I have a vps where I host a few things and I tried adding jellyfin. It worked and while scanning media railed the CPU/ram, once it was done everything was smooth. However, despite having all dependencies a bunch of videos didn’t play. I also don’t need the music and ebooks side of jellyfin as I’ll be using other things for those (funkwhale for music, still looking into the books and comics ) So, which self hosted alternatives do I have for videos and books/comic books? I need things that only do that but don’t well. The video one needs to have a client I can install on a android device I have plugged ony tv
There’s always Plex and emby, but if the videos didn’t play in jellyfin I doubt they will play in those two. You are probably lacking hardware support for the codec you’re trying to play.
It’s a vps so maybe I am indeed lacking hardware.
It’s determined by the client you’re trying to watch the file on. The server could be run on a Raspberry Pi if you always use compatible files with your client since transcoding wouldn’t be needed. The most compatible files will be x264 video and (don’t quote me here) AAC audio but modern clients can also play x265 video and stuff like EAC or AC3 audio without needing to be transcoded (converted from one format to another on the server). For ease of transcoding, a GPU works best but they can be converted strictly with CPU hardware though it’s more resource intensive.
For movies and tv shows I use Plex
Books/manga/comic books I use Kavita
Kavita is the one I was looking at as well. I hear plex is closed source and I prefer using open.
I would recommend giving kivata a try.
Can’t really speak on open source alternative for Plex though (other than jellyfin, which I haven’t used myself even). Good luck on the search!
How are you liking Kavita?
You probably just need to transcode your videos to match whatever client you’re watching on. I run jellyfin from a raspberry pi without any problem once things are encoded properly.
For books and manga I use calibre-web, having used Calibre for a while before self hosting.
This is what I suspect too. Maybe OP has a weak server or they don’t have transcoding turned on and have a file that’s incompatible with the client they’re trying to play media on.
If it doesn’t play it could means that the video codec/format isn’t supporter for streaming and it should be transcoded. But that needs a GPU and a vps doesn’t have that…
I think you could have the same problem with Plex
I actually should be able to do it. The files are hosted on a drive I have at home mounted on a raspberry pi, the drive is then mounted on the vps through sshfs, so while it would take a while I think the pi might do it. Otherwise I’ll just do it on my desktop, the drive is mounted through sshfs here too.
Out of curiosity what are your issues with jellyfin? I haven’t had any myself.
Have you tried installing Jellyfin as a docker container? The official image as well as the linuxserver.io’s image?
Plex and Emby are some alternatives, but these are closed-source solutions.
Have you tried installing Jellyfin as a docker container? The official image as well as the linuxserver.io’s image?
I tried docker, yes. I have to check if I used linuxserver.io image but I did use the official one for sure.
Plex and Emby are some alternatives, but these are closed-source solutions.
Aw heck, I’d prefer foss
The linux server image worked without issue for me.
You might have to let jellyfin finish scanning your stuff though. First time takes a bit.
Pretty sure Emby is open source since Jellyfin is a fork of it, but that also means you might run into the same issues if you try switching over.
I’d check if you have hardware transcoding turned on. If you have an intel cpu it should be enough to get things to work.
I believe Jellyfin was a fork of Emby a number of versions back originally. I’ve used Emby for some while and had no issues other than the occasional case where transcribing some ridiculous bitrate file eats up resources. Streaming to Emby (as in the cast icon) via Roku has an issue with series that have more than 100 episodes on them due to an index size issue, that might have carried over to to Jellyfin?
