The original post: /r/piracy by /u/Mrsum10ne on 2024-12-19 20:13:20.
I'm wanting to set up a local server to connect to to stream my archived content to. From what I have found Jellyfin is likely the best program for it. I've read through some of the well written guides on it, but still have a few questions.
First, the consensus seems to be that the server doesn't need to be that powerful. Most guides say a cheap/old pc will work fine, some even saying raspberry pi can handle it. The only exception being for transcoding, which prefers to use a gpu to prevent the cpu from being overworked. How often is transcoding needed? as I understand it that is switching formats right? eg .webm to .mp4 right? is this needed if I consistently stick to a certain format? And if I do want to include transcoding capabilities in my set up, if I use a raspberry pi how do I get that to use a gpu? I've never worked with a raspberry pi, but looking them up they lack a pcie connection for a gpu. I have an old nvidea ... 2600 or 1600 or something I can't remember its a few gens old though. It is a small gpu by today's standards, but still much larger than a raspberry pi so if I were to utilize it in this setup I have no idea spatially how I set it up. If I should just build a little mini pc thats fine too, I'm no stranger to that I'm just not sure what is overkill/waste of money for this kind of project.
Along with the gpu confusion, the raspberry pi only has usb connections. Wouldn't a SATA connected harddrive (requiring a proper motherboard) be better? or does the difference in performance not really matter? Last hardware question, for those who have an actual computer set up, do you use a RAID set up? Or is that overkill since for most content it can be reacquired if corrupted/lost?
Second, can I copy/download content from my Jellyfin server to a device (ie laptop, ipad, iphone, etc) for offline viewing? I'm sure there is a way to vpn to my server if I am no longer on my local network, and I can think of many convoluted ways to get the content from that server to these devices (apple is annoying for these workarounds), but if they have a native way to download that would be amazing.
Finally, the jellyfin site and mentions in the reddit threads I've gone through seem to only focus on video content. Can this also hold/deliver other forms of media? If I put books (pdf, epub, etc) or audio books (mp3 and I can't even remember what other file formats) can I connect to the server from my iphone and copy those files from the server to the device? Again I single out apple because they make these things difficult. I'm sure from a pc is as easy connecting and downloading. But does Jellyfin work with these media types or is that going to require just connecting to the computer and file transferring?