I have both technically running. The metadata matching on jellyfin is complete ass, so I have to manually match up like a third of my library, or reconfigure the files (absolutely not happening) which I just dgaf enough to do when vanishingly few people would be able to use it, so its only partially set up. It also can’t be accessed by anyone because I’m not dumb enough, nor smart enough, to open it up to the internet (I don’t know how to do it safely and I’m thus entirely not interested in trying).
Plex, by contrast, is already configured (and if I have to scrap the library and start over, as I’ve done several times, its pretty easy to reconfigure), the metadata linking is correct and automatic most of the time, everyone already has access to it, and it just works for them, and thus for me. I’m not giving it up just because a bunch of hyper-nerds on the internet say it’s bad for, frankly, nonsense reasons that don’t apply or matter to me or honestly most people who use it. I’ll wait until it -actually- is bad for my use, or until jellyfin serves the use I have for it, which it absolutely does not do presently, and may never. (And no, a vpn or whatever setup is not a solution, it’s just one more thing to maintain and fuck with constantly to keep it working for people who don’t even know what a vpn is. Hard pass.)
I wouldn’t pay for plex now, nor in the last several years, and I strongly discourage my users from doing so, but spent money is spent, so might as well keep using what I paid for until it doesn’t work for me anymore. I mean really, why not? I genuinely haven’t seen any valid reasons to get rid of it, and lots of reasons to keep it.
The metadata matching on jellyfin is complete ass, so I have to manually match up like a third of my library
Does Plex somehow do a better job of figuring out special features metadata? Because other than that, you follow the naming schemes, and Jellyfin has had a 100% hit rate for me.
I’m not really sure what you mean by special feature in this context, but plex pulls the meta largely without needing to rename files (some exceptions, but they are very obvious, like if there’s words/numbers before the title for some reason, like when I ripped my 13 hours of classic monster movies and they were numbered), and it usually doesn’t care about extra stuff like encoding info and whatnot. Hardly need to manually match anything when it gets added, and never need to manually match shows. Handfull of stuff if I rebuild the server from scratch, but those files mostly don’t have metadata to begin with (some youtube rips, some documentaries that probably came out of a series, that sort of thing). It just seems to be a lot more forgiving, I guess.
I’m just not super interested at the moment in going through my entire library, which would take half of forever, to rename everything to make it work properly. Especially when I already did/do that for plex’s requirements, and it works fine. I assumed when I set jellyfin up it would pull the same, but it doesn’t, in my experience.
Genuinely don’t know how to set those things up, and “my personal IT” doesn’t know either because they also have limited docker experience, and no media management experience, the media stuff is my contribution, and I do it painfully manually (i like curating, so its largely fine, but its painfully manual). i’ve been looking into it on and off for a hot minute. But I have zero docker experience which is the main way those things are done afaik.
If you know of a good guide for those things, one that doesn’t assume you are a whiz with docker already, I’d be interested. Personal IT person does security and used to sysadmin, so I’m sure they could figure it out if i can’t, but we haven’t found any particularity good guides for it that were digestible without the background knowledge. Something neither of us has any other reason to learn, so hasn’t been done.
I found the guides overwhelming too at the start, but then I skipped them and just went for it with a simple container in a compose file (doesn’t even have to be sonarr).
The benefit of containerisation is that if you break it, it’s simple to remove the container, delete the config folder and start again without affecting your system. Give it fake data files to munch on and it’s unlikely to ruin anything if you muck it up.
So I did that a few times until I got the basic relationship between the docker compose file and the functions of the program. THEN I looked up some guides on the arrs and saw I needed to structure the volumes better, but that’s fine because I could wipe clean and go again.
Only when it worked predictably and I understood it did I let it loose on my library.
The good news is that if you figure Sonarr out, Radarr is almost exactly the same. As are all the arrs.
And then if you need some of them to route through a VPN container, that’s just one line in the file. And so on. Before you know it there are 20+ services and they’re easily managed.
So from services on a single compose, I can mark a show to follow, it’ll automatically download on release, rename itself, any extraneous subtitles and audio tracks removed, ingest to the media server, and delete the files when they’ve been watched. Basically, all I do is ask for the show and watch it. Everything else is automatic.
Im the sort of person why plex is still a big thing. Just enough knowledge, but not enough for all the things.
I know docker isn’t the only option (idk if thats what you mean) but idk any of what you proposed as alternative. Ill send this to IT person, maybe they’ll get it, but i don’t :) i want to get the things, but i don’t have the background knowledge to make them digestible. Have a degree in technical communication, so very good at learning, more for science than tech, unless I can find a good tech guide first and then I’m great (but tech people are notoriously shit at documentation for anyone even remotely lacking in tech skill)
I meant in the use case of ripping my entire Blu Ray library for a new Jellyfin install, the only thing that’s been difficult for me to match has been the special features. So I guess the friction you’re running into is that you’ve already got these files named for Plex, and the migration is the hard part?
Sort of, I guess? It probably would be very different if I’d been naming them in a way that works for jelly from the start, but it’s just a massive undertaking at this point to… retrofit, for lack of a better term coming to mind.
I was under the impression they used the same agent for metadata, but they must not, or there must be some changes in how Plex handles stuff.
Good to know, I’ll have to look into that. I’d like my jelly set up for the very few highly technical people I know who can manage their own connections (I got my limited technical skills somewhere!!), as well as my own home use, so thats helpful. Also to have a backup option for the person I care enough about to manage a VPN for (literally one person, but I also want them to have access to my calibre database as well as share folders for GOG games, and they are with it enough to learn what I teach them for maintaining the connection)
Im not sure exactly when I became a data hoarder, but I certainly am now, and more tools are good. Thanks for that info :)
I have both technically running. The metadata matching on jellyfin is complete ass, so I have to manually match up like a third of my library, or reconfigure the files (absolutely not happening) which I just dgaf enough to do when vanishingly few people would be able to use it, so its only partially set up. It also can’t be accessed by anyone because I’m not dumb enough, nor smart enough, to open it up to the internet (I don’t know how to do it safely and I’m thus entirely not interested in trying).
Plex, by contrast, is already configured (and if I have to scrap the library and start over, as I’ve done several times, its pretty easy to reconfigure), the metadata linking is correct and automatic most of the time, everyone already has access to it, and it just works for them, and thus for me. I’m not giving it up just because a bunch of hyper-nerds on the internet say it’s bad for, frankly, nonsense reasons that don’t apply or matter to me or honestly most people who use it. I’ll wait until it -actually- is bad for my use, or until jellyfin serves the use I have for it, which it absolutely does not do presently, and may never. (And no, a vpn or whatever setup is not a solution, it’s just one more thing to maintain and fuck with constantly to keep it working for people who don’t even know what a vpn is. Hard pass.)
I wouldn’t pay for plex now, nor in the last several years, and I strongly discourage my users from doing so, but spent money is spent, so might as well keep using what I paid for until it doesn’t work for me anymore. I mean really, why not? I genuinely haven’t seen any valid reasons to get rid of it, and lots of reasons to keep it.
Does Plex somehow do a better job of figuring out special features metadata? Because other than that, you follow the naming schemes, and Jellyfin has had a 100% hit rate for me.
I’m not really sure what you mean by special feature in this context, but plex pulls the meta largely without needing to rename files (some exceptions, but they are very obvious, like if there’s words/numbers before the title for some reason, like when I ripped my 13 hours of classic monster movies and they were numbered), and it usually doesn’t care about extra stuff like encoding info and whatnot. Hardly need to manually match anything when it gets added, and never need to manually match shows. Handfull of stuff if I rebuild the server from scratch, but those files mostly don’t have metadata to begin with (some youtube rips, some documentaries that probably came out of a series, that sort of thing). It just seems to be a lot more forgiving, I guess.
I’m just not super interested at the moment in going through my entire library, which would take half of forever, to rename everything to make it work properly. Especially when I already did/do that for plex’s requirements, and it works fine. I assumed when I set jellyfin up it would pull the same, but it doesn’t, in my experience.
Just let Sonarr/Radarr do the renaming automatically.
Genuinely don’t know how to set those things up, and “my personal IT” doesn’t know either because they also have limited docker experience, and no media management experience, the media stuff is my contribution, and I do it painfully manually (i like curating, so its largely fine, but its painfully manual). i’ve been looking into it on and off for a hot minute. But I have zero docker experience which is the main way those things are done afaik.
If you know of a good guide for those things, one that doesn’t assume you are a whiz with docker already, I’d be interested. Personal IT person does security and used to sysadmin, so I’m sure they could figure it out if i can’t, but we haven’t found any particularity good guides for it that were digestible without the background knowledge. Something neither of us has any other reason to learn, so hasn’t been done.
I found the guides overwhelming too at the start, but then I skipped them and just went for it with a simple container in a compose file (doesn’t even have to be sonarr).
The benefit of containerisation is that if you break it, it’s simple to remove the container, delete the config folder and start again without affecting your system. Give it fake data files to munch on and it’s unlikely to ruin anything if you muck it up.
So I did that a few times until I got the basic relationship between the docker compose file and the functions of the program. THEN I looked up some guides on the arrs and saw I needed to structure the volumes better, but that’s fine because I could wipe clean and go again.
Only when it worked predictably and I understood it did I let it loose on my library.
The good news is that if you figure Sonarr out, Radarr is almost exactly the same. As are all the arrs.
And then if you need some of them to route through a VPN container, that’s just one line in the file. And so on. Before you know it there are 20+ services and they’re easily managed.
So from services on a single compose, I can mark a show to follow, it’ll automatically download on release, rename itself, any extraneous subtitles and audio tracks removed, ingest to the media server, and delete the files when they’ve been watched. Basically, all I do is ask for the show and watch it. Everything else is automatic.
I understood about a third of that tbh.
Im the sort of person why plex is still a big thing. Just enough knowledge, but not enough for all the things.
I know docker isn’t the only option (idk if thats what you mean) but idk any of what you proposed as alternative. Ill send this to IT person, maybe they’ll get it, but i don’t :) i want to get the things, but i don’t have the background knowledge to make them digestible. Have a degree in technical communication, so very good at learning, more for science than tech, unless I can find a good tech guide first and then I’m great (but tech people are notoriously shit at documentation for anyone even remotely lacking in tech skill)
I meant in the use case of ripping my entire Blu Ray library for a new Jellyfin install, the only thing that’s been difficult for me to match has been the special features. So I guess the friction you’re running into is that you’ve already got these files named for Plex, and the migration is the hard part?
Sort of, I guess? It probably would be very different if I’d been naming them in a way that works for jelly from the start, but it’s just a massive undertaking at this point to… retrofit, for lack of a better term coming to mind.
I was under the impression they used the same agent for metadata, but they must not, or there must be some changes in how Plex handles stuff.
Gotcha. I hear you can run a utility outside of Plex to do the conversion, but I do have the luxury in this case of starting from scratch, myself.
Good to know, I’ll have to look into that. I’d like my jelly set up for the very few highly technical people I know who can manage their own connections (I got my limited technical skills somewhere!!), as well as my own home use, so thats helpful. Also to have a backup option for the person I care enough about to manage a VPN for (literally one person, but I also want them to have access to my calibre database as well as share folders for GOG games, and they are with it enough to learn what I teach them for maintaining the connection)
Im not sure exactly when I became a data hoarder, but I certainly am now, and more tools are good. Thanks for that info :)