Running Jellyfin on the Vero?

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
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Has anyone successfully ran Jellyfin on top of a Vero?

I have been using Kodi for a long time now, from even before it was called XBMC and before I got a Vero. But now I moved places and the vero is in a box and I keep wondering if I’m missing out. In particular, I feel like being forced to use the vero to watch the content is a serious limitation… I’d like to be able to stream to mobile devices instead, for example…

I already have a (separate, not on the vero) Navidrome server for Subsonic clients, and that works really nicely for music…

Has anyone tried setting up something like this with OSMC? I heard there’s some sort of Jellyfin/Kodi integration, but it’s not clear to me how that works exactly…

Another way to ask this question is: can I haz video streaming on my tablet plz? :slight_smile:

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I don’t know about the question of running the server on an OSMC install but as for the Kodi side there is a few plug-ins available. One allows you to open an add-on and interact with Jellyfin as if it was an app. The other populates the Kodi library with media as your used to but it is pulling the files from you Jellyfin server instead of a regular Kodi source.

There is also an option to enable DLNA in Kodi and then connect to your existing library using any app that supports this protocol. This has the limitation that it only work on your LAN, however.

3

If it’s just steaming video to your tablet, you can already do so just with the help of Kore, the official remote app of Kodi.

  1. Enable “Remote Control” / “Web Access” in Kodi Setup. Better to setup a password but it’s not necessary since by default it allows local LAN access.
  2. Install Kore and some media player(VLC for example) on your tablet.
  3. Open Kore and connect it to your Kodi instance running on Vero.
  4. Select the video from Kore, either Movie or TVShows. You might need to pull down to refresh the category list first.
  5. On the details screen, there’s an option called “Local Play”. Tap that and select the local media player.
  6. The media will be streamed from Vero to the local player on your tablet.

I had this setup working perfectly fine for 4K content streaming to an Android tablet with VLC Player via WiFi 5. No stuttering at all.

1 Like
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If you heart is set on a Jellyfin server on you Vero4, it is possible.

Setup Docker on Vero, then grab jellyfin arm64 docker from linuxserver. So It’s possible, but if you are not familiar with Docker it’s a learning curve.

Other wise @lovenemesis suggestion sounds easier,

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I have tried to do this and failed in the past, but I guess I can try again! Thanks! :slight_smile:

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I’ve been running Jellyfin on an x86-64 system for about 2 yrs. Migrated off Plex to avoid all the tracking/phoning home that Plex does for every keystroke.

Jellyfin Server isn’t a light process, but I suppose that depends on what you’re setup demands from it.

I never allowed remote access for plex or jellyfin, without first connecting back to the house using a full VPN - either openvpn or wireguard, but I suppose IPSec could be used. Anything less would be a security failure and too risky to have on the internet, IMHO. Any VPN server you’d run needs to go inside a dedicated system, not shared with any other stuff. That can be either physical hardware or a solid virtual machine that has the NIC that connects to the internet setup using PCIe passthru to avoid some serious security issues that typical bridged networks have.

I prefer the Kodi/OSMC playback interface. While all the media is physically located on the Jellyfin Server, I never use that system for direct playback. Clients include tablets and OSMC running on a few devices in different parts of the house.

I have both the Jellyfin client and the Jelly-CON “connector” addon for Kodi. Since I want centralized play information, I need to remove the jellcon addon. It works by periodically synchronizing the media in the Jellyfin library to the Kodi library.

On an old Android tablet, I run the Jellyfin app to use as a remote control to the different OSMC/Kodi system around the house. Android phones can be used too. The remote connection can use either Jellyfin or DLNA protocols. From time to time, one will stop working for some reason (never in the middle of playback), so I’ll switch to the other one. Doesn’t really matter which.

The Jellyfin client on the tablet can be used to play anything too. That’s nice in bed when I don’t want to wake up my better half (wear ear phones!).

Ok, I suspect you really want to run the Jellyfin server directly on the Vero and access media remotely. If the media is in the exact format that the client needs, this should work. One of the best parts about a Jellyfin server is that it knows how to transcode video to a format supported by different clients. For example, low powered devices, like a Raspberrry Pi or cheap Android table or even some cheap laptops don’t have sufficient GPU to handle playback of VP9/h.265 video, so Jellyfin will try to transcode to h.264 video. This isn’t something that any sub-$800 ARM computer can handle. So, if all your content is in h.264, which has been widely supported in video for over a decade, go for it. If you have any h.265 that you’d like to watch, you’ll need a more powerful client and you’ll need to tell Jellyfin NOT to try an transcode.

I do have good news. Jellyfin can record OTA/Antenna TV using the excellent line of ATSC network tuners HDHomerun. Effectively, the “recording” is doing a normal HTTP GET and saving the TV show to a file. You’ll want an external HDD/SSD for this. Where I live, the ATSC standard uses mpeg2 video which a Vero should easily handle at 1080i or lower resolutions. Raspberry Pi v2 systems struggle with that resolution with mpeg2 video unless the $2 mpeg2 video codec license is purchased for the Pi. Pi v3 and later handle it easily. My cheap android table can’t.

When a recording finishes on Jellyfin, I have a script that runs automatically to transcode the mpeg2 into h.264, then run a commercial-finding program called comskip to generate an EDL file which marks where the commercial breaks are. Sadly, the EDL file isn’t seen during playback over DLNA or Jellyfin protocols, so I spend about 30 seconds using LosslessCut.AppImage to edit the file with the EDL file as a guide.
Say the original 62 minute TV show is 10G in size. After transcoding to h.264, it is about 2.5G. Then I remove the commercials and it is about 1.5G. Sometimes, non-action shows are less than 1GB for the 42 minute show. For example, we haven’t watched these two episodes:

Type        m:s   VCodec     WxH     VRate  ACodec  AChan Filename
-------- -------- ------  ---------  -----  ------  ----- --------
lavfpref    42:05   h264  1280:720   29.97   VORB   6     True_Lies-105-Working_Vacation.mkv
lavfpref    40:18   h264  1280:720   29.97   VORB   6     True_Lies-106-Independent_Dependents.mkv

My jellyfin server started on a Pentium G3258 computer and that could transcode 1 stream fine, but not 2. After 6 good years, I swapped it out for a Ryzen 5600G system, which handles about 7-10x the workload, easily. We don’t worry about transcoding anything anymore, but until I upgrade the v2 and v3 Raspberry Pis, we won’t be moving to h.265 video.
My $50 2017 8inch tablet appears to have died ---- TODAY ----, I’ll have a replacement by the weekend. Some things just become part of your life. Have a little troubleshooting to do today before deciding it is really dead. Anything I get will be a huge upgrade, I’m sure. Happy I have a backup from last month of the tablet.

I don’t do “docker”. I do have a number of LXC containers, but anything that needs direct access to lots of storage wouldn’t be a good choice usually. I run ph-hole, email gateway, wallabag and nextcloud servers inside LXC on my jellyfin system. I also have my main desktop running inside a KVM/QEMU VM there.

If it isn’t clear, I’m a Unix/Linux and virtualization guy with multiple decades of experience running servers for corporations.

7

Is it on entware? Might be worth looking into.