(un)official proxmox

make a folder in your files. this is where all the media you want on jellyfin will live from now on. make a bunch of subfolders in the main one (called the "root folder") for each type of media you want stored (e.g. music, movies, books, shows, whatever)

download tailscale to all the devices you want jellyfin on (do NOT skip this i promise you will need it later)

complete tailscale signup procedures

download jellyfin

complete the setup wizard on jellyfin (dont bother with adding folders unless you really want to, you can deal with it later)

give jellyfin permission to access your files

yayy youre done with setup on device A. now download jellyfin or an associated player (finamp, fintunes, symfonium, manet, etc. im using finamp so my music keeps playing even if my phone is off) on device B and add your server link

"elliott what even is my server link" "elliott its not working" shhhh. i know. it took me 3 days to figure this shit out, future Q. i am here to help you. go to tailscale and find the IP address of device A or whatever device you set jellyfin up on

take that IP address (it should only be FOUR BIG NUMBERS. FOUR. and it will look something like <123.45.678.90> or whatever combination device A decided its address is) (NOT THE 127 OR 10 NUMBERS. DO NOT USE THOSE.) and type it in using this format <http://> <ipaddress:8096>

"elliott what even is 8096" i dont know. i wish i did. im pretty sure it just tells device B that its allowed to join the server but that has a 99% chance of being wrong. its what makes jellyfin work on Not Device A so im choosing to leave it at that

good job, you are officially set up on device B. now you can go back to the folder stuff and do all that for the next one billion hours

add a media folder of your choosing. title it whatever your heart desires. copy the file address for the folder youre storing x media in so jellyfin knows exactly what youre trying to put on there.

repeat step 12 forever and congratulations! you now have a personal media server

other stuff

remember to scan your folders so it actually knows to read the files

So after my move to using Radarr and Usenet I've been upgrading my long term storage movies (ones that I want to keep and not delete after watching) up to the best quality I can get, ideally 4k with 10bit colour and HDR where applicable. But this has come with some thorns in my side.

Essentially, I was finding that for some reason, Jellyfin would transcode a lot of my newly upgraded 4k HDR files which unfortunately strips the played file of HDR and tonemaps it down to SDR. Which isn't a *bad* thing but if I downloaded HDR then I wanna watch in HDR.

I decided to download the Jellyfin test suite video files of various different file sizes, codecs and resolutions as well as different HDR profiles (Dolby Video + HDR10) which to my surprise, almost all of them played without transcoding.

So as it turns out, there's a bug in Jellyfin that if you have a file that isn't the exact dimensions of the reported resolution (3832x1598 instead of 3832x1598 for example) then Jellyfin would transcode that file. No matter what client I used it would always transcode it. But if I direct played it with vimu player over SMB it would play just fine. Strange stuff.

So I turned to Tdarr which I'm not gonna lie made my head hurt. I can't get it to work but I ended up cobbling something up with local LLM what used Tdarr's ffmpeg to add in black bars to essentially fill in the gaps around movie. After letting that run it works without the need to transcode!

I have some more tweaking to do for sure (fuck knows why the bitrate has dropped so much) and ideally I want to automate this to scan and add this without any input from myself but it's progress baby!

this combination of words is baffling

should I get a ThinkPad T14 or smth else ??

is this decision wise, Oh! great thinkpad-official ?

(i got nobody to ask, people keep recommending me gaming laptops.. i don't even play games)

Well that depends on what kind of work you want to do on your laptop. T series ThinkPads are the flagship series, they are pretty high quality, but not too expensive, so they're great for just about everyone. The t series is usually the type of laptop that gets bought by companies for their employees.

If you want something more macbook esque, the X and X1 series might be the one for you, they are light, thinner, and expensive, the X series has a slightly smaller screen and have low power options.

The P series stands for "preformance" (i think), they are beefy, usually runs hotter, thick, and powerful. Good if you want performance above all else.

The E and L thinkpads are the cheapest thinkpads and aren't the best quality, most people don't recommend them. If you're really tight on cash, you can get these, but most people suggest getting a different laptop in a similar price range.

2 in 1 thinkpads are tablets and laptops combined, the touchscreen can be flipped over 365° and it has an integrated pen. Good if love to take handwritten notes and you can draw on it. But most people don't use the gimmick after a couple of days (And also the ThinkPad T14 gen 5 and up is really repairable (especially gen 7) which is neat) Also i generally recommend getting laptops (or just devices in general) refurbished (or second hand) and installing Linux on them ;)

also, yes I'll be getting a refurbished one because I'm getting a good deal and it's gen 7

I will have to ask the store person if there aren't any administrative or BIOS passwords on the refurbished device because that might cause issues with Linux installation, ig

nevertheless, thanks a lot thinkpad-official 🙇🏻