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A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

jellyfin.org

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Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#111

Post by lost_tourist »

mmh0000 wrote: post #27

I do not understand why anyone uses Jellyfin, I've tried it twice, and it seems soo finicky and opinionated. I've always just had a Linux computer hooked up to the T.V. Add a little bit of ktorrent, VLC, and SMB. Never really had any problems with this and its much much simpler.

because it's easy for the end users. which is probably the most important feature rather than ease of control for devs. This has often been my experience in most things. They seem to be optimized for the end user and not the configurator.

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#112

Post by distract8901 »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #107
distract8901 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of reasons, but mainly that I don't consider null values to be a fault of the language. Even if it were, this doesn't solve that problem. But now we're in a situation where we still have nulls, but compiler warnings force us to decorate them and treat them the same as before. It obscures the difference between value and reference types. Plus the syntax implies Nullable , which is something everyone should have l…

Agreed that Microsoft is adding features for the sake of setting C# apart rather than making it a better language (IMO). I strongly disagree about the treatment of null values, if there's one thing I like about C# it's that (even if it's crude, it's better than Scala's way of doing it which is Maybe or Option or something, sorry, it's been a while.) Also C# doesn't 'force' you, you have to require it before it enforc…

The question mark to denote a nullable type is inherited from the .net framework days. You'd use that to mark a value type as nullable, which is syntactic sugar for Nullable. Internally, that object stores a bool for IsNull and it packs your value into an Object. When dealing with value types, this results in a copy-by-value every time you access it, which is bad in most cases.

I don't like this solution because it reuses something that I've learned is a Bad Thing. Though I'm sure the current implementation just stores a reference to the object in question.

But fundamentally, I think nulls are a good thing. Null carries information. If C/++ can handle null pointers for the last 40 years, I think C# can handle it. But then again, maybe this is a problem domain that I've just never encountered. The only problems I have with nulls is around ergonomics, but the null coalescing and safe access operators solve that for the most part. Maybe it's a bigger problem at scale, I really wouldn't know. At the scale I operate at, non-nullable reference types causes more headache than it solves problems

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#113

Post by evanreichard »

mrb wrote: post #75
hotnfresh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do kinda cheat by ensuring I never need to transcode. Clients are AppleTV or iOS devices, mostly, and support every video or audio codec I’ve got. My server’s too weak to transcode more than about DVD resolution videos at live-video speeds, is why I have to do it that way.

Do you have media with DTS (not Dolby) 5.1 audio tracks, and can Jellyfin pass it through from the AppleTV to your TV or A/V receiver?

So I have an Apple TV 4K, but I don't use the official client. I use Infuse.

The Apple TV 4K does not support DTS passthrough, but Infuse will decode DTS on the device itself and pass it through to the receiver as uncompressed lossless multi-channel LPCM. I.e. the server is not transcoding in any capacity

The biggest hurdle for Plex, Jellyfin, etc is the variability of the devices and the nuances around what they do and don't support codec wise. Your experience with GTVWCC does surprise me, though. What should be happening is "Direct stream", where it transcodes the audio and just "repackages" the video.

I just tested in Firefox w/ a video that has 5.1 DTS audio. It transcoded the audio but just repackaged the video. It does seem to have done it all at once though, so the CPU was pegged for about 2 minutes while it transcoded the full 2h30m DTS track. Afterwards CPU was idle while still watching.

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#114

Post by happymellon »

carlosjobim wrote: post #109
happymellon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I normally solve this by tethering. All these media clients support downloading too for offline usage.

To me it seems to be much more trouble than it's worth. Setting up a server and installing clients, pirating a bunch of content to put on your server. Then using the client to download files since you won't have signal (how is the tether going to have any signal?). I guess it's fun for hackers to tinker with this stuff, but just putting the file on the device like we did 12 years ago seems much easier.

The only additional step is installing a server application, you would probably have installed VLC or something to use anyway on the client. Having a box to store your stuff, ripping or downloading to it is still the same regardless of installing a client or not.

> how is the tether going to have any signal?

I have a phone plan? Your decisions would be different if you have different requirements and restrictions.

It's not like any of this requires expensive hardware, Intel Quicksync is on my £75 Wyse thin client acting as the server and can transcode perfectly for an iPhone/Android TV/etc.

Secondly, it isn't only doing those duties. It's also hooked up to stream TV so if I remember something I want to watch later it will record, and if I'm having to wait and there is nothing to read I can watch a show.

Can't do that with "putting files on a device".

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#115

Post by jethro_tell »

carlosjobim wrote: post #109
happymellon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I normally solve this by tethering. All these media clients support downloading too for offline usage.

To me it seems to be much more trouble than it's worth. Setting up a server and installing clients, pirating a bunch of content to put on your server. Then using the client to download files since you won't have signal (how is the tether going to have any signal?). I guess it's fun for hackers to tinker with this stuff, but just putting the file on the device like we did 12 years ago seems much easier.

> To me it seems to be much more trouble than it's worth.

I'm glad that use case works for you. However, an inability to imagine a usecase where that could be of value than shitting on people who say they have that use case isn't a great look.

I meets the needs of my usecase and my family. We were using plex before but since it required central login for of network use it has been on the deprecation list for me. But the exact solution is not relevant to the need and use case that makes the quite a bit less work than other options for us.

I spend quite a bit of time with my family moving between locations so, yes we have internet for that. The timing isn't always pre-planned so offline media consumption can be tough. Additionally, we may leave with a couple hours notice and spend a week or more before we come home. In which case, we'll stream media from a different location than our primary residence.

Additionally, we record/watch things off our digital tv antenna to stream when we are out of range. Which gets a little tougher for a generic fileserver.

So for us, it's quite a bit less trouble than it's worth. It's all the same things that setting up a local media setup involves with the addition of an authenticated streaming frontend that can be setup to work with multiple clients in multiple locations and multiple times.

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#116

Post by SamuelAdams »

mmh0000 wrote: post #27

I do not understand why anyone uses Jellyfin, I've tried it twice, and it seems soo finicky and opinionated. I've always just had a Linux computer hooked up to the T.V. Add a little bit of ktorrent, VLC, and SMB. Never really had any problems with this and its much much simpler.

This reminds me of the dismissive Dropbox comment. Which is now a million dollar business.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#117

Post by ncallaway »

Mindwipe wrote: post #105
ncallaway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Jellyfin quite often, for a fairly large library, and I don’t pirate anything. You can still buy physical media, and if you own that media, it’s totally legal to rip to digital storage.

Breaking DRM to rip physical media isn't legal in basically any mainstream country in the world (since membership of the WTO requires you to pass an anti-circumvention law). Heck, in major nations (like the UK) ripping unencrypted media isn't legal.

My understanding is that the librarian of Congress has granted an exemption to the DMCA anti-circumvention clause to allow ripping DVDs for non-infringing fair use purposes, including personal backups.

I am not a lawyer, though.

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#118

Post by carlosjobim »

jethro_tell wrote: post #115
carlosjobim wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems to be much more trouble than it's worth. Setting up a server and installing clients, pirating a bunch of content to put on your server. Then using the client to download files since you won't have signal (how is the tether going to have any signal?). I guess it's fun for hackers to tinker with this stuff, but just putting the file on the device like we did 12 years ago seems much easier.

> To me it seems to be much more trouble than it's worth. I'm glad that use case works for you. However, an inability to imagine a usecase where that could be of value than shitting on people who say they have that use case isn't a great look. I meets the needs of my usecase and my family. We were using plex before but since it required central login for of network use it has been on the deprecation list for me. But…

Your behaviour is the low-point of this thread, so I'm not giving you any more of my time. You're the only person "shitting on people" here.

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#119

Post by carlosjobim »

happymellon wrote: post #114
carlosjobim wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems to be much more trouble than it's worth. Setting up a server and installing clients, pirating a bunch of content to put on your server. Then using the client to download files since you won't have signal (how is the tether going to have any signal?). I guess it's fun for hackers to tinker with this stuff, but just putting the file on the device like we did 12 years ago seems much easier.

The only additional step is installing a server application, you would probably have installed VLC or something to use anyway on the client. Having a box to store your stuff, ripping or downloading to it is still the same regardless of installing a client or not. > how is the tether going to have any signal? I have a phone plan? Your decisions would be different if you have different requirements and restrictions. It…

What I mean with signal for the tether is that in the example of watching stuff on an iPad in the car, you'll probably be in places where there is no signal and then it doesn't matter if the chip is in the iPad or in your phone – you still can't get signal.

But I'm probably not the intended user for these self hosted media servers. I don't watch a ton of stuff, and what I watch is generally on YouTube.

Re: A Call for Developers – Jellyfin

#120

Post by StimDeck »

paradox460 wrote: post #80
hotnfresh wrote: post #3

I looked at adding a much-requested and not-that-hard-to-add feature a while back (allowlist-by-tag), got as far as figuring out where to add it in the server code… but bailed when I realized I’d need to shepherd PRs through at least two repos to get the feature delivered, while juggling both repos to do integration testing. Monorepos for tightly-coupled code are so nice… Maybe I’ll give it another look. [edit] incid…

Fwiw, Plex parental controls are absurdly flexible. I have it set up so the kids account can only watch things that have been given a particular tag. Due to how granular Plex tags are, this means you can give them a whole movie or TV show, some of a TV show, or a single episode As it is right now, they have access to a reasonably large corpus of content, but nothing new; every time I acquire a new episode of bluey or…

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