make up for poor client device compatibility and poor quality mutt rips with a random grab bag of codecs and containers. Transcoding is also needed in many cases for subtitles - see Supported Subtitle Formats here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200471133-adding-local-subtitles-to-your-media/ In general, if you are your Plex server's only user then you probably don't need to think about hardware transcode because your CPU can probably handle it when it's needed anyway unless you're using an Atom or an SBC. If you want to accommodate other users, then it seems like something you may want to care about. The recommendation to "just get a 2mbps 720p stream" is odd because I want the highest quality source available to watch even if my users don't, my users may have variable preferences or use cases, and even if not I don't really want to do the work to survey my users and re-encode/re-download my media library around their format preferences. Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 20:09
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Twerk from Home posted:Did you use SATA or SAS drives in it? I've had some real weirdness happen with SATA drives behind SAS expanders that have been hard to track down. SATA -- 2TB Barracuda LPs, 5900 RPM actually (looking back in this thread). Wibla posted:What kind of expanders did you run? I have one of those HP expanders and it never gave me any problems beyond being stuck at SATA1 speeds (iirc). That's using 1.5TB, 4TB and 8TB drives, though... LSI 1068E based ones, running on the Supermicro white-box AOC card that has that IC on it. I vaguely recall being concerned about if ~2TB drives would function OK...
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Dec 20, 2023 20:19
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Newegg price chopped The Cheap Rack Case in half today; i grabbed one for the Epyc build https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-l4000u-black/p/N82E16811147327?Item=N82E16811147327
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Dec 20, 2023 20:42
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Eletriarnation posted:Transcoding is also needed in many cases for subtitles - see Supported Subtitle Formats here: https://support.plex.tv/articles/200471133-adding-local-subtitles-to-your-media/ Pretty much any media player worth a poo poo will let you turn on subtitles either embedded in the file itself or alongside it in a .srt file, that’s absolutely not a situation that requires transcoding. This sometimes causes issues in the other direction for me, where files that have been distributed with a foreign language subtitle file flagged to on/default/whatever the gently caress needs to have them turned off again manually whenever I play them if I’m using vlc device instead of one of my Kodi boxes since that doesn’t support forcing a default subtitle option 
History Comes Inside! fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 21:08
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I'm not sure if you understand what I'm saying because I'm not talking about "any media player worth a poo poo", I'm specifically talking about the Plex client which is why I linked a page from Plex's website. Here, I'll quote it for you (bolding mine):quote:Other formats such as VOBSUB, PGS, etc. may work on some Plex apps but not all. For the majority of apps, both VOBSUB and PGS subtitles will require the video to be transcoded to “burn in” the subtitles for streaming. vvv IDK man, I don't make the rules. I just paid attention when I was putting poo poo together and got a Comet Lake IGP so that I don't have to think about it.
Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 21:15
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Can they not afford to fix their app with the Plex Pass income? What a horrendous workaround.
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Dec 20, 2023 21:16
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Subs are hard. I remember back in the day loving around with VSFilter and DirectShow filters to optimize subtitle behavior... then you had all the loving crazy poo poo with SSA/rear end karaoke effects and stuff on there. It would bring P4s to their knees trying to watch anime. Some groups just ended up hardcoding the karaoke subs and sticking with simple SRTs for most of the content. The purist / completion groups (hi) would also toss in the VOBSUBs in the case of DVD Rips. SRTs were easy and worked well. No clue what the 'standard' is today. Jonny 290 posted:Newegg price chopped The Cheap Rack Case in half today; i grabbed one for the Epyc build What EPYC build are you going for (might have missed it)? Only 8x 3.5" bays though, kind of disappointing... but I see they used most of the front area for 2x 120mms. movax fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Dec 20, 2023 |
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Dec 20, 2023 21:36
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movax posted:What EPYC build are you going for (might have missed it)? Got hit by the bug and since i have to build a new computer every year and my two desktops are still Fine, i decided to rotate out the headless linux box. 7551p and asrock epycd8 board 256gb registered 2x1t SSD 10gb dual port (in the mail) overpriced 120mm noctua SP3 cooler It's a lot of fun to play with. getting it all set up today Not sure if i want to put it on NAS duties or not - i generally like having a dedicated something for storage - but it can run 8 sata ports out the miniSAS connectors, so i could do so if i wanted to.
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Dec 20, 2023 22:47
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Jonny 290 posted:Got hit by the bug and since i have to build a new computer every year and my two desktops are still Fine, i decided to rotate out the headless linux box. Aw man -- wish I had known, I think I'm going to sell my hardware off. ROMED6U, 7443P... I wanted all the PCIe for NVMe mega VM host box. But, the TDP + power consumption scared me off... I just don't need that level of RAW POWER. I think I'm gonna do a more conventional desktop Zen/Intel build in the future.
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Dec 20, 2023 23:02
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are the 7000 series epycs pretty good price now? Just thinking about my own NAS upgrade, but probably would rather go with something lower TDP if possible
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Dec 20, 2023 23:04
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priznat posted:are the 7000 series epycs pretty good price now? Just thinking about my own NAS upgrade, but probably would rather go with something lower TDP if possible eBay prices are alright but the lowest TDP Zen 3 part is like 120 W I think. I kind of pre-emptively gave up on fighting power management battles against server parts in the home use case.
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Dec 20, 2023 23:08
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Thanks Ants posted:Can they not afford to fix their app with the Plex Pass income? What a horrendous workaround. Text-based subtitles work on all supported platforms, but a lot of content instead has image-based subtitles which are not supported by a lot of TV platforms so they have to be burned in to the video stream at the server which is effectively a transcode operation. Anything sourced from a disc probably has image-based subtitles, anything sourced from TV or streaming probably has text-based subtitles. Since the TV clients are most of the reason to choose Plex over alternatives, and the TV companies have no real incentive to deliver any more capability than whatever Netflix, D+, etc. demand, I don't think there's a lot they could do there. What does annoy me is that they offer a feature to pre-transcode for lower streaming qualities, but no similar option for subtitle injection. It wouldn't be nearly as big of an annoyance if I could configure my Plex server to automatically process the movies ahead of time instead of starting to watch a movie and then having it start stumbling when someone speaks a foreign language.
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Dec 20, 2023 23:09
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priznat posted:are the 7000 series epycs pretty good price now? Just thinking about my own NAS upgrade, but probably would rather go with something lower TDP if possible Apparently they get hardware locked to a specific board vendor and it's impossible to take a CPU out of a Dell or HP you can't put it into another board, so be careful if you're sourcing a used processor.
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Dec 20, 2023 23:16
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I still feel the ideal CPU/motherboard for my NAS would be a Xeon-D 1540/41 like a supermicro X10SDV I just could never find a good enough deal for one (whenever I remembered to look, which was infrequently)
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Dec 20, 2023 23:21
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priznat posted:are the 7000 series epycs pretty good price now? Just thinking about my own NAS upgrade, but probably would rather go with something lower TDP if possible I'd go for a relatively new, cheap i5 or similar. Some caveats if you want/need ECC. QSV is amazing for transcoding. Ryzens are a lot better power-wise - when I bench-tested my Ryzen 3700X on a cheap B550 board with 32GB ram and an NVMe drive, it pulled 22W from the wall idling in proxmox.
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Dec 20, 2023 23:22
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Wibla posted:I'd go for a relatively new, cheap i5 or similar. Some caveats if you want/need ECC. QSV is amazing for transcoding. What are the ECC caveats? Doesn't every i5, i7, and i9 support ECC now? Seems like you could just use boards designed for the Xeon E-2488 and such?
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Dec 20, 2023 23:28
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Yeah the caveat is that you get to spend a fair chunk more money (At least over here in  finding boards that support ECC is a pain in the rear end, and usually quite expensive)
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Dec 20, 2023 23:29
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Yeah I'm on the fence about ECC with Unraid for myself, it would be nice buuuuut I don't know if it is worth the extra cost in my use case. Will have to see if and when I get a shopping list together though.
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Dec 20, 2023 23:37
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It should get a lot better now that the C262 chipset has actually launched as of last week.
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Dec 20, 2023 23:37
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Regarding all of the Plex talk: First, Plex is by default set to require man-in-the-middle via plex’s servers, but it is quite easy to disable this by default for local playback. As long as your router is functioning and Plex is set up correctly, it will 100% work local with no internet access. rear end/SRT are generally standard and do not require “burn-in” so they don’t need to be transcoded. Those listed sub formats are weird niche ones that aren’t used often. Plex & transcoding is all about your client rather than the server. The client has to support direct-play if the codec (for audio, video, and subtitles). For any hardware client worth a poo poo ( Apple TV, shield, etc) Plex is gonna direct play 99% of your stuff unless it has weird audio formats (even HDR is fine). The server CPU does need to keep up, but with most modern intel chips (even i3/i5) you can get away with no GPU and still transcode 4k. Plex has plenty of issues, but most of the transcoding and local access issues are based around a lack of knowledge, understanding, or good client hardware.
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Dec 20, 2023 23:53
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Pilfered Pallbearers posted:rear end/SRT are generally standard and do not require “burn-in” so they don’t need to be transcoded. Those listed sub formats are weird niche ones that aren’t used often. I'm not sure if this is determined by the source format, the ripping utility, or my Handbrake presets, but I checked just now and my Blu-Ray rip of LotR: Fellowship uses PGS subtitles. If I use the official Plex app then it doesn't need to transcode when subtitles are on but if I use app.plex.tv, it does. So, maybe no one else is ripping their entire disc library using MakeMKV or has friends who might use app.plex.tv instead of the store app but it has the potential to be relevant at least in my experience. e: It's not Handbrake since that seems to offer no ability to change subtitle format (at least, to change PGS) and I kind of doubt it's MakeMKV either since its whole shtick is that it just dumps the disc data straight to a file. Eletriarnation fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Dec 21, 2023 |
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Dec 21, 2023 00:17
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