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Media servers experiments

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yui:
Hello, i have started experimenting with media servers on VMs so far i have managed to get Plex MS, UMS and minidlna to work, the snag with all the others is that my servers are headless. do you have any suggestions of others to try, or ways of making those that do not do?

honestly i rather have something opensource and only tried Plex because a friend of mine had problem with it on his windows machine and asked me to try on linux before he went that way.

findings thus far:
-Plex MS: works very well when it does, required 3 reboots before understanding it was a server and not a rendered though, can be installed through APT.
-Universal Media Server: works pretty well, the web app fails on empty categories and OGG files (treats them as videos) though and the UI can be improved but is better than Plex at understanding what that it is a server and with library scanning.
-minidlna: extremely minimalist, only a DLNA/uPnP server, does not have a web app but works rather well, edit: i only tested on my PC, it actually also requires X11 and Wayland even though it is only a gui-less server (explanation i got is that it uses FFPMEG), can be installed through APT.
-Gerbera: requires X11 to be installed, very bare-bone web UI, at least when using the version from the default apt repo, no player or configuration assistant, only a file browser, can be installed through APT.
-Kodi: for some reasons included in all the media servers list online, could not find how to set it up as an headless server
-MediaPortal: seems Windows only, so could not go further
-Jellyfin: requires X11 to be installed, the web UI is very close to Plex's and worked 1st try, and allows custom named library, that neither UMS or Plex seems to do, or at least not that i could find easily. edit: got nonsense errors, when it loses the files it says that the player is incompatible, a library re-scan fixes it though, can be installed through APT.
-Navidrome: requires X11 to be installed, and so far the only one with web player to not be able to either find its own album art or use the cover.jpg in the album folder, and also is the only one without uPnP if it matters, fairly slow refresh too but plays fast, and does not error out at all when it loses its media folder. also very low resource usage compared to all the other web enabled servers, can be installed through APT. (thx foxieze for the suggestion)

so far the media servers with web interfaces get limited by memory 1st and foremost.

specs of my VMs:
-1cpu 2cores Core2Duo
-2GB ram
-virtioSCSI 32GB drive on local SAS drive array
-virtio Ethernet controller bridged
-Debian 11 minimal install with SSH server

I will try to complete the list of findings as i go, and integrate findings of others too if possible.
Thanks

Leslieann:
Headless media server, is this only audio?

If it's only audio why even use a media server, go old school and auto start a media player like VLC with a playlist.

yui:
to be honest my server is mostly for audio, to serve all my music and few films from one unified and central service to all compatible devices on the network. and i went past the OGG limitation by starting to re-download in flac from BC and re-ripping my CDs.
part of it is also that i have built myself a virtualization server and want to use it :) and that i have friends with huge (12+TB, mostly manga and series from what i am told) media libraries that asked me advice on building a media server so i feel i should experiment a bit.
and i feel like there should be more than 2 players in that space, so it is why i ask for advice on a forum where i know there are quite a few power users that may have more experience than i do :)

foxieze:
If you're just looking for audio streaming, then Navidrome is widely regarded as the best option nowadays. However, if you also want to stream video then Jellyfin is a popular open-source alternative to Plex.

yui:

--- Quote from: foxieze on Tue, 15 March 2022, 01:54:18 ---If you're just looking for audio streaming, then Navidrome is widely regarded as the best option nowadays. However, if you also want to stream video then Jellyfin is a popular open-source alternative to Plex.

--- End quote ---
thanks for the suggestion, so far Jellyfin is my favorite even with its shortcomings seems to be the best overall so far :) navidrome is an interesting beast, a simplified version of plex/jellyfin with a slightly upgraded audio player and slightly downgraded settings panel, and much lighter memory usage.
so far 5 VMs

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