Mediaserver - Jellyfin

W...I...P...

Proven on:

11 (bullseye)

(Including as a LXC!)

Requirements

Jellyfin is not particularly resource hungry in general.

I've found that the most common "slowdowns" are caused be library scanning. If you add a whole lot of media to the libraries at once, (like multiple TB...) it'll bog down for a long time.

Current testbed:

• Debian LXC
  • CPU: 4 cores
  • RAM: 2048MB
  • DISK: 64GB

I'm actually running it live on a Debian VM, but the testbed is being used to write this page...

Current Live Server:

• Debian 11 Minimal
  • CPU: 2 sockets, 4 cores each
  • RAM: 16GB
  • DISK: 64GB

Playing back a 1080p HEVC video in the web client seems to use ALL of the CPU. No difficulty with the playback, but it grabs the CPU puts it to use.

Installation

• sudo apt install curl gnupg
• curl https://repo.jellyfin.org/install-debuntu.sh | sudo bash

Pretty hard... eh?

Storage

Personally, I like to use NFS for my data storage needs.

You could simply try to give the media server enough local storage for ALL of your media, but, how much storage will you eventually need? (Hint: More than you think...)

Locally, I actually have my live PVE servers set up to share data drives via NFS (They each have 8 hot-swap bays in them & only one is being used for PVE, So 7 big data drives each...)

The media server(s) mount NFS shares from the main servers under /mnt

• /mnt/TV
• /mnt/MOVIES
• /mnt/MUSIC
• /mnt/OtherStuff

Initial Configuration

1. Browse to http://MEDIASERVER:8096
   • (Replace MEDIASERVER with the IP or FQDN of your server...)
2. Follow the prompts
   • (Admin user will be able to manage the server through the WEB UI)

Setting Up Your Media libraries

This is a BIG & heavily debated topic...

Gonna take a while to write up MY thoughts on it.

Useful Configurations

User Options

(click the little person icon top right or, the hamburger top left then "User" / "Settings"...)

Playback

• Turn on "Prefer fMP4-HLS Media Container" if you tend to use HEVC for media.
• "Play next episode automatically" seems to default to ON...

Subtitles

• apparently ON by default...
  • Set "Subtitle mode:" to "None"

Addons & Extra Features

(Hamburger icon, "Administration" / "Dashboard" then "Plugins")

I like the "TheTVDB" plugin. (In the catalogue...)

One of the nice features it adds is Missing Episode information.

• Enable TVDB-addon
• Client: Settings -> Display -> Display missing episodes within their series
• Server: Dashboard -> Libraries -> Manage Library -> Metadata downloaders: check: Missing Episode Fetcher
• Next time Metadata gets refreshed, missing episodes will appear in the listings.

Some Useful Links

• Using Jellyfin
• Installation
• Jellyfin Documentation
  • Hardware Acceleration
  • Codec Support