I want to be able to understand how to setup a Jellyfin Media Server stack. I get the general gist of some of the tools and know how to use qBittorent with Express VPN bound to it and barely got a basic Jellyfin server setup and connected to my Smart TV but that’s where my knowledge ends.
I’ve read there is so much more that can be done with the *Arrs, Docker, Jellyfin Plug-Ins and other tools but so many resources I look into are geared towards Linux not Windows so it gets confusing.
I’m looking for references to “Noob” guides for setting EVERYTHING up from square one. Things like how to layout your data effectively, understanding and using Docker for Windows if appropriate, best settings for the programs, essential Jellyfin plug-ins, renaming & scraping data for files, how manually downloaded torrent files are handled, if a stack can handle “ripped” files, etc.
Any helpful guidance would be most appreciated. Thanks kindly!
This guide made by @[email protected] is great: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/5911320
Thank you! I don’t use Linux but I will try to map it into a Windows version. It looks very comprehensive and like it covers all the bases I want. Appreciate it.
I’m sorry, I have misunderstood your post then. I didn’t realize you want to run Windows on the server, I thought you were just saying that you have no prior experience with Linux because you use Windows on the desktop.
As someone with some experience in both Linux and Windows system administration I can tell you, Windows on the server sucks.
I’d even go as far to say that Linux on servers is more noob-friendly because there are more guides, tutorials, other resources, etc. available, and people on StackExchange, in forums, chat rooms or in Lemmy communities are really helpful. The hobbyist Windows server community is much smaller and has essentially no presence here on Lemmy.Most open source software, especially piracy-related software is just assumed to be run on Linux, so there are almost never sufficient instructions for how to do something on Windows. The CLI (which you sometimes have to use for these kinds of things) is vastly different on Windows and Unix-like operating systems like Linux, macOS or BSD.
This doesn’t cover Jellyfin but the rest of the stack the gets files into it. And frankly I disagree with a number of the ways that they do things but if you want a guide that gives you a setup that works with a community that is helpful (they have a well populated discord) this is a good starting point
Jellyfin is basically install it, create a library within the app, point said library at a folder on a drive somewhere with media on it.
You generally want to follow reasonable naming conventions, eg showname.s01e01.mkv but these have gotten fairly flexible over the years. You don’t need to worry about the extra stuff like webdl.1080p.flux.proper etc, that is typically ignored, though there are always edge cases. The bigger headache is making sure your files match thetvdb or themoviedb as this is primarily what Jellyfin will use for scraping. If you use sonarr/radarr you can ensure the files are properly ordered and even rename them to scrape perfectly but this can be a headache for seeding if you torrent as renaming the files will break shit. This gets you into needing to hardlink if you want to keep things automated unless you want to manually go in and rename the files in your torrent client which is a chore, the trash guides describe how to set this up
Anime can be a chore, especially older releases, because lots of good shows were released by random people and not groups. As a result they decided to just release things with sequential numbered episodes (eg instead of s01e01,02, etc it’s just a folder with 1.mkv, 2.mkv, etc). Or they released them with episode numbering that differs from what tvdb has because they insist that some other source like anidb is gospel. Certain western shows can be a nightmare because of stuff like this too (American dad is the worst)
From there it depends on how you want to customize your Jellyfin install. I use a kodi as a front end so the only plugin I bother with is Jellyfin for kodi. But before that when I used native clients I used jelly scrub, introskipper, etc. but a lot of those plugins are redundant now because they’ve been built into native Jellyfin.
You also may need to set up transcoding. This depends on your setup. My setup direct plays everything (ugoos streaming box with Coreelec/kodi). This is really only necessary if you have a setup that benefits from the direct formats, eg a surround sound setup, oled screen that can play dolby vision or a led that can do hdr10+, etc. or if your server is really garbage and can’t handle transcoding. But really it has to truly be awful; intel quicksync going back years can handle most modern files pretty effortlessly (unless you start messing with stuff like av1 or vp9), nvidia transcoding also works fine even with relatively old cards (though using much more power by nature of needing a gpu installed). If you have an amd cpu video core next works too although quicksync is objectively superior, though not necessarily enough to justify buying a whole new setup and creating a bunch of waste when your amd rig will work well enough.
As you can see transcoding is in and of itself a diverse topic and how you set that up depends on your setup and needs: what’s your hardware, do you need tonemapping, how many concurrent streams do you anticipate having, etc.
It sounds like a lot but if you play with it for like a weekend you’ll be fine and then you’ll be free of streaming bullshit and the associated data collection
Wow, thanks for the incredible amount of information! I really appreciate it. It seems like everyone does something different and it gets to be a headache trying to find the way easiest for me. Yeah, I get what you’re saying about Anime and Toku which is a LOT of what I’m downloading. It’s a real pain, believe me. Plus, I DO want to seed as the torrent’s themselves are like 1.5Tb (seriously) and I don’t have the storage to make a copy of the data and rename. Anyway, again thanks for the input. Wish me luck!
Depends on how anal you are about file sorting. My nas is almost fully automated and for the most part I don’t really rename files except for music. That’s not renamed but it is fingerprinted and auto tagged because Jellyfin displays music based on tags and if the tags aren’t consistent and clean your library will be a goddamn mess. as a result seeding music can be a nightmare bc unlike changing filenames modifying tags changes the files hash so then you absolutely cannot seed it anymore and music trackers are generally the most anal about seeding.
Just make sure once you get a setup that works well for you that you back it up. If you’re grabbing all your media from torrents you generally can grab it again (though not always, torrents die and niche media can be impossible to find a few years later) but your Jellyfin db and config have to be set up from scratch if shit goes south
Also if you end up going with a Linux distro for Jellyfin (not a bad idea) and you run into problems just remember like 60% of the time it’s because you fucked up file permissions somehow. And if you’re using docker, which isn’t necessary but totally okay (I use it), you probably fucked up remote path mappings if things aren’t working right
Hey, thanks for all the info especially which files to backup for Jellyfin in case of data loss. That will save me a big headache. Not using Linux, gonna be Windows for me as that’s what my desktop is. Docker is probably a good ways down the road. I need to get Jellyfin just right and add all the plug-ins I might want plus get Sonarr, etc. setup also but thanks for all the information. Appreciate it!
I would approach it this way:
- Learn to configure and install Jellyfin the way you like it. You sound like you have a good start on that. JF handles metadata for you, and you can also manually match items if/when it matches up. The only extra plugins I install are some of the ones for extra metadata providers and TMDB box sets.
- Setup Jackett with the qB search so you can run manual searches for stuff against your indexers.
- If you want to use docker, learn docker. There’s a million tutorials around. You can use Docker Desktop on Windows if you want a GUI to help you out. Since docker on Windows runs on WSL2, it’s a good opportunity to mess around with Linux if you aren’t familiar.
From there you can work your way up to full automation and such if you like. I don’t think it’s necessary for most people.
As for data layout, just make some folders like movies, tv, music, etc, and lay out stuff in there logically. If you have a fancy storage setup, you might do separate shares for them, whatever works for you. Some people like to link from their “download” folder into their actual media folder to keep things clean. You can do hard and soft links on Windows with NTFS, but it’s kind of a pain.
I’ve really just needed to know how to start with the basics and grow from there IF I wanted to not because I thought I HAD to which I did. Now you’ve clarified that it’s really not a necessity that is a load off my mind. Yeah, I’m probably gonna segment my videos a little more than usual as so many of my shows are Anime or Toku that have season after season of shows but I get what you are trying to say. Thank you so much for your input!
Docker isn’t needed for Jellyfin. It can be just installed like a regular program. I don’t know about any Arr stacks but Jellyfin by default will identify and fetch metadata for any media included in its library. The library structure that I use is one folder for music, one for TV shows, and one for movies. That’s it. I just copy over manually downloaded or ripped files.
I use Linux for hosting Jellyfin but the setup was minimal, it was just some Linux specific file permission stuff. Before you get too far into it just download Jellyfin and give it a try! You might be surprised how little setup is needed.
Most of us started with the TRaSH Guides.
Also it’s not Linux or Windows; it’s Docker (which works on both Linux and Windows).
Also check out YouTube. There are a lot of great tutorials on there.
I’m going to check out the TRaSH guides. I’m using Linux and I’ve had a very difficult time getting anything set up. Plex keeps dropping my external connection and Jellyfin absolutely wouldn’t see my external drive, even after monkeying with groups and permissions. I don’t doubt that most of my issues are due to my ignorance.
What distro are you using? JF recommends Ubuntu.
FWIW, I found TechHut’s Jellyfin YouTube tutorials super easy to follow when I was just starting out. He also has a video on FStab which you might eventually find handy. I haven’t watched this stuff in long time though so it might be outdated. https://www.youtube.com/c/TechHutHD
Mint. I’ll have to check that out. I have quite a bit of music and I’d love to be able to listen wherever.
I knew absolutely nothing about this subject before the beginning of the year and now I have a server setup with proxmox an arr stack and both Plex and jellyfin running and it is all thanks to TechHut videos and guides.
He is the only person that seemed to explain things in a way that made sense for me as someone who had barely any Linux experience. The trash guides that everyone recommends I just couldn’t make much sense of.
So another vote for tech hut from me.
Not using Linux. Window 10. But, thanks, I’ll look at the vids and see if they are helpful.
