Keep the films you paid for
What you will learn
- Why the films on a streaming service are not yours, and what to do instead
- The two problems that will bite you, including one that looks exactly like slow hardware
- Why one drive is not a backup, it is a countdown
You do not own anything on a streaming service. You are renting access to a collection that somebody else edits, and when a licensing deal expires, the thing you watched every Christmas simply is not there any more. Nobody emails you. It is gone, and you are still paying.
The fix is old and boring: hold the files yourself. Put them on a drive in your house, run something that sends them to your television, and now your collection only changes when you change it.
What you actually need
- A computer that stays switched on. It does not need to be fast.
- Drives with room on them.
- A media server program. Jellyfin is free and open, with no account and nothing to upsell you.
Mine runs on a laptop from 2012 with a bit over 14 terabytes of external drives attached, and it feeds every screen in the house. Nearly 11 terabytes of that is one large external drive I already owned.
The point is not the numbers. The point is that this ran perfectly well for a long time on a laptop that was too old to sell.
Install it, point it at your folders, and let it look through them. It fetches the artwork and descriptions by itself, and you end up with something that looks like a streaming app, except that the collection is yours and nothing disappears overnight.
Two things that will bite you
When a video is stored in a form your television cannot read, the server has to convert it as it plays. That conversion is the single most demanding thing a media server ever does.
A machine with a graphics card does that conversion in dedicated hardware without breaking a sweat. A machine without one has to do it the slow way, and drowns.
First, the file format matters more than you think. I once used a file in a newer, more efficient format and it played like a slideshow. Nothing was broken. The machine simply had no hardware built to read that format, so it was doing all the work the slow way and losing.
If you are going to run into that, move the server to whichever machine has a real graphics card in it. That is what I ended up doing.
The one that cost me the most time
Video to the television kept stuttering, and I was certain the problem was that ancient laptop finally being too slow.
I was wrong. It was the route the data was taking.
I have a private network that lets all my machines reach each other from anywhere, and I like it very much. But my television was reaching the server through that private network instead of simply going straight across the house. Every frame was taking the scenic route through a layer built for connecting from far away, not for pushing a large video ten feet.
I changed the television to use the server's ordinary local address. Same file, same supposedly too-slow drive, same everything else. It played perfectly.
The bottleneck was never the hardware.
When something is slow, the part you suspect is usually innocent. Find out what the data is actually doing before you go and buy a faster anything.
The rule about backups
Drives fail. Not perhaps. Eventually.
If a collection took you years to build and it exists in exactly one place, you do not have a library. You have a bet. Get a second drive and copy to it. It is the least interesting part of this whole thing, and it is the part you will be glad about.
Start smaller than all of that
Do not read the above and conclude that you need a wall of drives. Put the media server on the computer you already have, point it at a folder that already has things in it, and open it on your television. That is one evening. If you like it, then start thinking about drives.
Everything here is about media you already have a right to. Copy your own discs, keep your own recordings, hold your own files.
One drive is not a backup. One drive is a countdown.
This starts on any computer that stays on, with a folder of files. Replace anything in angle brackets with your own value.
1. Install the server
What this is: a web address, not a command. Once the program is installed on a machine that stays on, you open this page in a browser on that same machine to finish setting it up.
What should happen: a setup page appears and asks you to create an administrator account.
http://127.0.0.1:<port>2. Point it at your folders
What this shows: a naming pattern, not a command. Tidy names make it far more reliable at recognising what a file is.
What to do: in the dashboard, add each folder as a library and let it scan. It will fetch artwork and descriptions on its own.
/media/movies/<Title> (<Year>)/<Title> (<Year>).mkv
/media/shows/<Show>/Season 01/<Show> S01E01.mkv3. Switch on hardware conversion, the slideshow fix
What this does: tells the server to use the graphics card for converting video rather than doing it the slow way.
Where: in the dashboard, under playback settings. Only useful on a machine that actually has a graphics card.
How to check it worked: play a file that used to stutter and watch the machine stay calm.
4. The trap that cost the most time: the route
What goes wrong: if your machines share a private network for reaching them from anywhere, a device in the same house can end up reaching the server through that private network instead of straight across the room. Every frame takes the long way round, and it stutters.
The fix: on the television, point it at the server's ordinary local address, not its private-network one.
Why it matters beyond video: the hardware was never the problem.
# fast: the ordinary local address
Server: http://<server-local-address>:<port>
# NOT the private-network address, which sends video the long way5. Back it up
What this does: copies everything to a second drive, showing progress as it goes. It only copies what has changed, so running it again is quick.
What to do next: put it on a timer, and then check that it actually ran. A backup that quietly stopped months ago is not a backup.
rsync -a --info=progress2 /media/ /mnt/<backup-drive>/media/This page in the original Kyber Cypher voice: Own your movies again