Stream movies/tv-shows/music to a browser, or a large selection of devices and services.
Jellyfin if a free media system, an alternative to proprietary Plex.
The core server side is written in C#, web client in Javascript,
and a number of other clients written in various languages and frameworks.
Starting point for me was this viggy96 repo
/mnt/
└── bigdisk/
├── tv/
├── movies/
└── music/
/home/
└── ~/
└── docker/
└── jellyfin/
├── jellyfin_cache/
├── jellyfin_config/
├── .env
└── compose.yml
/mnt/bigdisk/...- a mounted media storage sharejellyfin_cache/- cache, includes transcodesjellyfin_config/- configuration.env- a file containing environment variables for docker composecompose.yml- a docker compose file, telling docker how to run the containers
You only need to provide the two files.
The directories are created by docker compose on the first run.
A relatively simple compose.
The only atypical thing is the passthrough of the graphic card
for hardware accelerated transcoding.
In the devices section a passthrough of a graphic card is done,
/dev/dri/renderD128 refering to the first gpu of the system
In group_add section permissions are set.
You want to execute the command: getent group render | cut -d: -f3
to get the correct group number for you system and set it in.
This all can be left as is even if no gpu is planned to be used.
compose.yml
services:
jellyfin:
image: jellyfin/jellyfin:latest
container_name: jellyfin
hostname: jellyfin
restart: unless-stopped
env_file: .env
devices:
- /dev/dri/renderD128:/dev/dri/renderD128 # ls /dev/dri
group_add:
- "989" # match output of: getent group render | cut -d: -f3
volumes:
- ./jellyfin_config:/config
- ./jellyfin_cache:/cache
- /mnt/bigdisk/serialy:/media/tv:ro
- /mnt/bigdisk/filmy_2:/media/movies:ro
ports:
- "8096:8096" # webGUI
- "1900:1900/udp" # autodiscovery on local networks
networks:
default:
name: $DOCKER_MY_NETWORK
external: true.env
# GENERAL
DOCKER_MY_NETWORK=caddy_net
TZ=Europe/BratislavaAll containers must be on the same network.
Which is named in the .env file.
If one does not exist yet: docker network create caddy_net
Caddy is used, details
here.
Caddyfile
tv.{$MY_DOMAIN} {
reverse_proxy jellyfin:8096
}
Click through basic setup.
WORK IN PROGRESS
WORK IN PROGRESS
WORK IN PROGRESS
- a video file is just a bunch of pictures - frames, somehow packed in to one file.
- To save up disk space and bandwidth its compressed using some video
standard/codec.
- MPEG-2 - stuff of the past
- H.264 - the most common now
- H.265 - also called HEVC, fast spreading, 50% improved over H.264
- AV1 - the future, open codec - no licencing fees, more improvements
- Ways to transcode
- Software - cpu does the job, uses some library, it is very cpu heavy
a phone doing a software playback would either stutter, or be through the entire battery in 30 minutes. - Hardware - there is a dedicated hardware - a tiny part of a cpu/gpu/soc that is designed for just one thing - to transcode a specific video standard. That means it is extremely efficient at it.
- Software - cpu does the job, uses some library, it is very cpu heavy
- Terminology
- Decode - taking a compressed video file and turning it into a viewable format.
- Encode - compressing raw video in to a specific video format
- Transcode - converting a video format in to a different format, consists of both decode and encode steps
Ideally you deploy jellyfin somewhere with an igpu to get hardware accelerated
transcoding, but it is far from required.
For most people, majority of media will be in H.264 or H.265 which will be
direct play - no transcoding required on most devices.
Even if theres occasional need to transcode, average cpu can do one or two streams.
If you plan to serve more people and have larger library you should definitly plan to have something with igpu
The issue starts with 4k content, of which majority also uses HDR - High Dynamic Range. This is for benefit of HDR TVs, monitors, phones,... To play on non-HDR devices transcoding is always required and not just typical transcoding, but also tonemapping as trancoding HDR content without it will make colors seem heavily desaturated - washed out.
- Not all devices like phones, PCs - browsers, TVs, streaming boxes,... have build in support for all these standard.
- If video is in H.265 but firefox on linux cant decode it, jellyfin detects this and transcodes it to something that can be played.
to get "Enable Intel Low-Power H.264 hardware encoder" working
echo "options i915 enable_guc=2" > /etc/modprobe.d/i915.confmkinitcpio -P- reboot
The above compose basic setup worked for me
- ryzen 1700, headless, without any gpu
- modern intel cpus with igpu - n200, i5-125600k
- modern amd ryzens with igpu - 7700x, 5500GT
but how to setup things might change over time so one should check the official documentation
-
no real long term use
-
findroid app does not jump subtitles like official one
-
amd cpu and no gpu, so no experience with hw transcoding
-
media files are stored and shared on trunas scale VM and mounted directly on the docker host using systemd mounts, instead of fstab or autofs.
/etc/systemd/system/mnt-bigdisk.mount[Unit] Description=12TB truenas mount [Mount] What=//10.0.19.11/Dataset-01 Where=/mnt/bigdisk Type=cifs Options=ro,username=ja,password=qq,file_mode=0700,dir_mode=0700,uid=1000 DirectoryMode=0700 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
/etc/systemd/system/mnt-bigdisk.automount[Unit] Description=12TB truenas mount [Automount] Where=/mnt/bigdisk [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
to automount on boot -
sudo systemctl enable mnt-bigdisk.automount
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No playback at all but GUI works fine
Might be no access to network share, for example if dockerhost boots up faster than NAS.
Manual image update:
docker compose pulldocker compose up -ddocker image prune