Media servers experiments

[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]

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.

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

[1391401]

I'm a plex user - I have it running on a raspberry pi on my network and so far I am pretty satisfied with it.  I transitioned to plex from google music when they shut that service down.

The main thing I like about plex is that there are apps that work really well on my Android phone and my Chromecast connected to my TV.  Also it has its own built-in reverse proxy (or something that functions like it) so I don't have to do any advanced network configurations to expose my server and I can listen to music on the go.

I currently store flac music backups I ripped from my CDs and am starting to use it for movies I backed up off my blurays too.

The experience of using and loving google music combined with never being able to find the movie I want to see on the streaming services I owned has lead me down the path of also hosting my own media thing.  For now plex is definitely my go-to.

[PaulTate222]

You'll need to post a bit more about your needs but to follow up with the great response before mine there, FMS and WMS have quite a different set of functionality going for each of them.

For FMS, you've got Adobe behind it with their millions and millions towards not only FMS and the Flash player too to sync with features in FMS. FMS will always have the best features available from the beginning. Going with the Interactive version you can do a lot of powerful things like build conference-style apps, games, video players, and live interactive apps with a combination of live video and audio of all kinds. The streaming version which is cheaper at 995 USD just streams video. Look for the solution here.

Wowza is very powerful and they are making great progress with their feature set. The main difference between the two is that Wowza is a Java-based socket server, and FMS is C# I think. Wowza will work on more platforms and serve video to more platforms. The server-side coding environment is more powerful and they are constantly working on updates and features and pushing them out to the public. Wowza is small though, meaning that you don't have the big gorilla that Adobe is pushing the product along. I do have to say though that the owners and developers are very passionate about their product. Well worth looking in to.

[Darthbaggins]

I personally have stuck with Plex over the past 8 years and will continue to do so.  Also I'm not using it in a headless environment but currently in my main rig where I can use my 1080Ti for media encoding/transcoding.

[yui]

well for now those experiments are on hold as i may have done a mistake that fried my server's motherboard, and i do not have the funds to by a "new" one quite yet (and i searched for a motherboard but they are unobtainium). do not try to refurbish old HP SAS controllers batteries without triple checking polarities...

[tp4tissue]

Those 4770cpu (non-k) dell boxes are going for ~$150

[suicidal_orange]

Those 4770cpu (non-k) dell boxes are going for ~$150

With SAS and old school remote connection at a level lower than the OS?

I'm not sure how or why yui had such a fancy server, but he(?) did.

[yui]

I'm not sure how or why yui had such a fancy server, but he(?) did.

(it was free with the rack i bought to put my networking gear so i did put it to use, oh and i do very much like proper pro gear, so that was a nice bonus)
(and yeah it is he, i did not know yui was a female name when i chose it 17 years ago)