Media server and Plex? Sorry, but how do these two concepts mix together?
Isn't your statement about hosting your own media service and not using a third party?

>>1235
Well that's part of my question. I don't know how else besides Plex you set up a media server that others can use conveniently besides yourself. At least not any ones with their own media players.

>>1236
i you just want to stream content using a generic HTML video element the synctube solution works well AKA theatre.kissu.moe or cytu.be. For a streaming solution using youtube style tech I'm not too sure

>>1234
Long posts incoming.. Here is everything you need to know and what I'm personally running to support about 30 users. I do it on a residential connection (although my upload speed is good and I'm on what is basically business-tier). You can do it on a VPS/dedi as well no problem if you're willing to pay for all the HDD space/colocation fees. Anyway....

First thing you need to figure out; What type of hardware devices are you going to be watching the content on?

For us we use the following;

1) Xbox Series X/One game consoles
2) AppleTV
3) Any set-top device that runs/can run Android (Firesticks are the most popular in our circle)

All of the above will give you;

1) Native/hardware decoding of 10-bit HEVC video / 8-bit AVC video
2) Native decoding support for most major audio codecs (some issues on AppleTV read below)
3) Native rendering of .ass subtitles (some set-up required read below)

Those are you main three issues when it comes to anime. With your hardware sorted let's talk about software needed on your set-top devices and server.

All the official apps for PleX are garbage. Most applications for Jellyfin are hit-and-miss. However, there are two good applications that use mpv as their software player that have you covered on all devices mentioned above. You want either;

1) KODI + Plug-in for Plex/Jellyfin (I suggest this if you can install it)
2) For AppleTV: Infuse. You _can_ run KODI on AppleTV but you either need to have a jail broken device, someone else's developer key so you can sign your own bin or pay for your own (requires $120+ a year plus owning an Apple PC).

IF you end up using Infuse (which is very good) it'll only decode AAC, Opus and mp3 audio without paying a subscription fee. I forget what the fee is but I know it's over $100 a year and like $5 a month or something. You'll need to pay it if you want to decode stuff like DTS, AC3 audio, E-AC3 and some other common formats used in fansub releases. Most of the "higher end" stuff ripped straight from things like BD will require it.

However, Infuse has GREAT .ass rendering support out of the box (and for free). It's even better than Xbox Series X with KODI (KODI can't use GPU for rendering on Xbox. So some more advanced .ass formatting can lag things from time to time. Not really a huge issue mostly effect karaoke).

If you go with KODI and want to use Plex for your server you need to be aware that they discontinued their official plug-in for it a couple of years ago. Thankfully, the community stepped up and provided updates. This works very well and we're using it for all our PleX clients using KODI. It can render .ass natively aka "direct play" it which means the server doesn't have to transcode.

It's called PM4K and you can find the instructions you need for it here: https://forums.plex.tv/t/pm4k-plexmod-for-kodi-18-19-20-21/481208

Speaking of installing KODI. On Android devices this isn't an issue and is straight forward. On Xbox devices you need to be aware that while you can download it from the Microsoft app store that M$ illegally throttles the download speed. They attempt to frustrate you with speeds of like 50kbps even though everything else from the store will download at full speed. You may need to start the download up to 10 times before it'll finally install. No worries though eventually it'll finish and you won't have to do it again. Once you have it installed add the repo above and install that plug-in. Then you can browse through your library like you're using an official app (ala Netflix feel).

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SERVERS
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We are migrating away from PleX to Jellyfin but some of our clients still have devices without a Jellyfin application. From what I've seen most Jellyfin applications for set-top devices use mpv and can render .ass subtitles natively. So you shouldn't have many issues if you decide to go that route. I'm also not going to go into detail about setting up the server because that's also pretty straight forward. I'll give you some tips about PleX though.

PleX is a mixed bag and they've been shoving a lot of "social" features into the UI lately. They're also talking about removing support for third party scrapers for info. PleX also isn't that coded that well and the DB has been known to shit the bed from time to time (not for me thankfully). Installation isn't that bad and I suggest you run it inside of Docker or something.

For your server you don't need high-end hardware provided all your client devices can "direct play" content. You're basically hosting some media files and some metadata about them if you go that route. IF you do want transcoding support I highly suggest you bring a beefy CPU and plan not to support many clients. PleX for example will charge you to transcode using your GPU. Which is frankly bullshit. But GPU encoding isn't that great anyway. Your CPU encoding isn't going to be that great either since it has to go fast enough to work in real-time.

If you have TONS of HDD space you can let your server transcode stuff during off hours. It can make multiple "editions" of the content in different resolutions and bitrates for you.

Transcoding the video is what will kill you. Audio isn't that bad. Although I suggest avoiding that if you can as well. Most transcodes happen because the end user device can natively play the content. In our case. 99% of transcoding was for "burning in" the subtitles with devices that couldn't render .ass. But we don't store BD remuxes and such. We host HEVC and AVC fansubs that are generally around 1-8Mbps to move over the network. If you're just doing this over LAN it isn't much of a concern of course. But the moment you go on vacation and want to access your home server it can become a problem if you're only storing BDRips and things of that nature. I prefer to pack more content into the HDD space instead of keeping HQ copies of everything. Since I can always download those in the future if I really want and most aren't any better than a properly done HEVC encode anyway.

Anyway, main point to take away from this: Avoid transcoding if at all possible. Sadly, this excludes your 10-bit x264 stuff by default. Since NOTHING can direct stream it at the moment (and it never will get support). So my advice is to start grabbing HEVC versions of stuff or hope most of your old stuff is from the pre-Hi10 era.

One last thing. Jellyfin is by far the better server. But client support isn't there yet on all devices. I think in another year or two we'll finally be able to ditch PleX all together. The main difference between the two is how they store their metadata. Plex stores it in a proper database. Jellyfin uses .nfo files within each show's directory.

You should also be aware that PleX will phone home and send data back about your and your user's watching habits.

The BIG difference between the two is this: With Plex all your users need to do is make a plex account. Plex's servers will handle the handshake between your server and the end user. If you go with Jellyfin you're required to supply that yourself. Which means setting up your own domain name, reverse proxy server, paying for a VPS/server and all that good stuff. I haven't had any issue with PleX's proxy myself. As long as the ports on my LAN are open it works just fine and my users can directly connect to me. Setting up my own Jellyfin reverse proxy was a bit of a pain. Plus I also have to manually create and manage user accounts for each and every client. As well as handling auth within many third party applications. As you can imagine this is a bit of a pain since most of my clients are tech savy.

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Renaming files / hosting content
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This isn't as bad as it seems provided you're willing to install some plug-ins for plex. I use this one; https://github.com/Dingmatt/AMSA

It's called "Anime multi-source agent". What it does is allows you to pull your metadata down from Anidb (and some other places) and combine it with meta data from TVDB (for your themes and box art). By default it will match against AniDB naming scheme. Which most of your content is probably already using. It will also allow you to host your anime as individual series (instead of seasons). So shows like Monogatari can be stored with their individual season titles as seperated entries in your library.

What I do is a mix of that and the "seasons" way of doing things. Some shows like Monogatari or movies/OVAs I store as their own entry. Other shows like Lupin for example I store as one entry with multiple "seasons/specials". Renaming the files manually for tvdb matching isn't _that_ bad but I have a tool that can do it automagically. It used to be free but now the asshole that released it (it's a kuso java app) tries to charge like $50 a year for it. But the old version is easy to find on the usual public torrent websites.

For new stuff this is less of an issue because the usual uploaders have conformed to the naming scheme anyway. Basically, this isn't much of a problem anymore even if you have a massive library you need to import. You can pick and choose how you want to list each show using the "match" function in the Plex server GUI through your web browser. If you use the plug-in I linked above it'll use anidb and an entry for each "season" by default. Best thing to do is to import your stuff and see which way you prefer. You'll spend a couple of days at first then it'll be like 5 minutes tops a couple of times a week depending on how much you want to manually do it.

You can automate this entire process of course. Have your torrent client automatically pull from RSS feeds. Use some add-ons to auto rename the files as needed. Have your server automatically scan your media folder for new stuff. It'll automatically pull down the metadata. Most people have automated their entire set-up like that. I prefer just checking the 3-5 RSS feeds I follow on nyaa (and elsewhere) once a day. Grabbing the torrents manually. Moving the files manually to the media HDDs then clicking the "scan" button in the server interface. From there it'll do everything else by itself. I might rename one or two shows a week that don't follow the naming convention I'm using for that particular show. Sometimes at the start of the season I need to manually make a directory or two. It's no big deal. Just use keyboard shortcuts (F2 and ctrl+shift+N are helpful).

It's one of those things where you're going to spend a few days setting it up and being a bit frustrated but then it'll run pretty much on its own.

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WHAT I SUGGEST
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All of this may not apply if you're not supporting a lot of users like me. But I basically do the following;

1) All anime is stored as 10-bit HEVC, 8-bit AVC or XviD (ollllllld stuff)
2) All anime audio is in AAC, Opus, or mp3 format
3) Require all clients to direct play .ass subtitles. If they can't they get the boot
4) Stick to proper releases. If some idiot can't be bothered to mux in and label tracks correctly I get another released
5) For shows you can only get in 10-bit AVC plan to do bulk converts to HEVC (not as bad as it sounds. I use a GUI application and let it run on one of my workstations over night)
6) For shows not in AAC/Opus (mostly FLAC stuff) either accept that clients will transcode that (it isn't that hard on the CPU) or do bulk conversions to Opus (takes like 1-2 minutes per episode on decent CPU)
7) Avoid clients with Roku if they watch a lot of anime

Number 7) is due to the fact that there is no way to natively render .ass on Roku. They do not support installation of KODI or any other application that can do it. Trust me I've looked. You must provide them SRT subtitles or they will force your server to "burn-in" the subtitles with video transcoding.

I hope this was helpful and I answered your questions. I know I have a habit of rambling.

If you have any more questions let me know. I am currently hosting 1,500 anime series in about 7TB of HDD space. This does not include movies, cartoons and other content of course (we host a lot of content we ripped from youtube. Most of it stuff that is "banned" on the platform these days. Mostly old /x/ stuff and the like).

>>1244
Oh I should have mentioned. We're running Jellyfin and Plex on the same server. A lot of people do this. I suggest starting with one (probably Plex in your case) and seeing if you like things. If you decide you want to keep doing this look into migrating to Jellyfin. Both servers can co-exist on the same box just fine. They'll both maintain their own DB of course though.

If you need help setting stuff up or run into problems just ask. I'm usually around a few days out of the week.

>>1247
One last last thing I forgot to mention. You have the option of using the Japanese or English titles. But if you pull from AniDB you'll get kana/kanji titles instead of romaji. Since the vast majority of my users can't into moonrunes we settled on using English titles for most series. But this doesn't mean you're forced into using them for everything.

On both PleX and Jellyfin you can rename individual titles. You also have what is called a "sort title". Which allows you to sort things in the "sort by title" list in whatever order you want. See example.png. Where I both sorted Monogatari in mostly release order a long with storing them as separated series. You can also see other series that are using the "seasonal"/TVDB way of listing stuff. A long with other series that don't list "seasons" at all and instead just list the episodes in order. You have the option of not displaying seasons in the sub-menu for series with a lot of seasons. So if you prefer just all 100+ episodes of your epic being listed without going into seasons that's possible. You can do whatever you want as needed for each series.

You also have the option of making playlists that your users can see/use. In the case of Monogatari I made one that will play the episodes in the (mostly agreed upon) preferred viewing order. We do this for a handful of other shows that have multiple viewing orders. I do this as a service for some of our clients because they aren't very familiar with a lot of these series and are watching them for the first time. They aren't going to google for a watch order chart.

I have already transcoded _a lot_ of stuff over to HEVC/Opus by the way. I'm actually doing all 3 seasons of PriPara right now. If you'd like me to share anything I have ask and I'll tell you if I have it done already. Maybe I can save you some CPU time and some extra cash on your electricity bill. Standardizing on 10-bit AVC was the worst thing the fansub community ever did. Fansubbers always have to use some odd ball codec that's supported no where for whatever reason. I don't understand why more of them won't move on to HEVC when it's simple enough to turn off some features in it and make it behave exactly like 10-bit AVC. But I suppose they're stuck in their ways.

At least FLAC stuff isn't that bad. I used to not worry about it and let the server transcode it in real time. But when you have 15 people all transcoding a FLAC audio file at the same time on a 12-year old 4-core CPU it gets a bit tiresome hearing the fans run full speed so much. So I started doing bulk transcode over to Opus about a year ago. It takes almost no time at all and none of my clients can tell the difference anyway. Not sure why more devices don't natively support FLAC but that's just how things are. We chose Opus over AAC because we couldn't find one device that could play HEVC that also didn't support Opus. AAC is only about 2MB larger per episode and is also supported everywhere. In case you want to watch your stuff on a 10+ year old smartphone or something...

We're hopeful to break 2,000 hosted series by the end of this year. We've added over 500 shows this year alone.

Oh before I forget. I was talking about automation before. You can actually automate requests. I haven't done it yet. But a lot of people have discord channels for their servers set-up where their clients can request a movie/TV series and the torrent client will automatically fetch it and then another application will add it to the server. I don't use discord so I haven't looked into it that much. I'm not too keen on my users just adding random shit if I'm being honest. I just have them call or text me requests and I get to them when I can.

For anime I usually have stuff up before they ask anyway. They always request something that's a pain like One Piece or Bleach anyway.

>>1234
>But if you have a separate PC is there any way to directly load up media conveniently onto yours by connecting the two somehow?

Should have read more before dumping all that info. Yes sir. If you just want to watch stuff in mpv from another computer than what you want is a NAS. Which is just an HDD you can access over your LAN. Plenty of guides to get your started on that front.

But if you want to go the whole Jellyfin/Plex route as outlined above you can use your server as a NAS as well of course. Both KODI and Infuse can work directly with your NAS and stream the raw files using their mpv player. But the whole point of something like Plex is you get the meta data as well.

If you use the media agent for Plex I linked you can keep seeding your torrents. But I don't have my torrents on the same box as my media server's HDD. Anything I want to seed I'm seeding from another box anyway. I don't even have it on the same network as I don't want my torrent activity consuming the bandwidth I'm using to host content for my clients.

The entire reason I started my own set-up is so I could take my set-top device and laptop anywhere in the world and access my content at home. I've gotten so many people to cancel their CR and Netflix subscriptions. No one in my family or friend circle is watching anything from those places anymore. I even host soap operas for my mother and her friends that live many states away. I passed out so many cheap android boxes with KODI pre-installed and set-up the last two Christmases. Everyone loves them and says they're getting better quality off my puny connection than they get from Netflix and other streaming services anyway.

>>1238
The problem with HTTP streaming is you're limited to 8-bit AVC and VP9. You're better off directly playing most anime content in mpv (or KODI). Since if you use a web based player for something like PleX it's going to force your home server to transcode anyway to "burn in" the subtitles and get the video/audio in a codec supported by the two major web browsers.

I used to run a cytube channel myself where I did live streaming of anime. Not with the playlists like kissu uses. It was streaming out from my local PC running a playlist in mpv. I rented a cheap VPS and used some embedded code to embed a web player from it into the cytube page. It worked really well and we supported over 120 concurrent viewers a couple of times. I'd have to go look on my old computer but I'm sure I still have those scripts around. I can't remember where we originally found them but I know we did some small modifications to make them work since we did some custom stuff with the chat room as well.

>>1249
>But if you have a separate PC is there any way to directly load up media conveniently onto yours by connecting the two somehow?
>just use NAS
Sorry for however many posts this is. But if you need syncing of the files between the two computers over a network just use rsync of course. I've been using it for so long for this task I sometimes not everyone is aware of it.

Don't buy one of those high-end "NAS Solutions". All you need is any old device that runs linux and has the ability to hook up a lot of HDDs to. Get a PCI add-on card if you run out of SATA ports. Look into using whatever RAID works best for your amount of storage (remember; it's not a backup). Set-up any file syncing you need with rsync (it runs everywhere including Windows).

I personally use a Plex/Jellyfin client when possible for my video media files now. For audio I use mpd. Again; everything has a good mpd client. Anywhere else; Pull directly from the NAS using whatever software I need. If I'm on my LAN the rest of my devices see it as a local HDD anyway.

Plex can also do music but it's shit. I haven't tried doing music with jellyfin. None of my clients have requested music anyway. I mostly run mpd so I can listen to my albums from all my other devices. It works fine over the internet provided ports are properly forwarded.

If you are going to expose your server to the internet make damn sure you have a good firewall.

If you want to pick up a cheap dedicated machine for a home server I suggest trolling flea markets or ebay for Xenon servers/workstations. Along with some cheap HDDs. Large tech companies offload their old hardware on those places all of the time. Not as cheap as it used to be because youtubers have started promoting them as "cheap gaming rigs" lately. But still good deals to be had. You don't really need a very powerful CPU anyway if you can avoid transcoding in real-time. I personally use a machine with a 14-year old Intel 4-core Haswell CPU and A LOT of HDDs I picked up for cheap over the years. I've only had one fail in the last 8 years or so. Didn't matter since I run RAID and it limped along without it until I got another shipped in a week or two later. I run Gentoo Linux on my server. My firewall is an old core-2 duo machine I had laying around with OpenBSD on it. It's between my cable modem and my router/rest of my LAN.

If you can I suggest buying a UPS for your firewall/router/home server/modem. Saved my ass more than once. I have them for all my workstations now as well. Good investment and you can pick them up cheap. Just make sure you also buy a new battery when you order those used ones from tech companies offloading their old hardware when they do upgrades. I also highly suggest picking up the cheap thinkpads. But they're getting harder to come by for the same reason as those old workstations.

Seriously, check your local swap meet/flea market sometime. There is a guy at my local one that is constantly selling 2-10 year old high end work stations and servers for like $100-$200. He sometimes gets a ton of used HDDs in as well. If you buy 10 at a time from him he'll give you a really good deal. It's much cheaper than buying them off ebay.

I hope these word dumps were helpful.

>>1250
Some more PleX tips. Most of this is available through the web based GUI/control panel. Here are some helpful settings to turn on/off.

# Settings -> Quality
In here you want the following;
- Automatically adjust quality (Beta); Turn this off. It does not work and will just frustrate your users outside of your LAN
-Video Quality: Choose "Maximum" from drop down menu
-Play smaller videos at original quality; Turn on
-Use recommended settings; Turn on

#Settings -> Debug
-Debug level: Disabled
-Direct play: turn on (important!)
-Direct stream: Turn on (important!)
-Use alt-streaming protocol: Disable

#Settings -> Player
-Burn Subtitles: Set to "automatic" (it really means "off")

#Settings -> General
-Send crash report: Off
-Support Away mode: on
-Enable logging: off
-Enable verbose logging: off
-Server version updates: Ask me

#Settings -> Remote Access
-Enable remote access
-Manually specify public port: Pick anything but default/common ports then configure your firewall to allow it through

#Settings -> Agents
-Make sure "Local Media Assets" is enabled for all libraries

#Settings -> Library
-Scan library automatically: Off (better to run manually once a day - week or when you add new stuff)
-Run partial scan: Off (same as above)
-Scan library periodically: off (same as above)
-Empty trash after scans: on
-Allow media deletion: on (be careful though)
-Weeks to consider for continue watching: 16 weeks works good for us
-Run scanner tasks at lower priority: On
-Generate video preview thumbnails: never
-Generate chapter thumbnails: as scheduled task
-analyze audio tracks for loudness: off (client will do it anyway)
-Location visibility: Admin only
-DB cache size: 40MB

#Settings -> Network:
-Enable server support for IPv6: On
-Secure connections: Preferred
-Enable local network discovery: On
-Enable Relay: OFF (VERY IMPORTANT!!!)
-List of IP addresses allowed without auth: Set to your local subnet (VERY IMPORTANT!!!)
-Webhooks: ON (VERY IMPORTANT!!!!)

#Settings -> Transcoder:
-Transcoder quality: Automatic or Prefer higher speed
-Transcoder temp directory: Set to RAM disk (it will use your SSD/HDD as default. You don't want that. I give ours 1GB of RAM which supports 30 clients fine provided only a few are transcoding at the same time)
-Transcoder default throttle buffer: 60 seconds
-Background transcoder x264 preset: Very Fast
-Disable video stream transcoder: Your choice. I leave it on. But if I didn't have good CPU it would be off for sure
-Maximum simultaneous video transcode: Depends on CPU. I allow 2

#Settings -> Languages
-Auto select audio/subtitle track: On
-Prefer audio tracks: 日本
-Subtitle mode: pick your poison
-Prefer Subtitles in: English (note: The "signs and subtitle" dual-audio releases will fuck you here. But most clients will allow you to overide this setting and remember you choice for an entire series)

>>1254
(cont)

#Settings->DLNA
Turn everything off unless you need DLNA. Nothing I've used requires it

#Settings -> Scheduled tasks
-Time to run/stop tasks: 2-3am works good for us
-Backup database every three day: On
-Backup directory: Any HDD but the one you're hosting media on
-Optimize DB every week: On
-Remove old bundles weekly: On
-Remove old cache weekly: on
-Refresh local metadata every 3 days: On
-Update libs during maintenance: Off
-Upgrade media analysis during maintenance: Off
-Refresh Library metadata periodically: On
-Preform extensive media analysis during maintenance: Off

#Manage -> Libraries -> (your anime lib) -> advanced
-Scanner: Absolute Series Scanner
-Agent: Anime Multi Source Agent
-Fetch <x> from <x> (all 10 options): Enable all of them
-Delay in seconds between anidb requests: 2 seconds works for me
-Series Title/Summary/Airdate/other 20 entries for metadata: use "AniDB,TVDB,Plex"
-First Language preference for Series Title: "en" or "jp" depending on your preference. Repeat for all other selections listed below.
-Visibility: "Include in home screen and global search"
-Episode sorting: Oldest first
-Enable video preview thumbnails: No
-Include related external content: No
-Collections: Disable them, they're useless anyway
-Seasons: Hide for single-season series (or hide all together)

#Settings Authorized Devices:
You can ban a problematic device without banning your friend's entire account using this page

#Manage Library Access
Add your friend's/client's Plex username here to give them access to the entire server

Last but not least:
#Plex Web -> General
-Automatically sign in: On
-Allow Fallback to insecure connections: set to "On same network as server"

Wow that got long. Anyway. These settings prevent your DB from ballooning to an insane size and your users from hammering your server with video transcoding through incompetence. To move the location of your DB itself you have to edit a txt file on Linux or a Registry setting on Windows. I can't remember the exact way to do that off the top of my head but it's easy to find with a web search. I suggest moving it to an HDD that's not hosting your media files or your OS's partition. It's much faster if you put it on SSD of course. But mine runs fine on HDD.

Took me months to figure these settings out. Some stuff isn't where you'd expect it to be. The most important ones are forcing it to stream "original" quality, disabling video transcodes (or limiting them) and most importantly DISABLING THEIR Kuso PROXY SERVER.

If you don't disable the proxy server it'll try to stream everything in 720p by default and send all media data through PleX's servers instead of allowing the client to directly to connect. This actually results is worst quality, more server resources consumed and more bandwidth use. It'll take an HEVC 1080p file that would have streamed in native quality at 2mbps. Transcode it to 720p badly. Then send it over to the end user at 4+mbps bandwidth. It'll also buffer like hell because they're trying to bait you into paying for their pro pass or whatever it's called now. Do not pay them a dime. Nothing they're offering is worth the money and you'll get better experience by simply forcing direct play. Even if the end user needs a transcode it's better to send it directly from your server to them instead of routing it through Plex's proxy.

If your ports are opened properly it's on the end user to get their house in order. The ONLY thing you should be doing through PleX's server in the initial user auth handshake.

Again; Sorry for novel. Just trying to be helpful. Learning all of this on my own was very frustrating. But after several months we finally got anime working like it's supposed to with PleX. They did not design this shit with .ass subtitled content and listing anime series in mind. If you use the defaults or their default client applications you're going to have a really bad time.

>>1255
Do note by their "proxy server" I mean "Plex Relay". Absolutely under no circumstances should you ever enable this. It will not only hammer your plex server with unneeded transcoding it'll actually prevent a client that could direct play/connect from doing that. It will always use the relay if you have the relay enabled despite what the documentation says.

On the client side you'll want to make sure all settings related to "direct play/stream" and "original/highest quality" are enabled. As long as you aren't hosting BD remuxes or insane 5+GB per episode encodes you'll want to use the "maximum/highest" or "original" quality. Hence why I host everything as HEVC or high bitrate 8-bit AVC whenever possible. It'll just send the contents of those files over the network like a NAS would and the client's software player (mpv almost always) will decode the file like it was being played locally.

A note about dual-audio releases: I used to go through the effort to strip them of English audio+signs subtitle tracks with the thinking that it would save space. After awhile I figured out that this wasn't really worth my time. Some of my clients want to watch the dub while they're passing out in front of their TV. When they don't want to read subtitles with stuff playing in the background. It doesn't save enough space to justify the time invested. But I still try to grab Japanese audio only stuff if possible.

The main gripe with those files are the "signs only" English subtitles tracks being listed as "en" in the mkv container. This means if you use Japanese audio+English subs as your default settings you won't get dialog subtitle track by default. This really isn't a big deal with KODI and Infuse. When you watch the first episode manually select the correct subtitle track you want (dialog only, honorifics, whatever). The client's player will remember that setting for the rest of that particular series. This is far less trouble than attempting to manually re-mux an entire series to strip out the signs-only subtitle track and the English dub should the dual-audio release be the only one you can find. The batch remuxing GUI applications and ffmpeg don't work well for automating this type of task. Since most "fansubbers" (rippers and shitters) don't bother to correctly label/tag tracks most of the time anyway. Nor do they use consistent track ordering. Even the same group will vary wildly between releases. Even the most popular well known ones.

I know I've dumped a novel and this sounds like a huge pain in the ass. But I assure you once you get it set-up it runs without much trouble at all. I much prefer this to what I was doing before (lugging around external HDD or a laptop). These days all I have to do is grab my Firestick or AppleTV and take it with me anywhere. If I have an internet connection and a TV I can watch my entire anime library no matter where I am in the world. In my experience if your firewall is set-up correctly and your ports are forwarded on the server side it just werks. Even if you're at your friend's house behind a badly configured double NAT or CGNAT connection. It'll even just werk over the cell phone network. If you remember to disable Plex's kuso "relay" server/service you'll get a fast connection to your home server with no buffering and it'll send over the file at the original quality without transcoding.

Anime is actually the least bandwidth intensive content I host. I regularly watch movies and TV shows with my Grandmother whenever she requests something. She's got a badly configured cable modem with a busy network (lots of freeloaders in the family). We never experience buffering even when watching 5+GB per 2 hour movie encodes. It is very convenient to be able to stream from my home server at her house (or anywhere else in the world). Any time she misses an episode of Amazing Race, Survivor or her DVR fails to record the movie she wanted to see I can always come to the rescue and get to spend some time with her. She asks me and I have the file downloaded and up on my server in 10 minutes. Then I take one of my set-top devices and plug it into her living room TV and connect it to her wifi. Even with her low-tier cable package/bandwidth I have yet to find anything I couldn't stream without buffering outside of straight BD Dumps.

I highly encourage you to set-up your own media server and more importantly GIVE YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS ACCESS TO IT. I can't stress enough how much better this is quality wise than having everyone paying for their own streaming accounts. My home server is not only faster and provides higher quality. It also gets content sooner than those pay services (or at the same time) and it doesn't shove ads down their throats or randomly break for no reason.

It took several months of messing around with this. But once I had it going and navigated the maze that is PleX's kuso documentation there was no going back. In the near future I'm looking forward to moving everyone over to Jellyfin so PleX is no longer snooping upon our viewing habits. But for now nothing works as good. The burden of not maintaining your own auth server+reverse proxy for user auth can not be understated. We're doing all of this for free (less ISP costs). With Jellyfin we're out at least $5-$20 each month just for the auth server and domain name/static IP address alone. Plus if my VPS happens to go offline for whatever reason no one can log-in. I've never seen Plex's auth servers go offline.

Note users only have to log-in once every week or so. I can't remember how long a plex account stays authed with your server. But I know it's at least a week.

>>1256
>If I have an internet connection and a TV I can watch my entire anime library no matter where I am in the world.
I've written a bit of a novel today but I wanted to be very clear about this point. My set-up works on every network I've tried even public ones. You see that image over there?

<------

It just so happens about an hour before this episode released I had to go to the local hospital because someone I knew was in the ER. Nothing too serious but I was stuck in the waiting area for 3 hours waiting to give them a ride. I had my Firestick in my bag. Having absolutely no shame I plugged it into one of the public TVs in the waiting area, connected it to the hospital wifi network and it directly connected to my home media server with no issue. I got my laptop out and remotely re-scanned my library (since I don't do it automatically like most people).

I then sat there and watched this episode in full view of God and everybody. The crazy part is no one even noticed! The people that were around were so buried in their cell phones they didn't even bother to look up even during the moaning. Even if they did I could have always just claimed I didn't know who changed the channel. Since it's obviously not my TV and this show must be playing on cable since how am I supposed to sign in to Netflix/CR on a hospital TV, right?

I watched a few other episodes of random anime waiting on them and when they finally got released I yanked my firestick out of the hospital TV's HDMI port and went about my day.

That's why I continue to use plex right there. For whatever reason their auth servers will bust straight through any public firewall. I haven't found any hotel or otherwise public network where it's blocked and won't allow me to directly connect to my residential dynamic IP address. My own Jellyfin auth server would have probably worked just as well. But again you're into managing user accounts at that point. Which is always a pain (everyone forgets their password and needs a reset at the worst possible time).

True story. I watch MahoAko in full view of the public and no one even cared. One of the many benefits of everyone being addicted to their smart phones.

Again; I do hope I've been helpful. If anyone ever needs help setting up their own media server I'm more than willing to lend a hand. I'd much rather see people getting their friends and family addicted to home servers than paying all this money for services like CR, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Amazon and whatever other crap normal people are watching these days.

Take care! It's about time I went to bed.

I just use jellyfin.

Oh, Plex has a self hosted option. I didn't see

Deleted my post because I think I figured it out.

>>1316
deletard

>>1316
on topic sager