Emby vs Jellyfin - Which Should You Use on Your NAS

foreign [Music] looking at popular multimedia streaming platforms that you can run from your very own Nas server now in part one I looked at comparing Plex Media Server with jellyfin it was kind of like a David and Goliath situation with Plex being largely the established go-to premium uh streaming platform for nara's service and jellyfin being the young upstart that was really trying to shake things up being all open source now in today's video we're going to be comparing MB and jellyfin and for those of you in the know this is a very different conversation why is that well because jellyfin is a splinter a kind of offshoot a fork from MB when MB was first designed it was designed to be an open source alternative to the likes of Plex Media Server and although most of these projects all stem from the same Beginnings it has to be said that when they do deviate in their own ways it can be very pleasing for everyone in the community now jellyfin forked off from MB way back in 2018 even a little bit before that to be a truly open source alternative because MB as good as it is started getting a little bit premium now what do we mean by that well it means that although the platform got bigger and better and served itself as an alternative to Plex for quite a while in order to fund the project much like Plex did as well at one point certain features and developments are put behind a premium tier known as MB Premiere now this is when you pay a little bit towards the project and you can actively donate if you choose or go for the subscription model and from there you have access to a bunch or features that we'll talk about later on that allow you to create an even better multimedia Nas or private server level experience and by that I mean you know uh TurnKey or off-the-shelf Solutions like Synology qnap Acer store Terra Master as well as DIY or build it yourself level servers that you want to utilize with third-party platforms such as true NASCAR true now Scout unraid and more now where jellyfin came into this was when this was developed it was trying to be and indeed for the most part and we'll talk about that later is utterly open source and free and pretty much everything that's behind either a premium paywall or restricted to a one-off fee on the MB side of things is free on jellyfish and comparing these two platforms isn't just going to be a case of which one's the better made the media server for your needs but it's about the user experience as well and one of the things I will touch them quite heavily later in the video isn't just you the person that's watching this that's got your own Nas and setting up your media server it's going to be about setting up your multimedia server and client later on think of all those elderly relatives think of all of those friends and family that you're going to need to connect with this server whether some might say more limited grasp of it and networking than yourself this can be very important but for now let's compare these two and first and foremost let's talk about design and the user interface of them although you can see here on screen I am accessing this via the web browser I am running this on a two Synology Nas is here but it's worth highlighting that everything you're going to see today is largely possible on any Nas platform again DIY or TurnKey again slanty Q number is still Terror Master WD uh true Nas builds their unrate and more to one greater or lesser degree something I'll touch on later on now although we're accessing either web browser there are of course client applications which I'll get on to in a moment but for now as you can see because they're forked now because jellyfin is forked off from MB the user interfaces are very very similar indeed there indeed the level of customization the placement of logos even some of the icons transfer over very very familiarly because it's all built on open source of course it's just a question of what you do with open source afterwards and you create enough on there to justify charging for it and make in it and I you know your own IP now when it comes to configuring the server a configuration between these two platforms is similar but unlike previous video when I was talking about jellyfins customization with Plex jellyfin I would argue when you go to their dashboard although they're very very similar MB still seems to have the tiniest might amount more customization overall in terms of configuring the server in a breadcrumb kind of Lego brick style of way indeed when we go into things like transcoding uh when the devices are going to be activating some of that Hardware transcoding transcoding is it gives you the best of both worlds on the MB side so it gives you the ability to have the nice easy yes I want transcoding no I don't want transcoding and then it gives you the ability to really break down how that transcoding will take place offline transcoding uh active transcoding whereas on the uh a jelly fin side although Hardware acceleration and transcoding if you will is available there you have to kind of configure it a little bit more and know a lot more about your Hardware so the MB side of thing manages to give you basically like you have your cake and eat it to give you that customization in its Hardware configuration with Hardware Advanced coding but at the same time allow you to do it in either a user friendly or more complex means and there's ways to configure a lot of these options to a more advanced and a beginner settings there but why do I always talk about transcoding in these videos and why is it important in today's video that is for later on or just go to the time bar at the bottom of the screen that will tell you to skip ahead to that point but when it comes to configuring what you see here themes and the design of what you're seeing here on screen as you can see we can go down go into the user interface there you've got the dashboard you've got the option to change some things are on the left-hand side of the screen you've got the option to change the display there how it's displayed on the client server configuration site but in order to configure how it looks to the end user that's that's when we have to make our way over to a client so we've got here on screen the windows and uh oh we've got the windows client for both envy and jellyfin there don't worry too much about the zoom I had to try and squeeze it all here on screen and again if we look at the average movies if we go into the movie section of both of these and we select a movie I would say the transitions seem a little smoother there but again that is very specific to the MB tool there and I think it probably looks a little nice you can configure a lot of these options and again you can change some of that background stuff there are options you can go into to make it look a little Swisher on jellyfin there so again you can change either specific information about individual files and folders or you can go back into that settings menu there and actually change how some of it's presented to you in terms of when you're cycling through those albums so again if we go back into the uh display there we can change some of that background stuff there changed you know just some of the light stuff there overall within the client but I'd say between the two of them the extra money mbf clearly spent on their UI kind of it runs through and again with the scrolling of metadata they're all crawling the same reference point there um Envy also has the ability to create customized um are on there as well so a little bit of kudos to them on that one so let's test a couple of files and have a look at that play back there we're going to go for the PC desktop and I'll explain the reason for that later on but if we carry on and we'll go ahead and play exactly the same file let's pause them side by side we'll go in today we're going for the test files first file there I'm just going to play that file for us here I'll have them on side by side just to compare the user interface of both of these files again we're not using a copyright content because unfortunately it does make it very difficult to show it to you here on YouTube now again if we might have to move me out the way here because I think it's going to make things very difficult for you to see these bars we'll move back later on so the left hand side of the screen here you can see running here on jellyfish there are options open to us we can get those stats for nerds on screen and that gives us a lot more information about the file that we're playing I might be in the way of that again we've got those transcoding options quite a good degree of transcoding options that we can flick between we've got the option for adding those subtitles metal stair and again we can look online for existing but we will need to have that plug-in in place and that's really it we've got the picture in picture support as well of both of these we can just if we choose just have that picture in the corner of our screen that allows us to just sort of browse through and take care of it whenever we want but again I'll have to move that there and put that back there on screen move the stacks for nerds but on both of them very similar outlooks of what we're seeing here and overall there's not too much difference between them when it comes to the user interface again not a tremendous surprise given the fact that one is a fork off the other so in terms of the user interface and what we're seeing here we're not seeing a dissimilar experience although I would argue it does feel just a little bit Slicker there on MB now whether that's because MB has been around longer and has a lot more ux design put into it or the jellyfin in order to be a fork has had to put a little bit more work into 40 in its own path maybe it doesn't quite have the extra tier of uh design being put into it there long term but one thing I will say is this is where uh we're gonna make our first big reference to MB Premiere because MB Premiere as mentioned in the introduction you're gonna have to spend a little bit of money if you want to get the full experience of MB there when it comes to the user experience not only in terms of designer configuration but there's generally some of those Hardware options now I referred to this in my other video but I've actually made a huge article here comparing um jellyfinplex and MB and although we're only focusing on jellyfish and MB for this video is definitely worth referring to throughout this video again if you want to learn more about this it will be linked in the description alternatively this was created with a great deal of support and help and permission from protected dezora over on GitHub who's been kind of creating a great body of work on these platforms all together for you to check out and this article here although it talks about what they've all got in common and what they can all run side by side the real thing here to look at is the things that they don't have in common so straight away if we look at jellyfin and MB and again I'm just going to go back into OBS real quick and move myself back down here to the bottom of the screen um if we have a little look jellyf in there completely free completely free completely free it's utterly free free free free open source true true open source more on that later Envy on the other hand here again built off open source and then it starts costing you money now this money you're paying will depend on the um number of devices that you're accessing there number of servers and clients that you're configuring all under one Banner as well as some of the client tools and this is where the kicker lies because if we go back into that side by side there of both platforms um that Adobe Premiere not only is it the level of features that are supported that you have to pay for so again offline downloading which you can do for free in jellyfin pay for if you're going to use a live TV or a DVR plug-in a little antenna there Paid for apps and add-ons and again client apps and add-ons more on that later on premium Hardware transcoding premium adding some of the trailers and extra footage premium and you see the point I'm making here premium premium premium you have to pay for it now again it's not hugely expensive per month five dollars a year 55 54.55 lifetime 119 but it's still money that you're paying for a service when you've already paid for the hardware of your Nas now one you bought a TV but you still paid for Netflix right makes sense you know sometimes you've got to pay for a good platform for it to evolve I get that but where people draw the line sometimes is twofold one it's when people have to pay to trans code now with transcoding more transcoding is when a file is reshaped on the fly to be better suited to either the client that is being played on or the hardware environment that is playing on top of what does that mean well if we look at the files here that we're listing here on screen such as those test files some of these files are better suited they run on a compression technique known as h.264 some of them run in something called h.265 or hevc now because of that and we go make our way back to that original article some files need the file to be changed in shape and scale what that means is that maybe you're playing an enormous 4K file but you are sitting on a beach on the other side of the world using cellular data and you just want to watch it on a phone you don't need Avatar 2 in 4k what you need is a small compacted version of it you need it compressed but you didn't plan in advance you want that file changed on the fly now you can use your CPU your memory your Hardware in general to get the job done on your Nas on the fly in other words that it's going to use less than a second of time to compress or reshape less than a second of footage in air for being able to do it on the Fly that comes down to software transcoding and Hardware transcoding software transcoding uses raw system power and is less efficient but will change those files on the Fly Hardware transcoding is when if your CPU in your Nas has integrated Graphics or you've got a graphics card in place it can access these Hardware resources to get the job done quicker with less Hardware impact and use less resources overall you're either doing that because the destination device you know mobile phone a tablet or whatever is you know better suited to a bet you know a smaller version of that file or you're running on a connection a limited cellular internet connection there or spotty Wi-Fi you might want a smaller version to get the job done quicker or you're running a version of that file be it a file or format you know a codec such as some of the audio stuff which is in Flac ACC mp4i or you're running a compression compression techniques such as hevc which are not supported on your Amazon Fire TV Your Home console your phone and you need the server to convert it due to a lack of license sensing there in those scenarios transcoding is invaluable and Hardware transcoding you have to pay for to get on the MB service there because it's not available to all users you have to get that MB Premiere account whereas on jellyfin you can use as much system Hardware as you want you have to tweak it a little bit more in the encoder but you can get the job done without paying another penny more another thing as mentioned about paying for stuff is to do with those apps you see where it says free apps that's a little disingenuous because they're not all free again we'll head back to that list there and if we have a little look at the supported apps there's good news and there's bad news because if we look at the list of supported apps between jellyfin and MB the good news is that MB as you can see there there's an app for it as at least on the nas server side everywhere so if you want to run and be honor now as you want to run it on an old PC or a Mac menu you add knocking around you want to use an Nvidia Shield an old Raspberry Pi running on a Windows desktop as a server you can get and it's available there jellyfin is not readily available as a ready to deploy installer for all of those platforms sometimes it's not even available on the platforms that they say is as an installer it is really a Docker application that you have to manually set up within things like a Docker or a container based application as a kind of mini hypervisor but for a single application there however when you want your client devices to access your MB or jellyfin server it's a very different conversation because this is another area where MB have popped it behind that premium wall so as you can see where it says server license or five dollars what that means is if you want to enjoy your MB media server on your mobile phone you can download the app but on some platforms you will have to pay five dollars to access the app or you'll have to have the premium service otherwise much like I'll show you now if you try to play a file on the app and you don't have the premiere service like so you'll play it there'll be a slight delay and it will say to you you need to get a you need to get MB Premiere or enter your account details to get the paid access point via your Premiere account there and this isn't even a case of transcoding and again to use transcoding you'll need the premiere on mbside no this this is just to use those apps available to you so on the one hand it is supported on a lot of client-side on server side there but when it comes to the client devices so again this could be all of your relatives your friends your colleagues who you're allowing access to your MB server some of them are going to need to have your specific account login or at least you're gonna have to create user accounts for them within your group account to give them access fully on their client apps or you're gonna have to go in and set them up yourself which can be time consuming now Counterpoint jellyfin it doesn't get much better than when we were talking about on the server side because much like as mentioned jellyfin requiring a kind of container application set up in some cases to run jellyfin server side when it comes to the client side the range of applications available on all of those different client devices from Amazon Fire TV and Android TV and Apple TV and your smart TV and your phone your laptop whatever there are in some cases is a an app available but in other cases those applications are little more than web browser tabs with a small GUI on top and in some cases you have to pay because that application may be on a platform or service where they have to and by they I mean jellyfin have to pay to have that client app on there accessible to you have to pay for hosting so then they kind of had to push that through or they're reliant on third-party applications to work through either way both MB and jellyfin are not a perfect scenario when it comes to sharing your server with less Tech aware individuals or less input than from yourself in order to get those clients working of the two I would say MB is probably the easier of the two as a client and server side set up but I would argue it is one that is largely fraught with additional payments throughout now now when it comes to the level of Baseline features that both of these media platforms arrive with they're largely the same if we dig in we've already looked at it a little bit before but if we make our way into the dashboard of both of these bring them up on screen the level of configuration and controls you have arguably is better on MB sorry to be repetitious but it just seemingly is but the Baseline that you have at the beginning isn't just it you can of course include plugins both of these platforms Supply allow you to have add-on services that you can bolt on the later Bridge with other media applications other media server and client art applications and service ones as well and again things seemed because mb's been around longer there seems to be more often now a lot of these either come down to the people that have created these tools configuring them to be more better suited um to individual platforms of each of them therefore it relies on that third party to create a respective elephant or MB Client app to appear on their app centers there or it's simply the case that jellyfin is newer and that's yet to happen and therefore it's just a question of time but again the level of configurable add-ons just seems to be better there on the MB side of things everything from not even just uh server-side ones to do with multimedia but standard Nas and integrated server management tools that we built in as well and the synchronization with Cloud platforms although available on both of them there seems to be a broader range of tools supported there on MP because it's just been around that bit longer you can add third-party repositories um to the Jelly fin setup there but the Baseline level of configurable options available to you on day one just seems to be better there on the MB side of things and indeed if we make our way in back to that original con um kind of comparison tool there we did between um jellyfin MB and of course Plex on there as well you can see that the range of services included on jellyfin and MB are largely the same but the word we keep coming back to again is license there so again M um MB as good as it is will always have that paid tier there which gelatin doesn't seem to have and maybe they'll never add a paid tier on there and overall they'll win the hearts and minds of a lot of people over MB but we can't really say that um jellyfin has better or more features than MB it's just that the MB features although there are more of them happen to be by a large degree behind that premium wall there so let's summarize this right now if we go down to the bottom so I keep arching back to this article we have already created our comparison there of what's good and what's bad about both of them so in terms of jelly fan to you know sorry to be repetitious once again but one largely free client and server side tools there um support of many more format of media as well Baseline and in terms of transcoding and more a wider range of plugins compared with that of Plex but MB certainly has more overall maybe I should change the wording on that and we'll do that after this video um live TV we didn't even really touch on that that idea of using live TV services and like um IPTV as well using a localized antenna you have to pay for that on the MB side and not on the jelly fin side and the configuration is a little better on the client side I would say but the configuration on the server side is better on MB and lastly offline download is something that's for free there on jellyfinity when it comes to MB of course with MB if you are happy to pay that one-off payment you have access to everything in a better experience overall also this phone camera uploads and traditional just pointing backup uploads as a Target there for your backups as well it's more customizable on the server side than both Plex and um and jellyfin as well as well as those additional apps being greater in number than that of jellyfin overall and it's more Analytical in its approach than Plex Media Server as I say when it comes to MB you're kind of having your cake and eating it in terms of the range of apps and services again when it comes to limitations of both platforms we've largely established it there when it comes to limitations on the side of MB it's got to be that most of these great features and services are stuck behind Premiere and when it comes to the limitations of jelly fin it is that it's nowhere near as established in terms of available downloads on NAS platforms as well as on the client side with the amount of time that you're going to have to spend helping out friends and relatives installing those MB sorry those jellyfin client tools on their devices or at least bridging their third-party ones as well so when it comes down to it MB is still kind of for me the better choice for most casual users between jellyfin and MB I would recommend MB two users who you know are looking for a more customizable platform but aren't really going to be taking advantage of specialized tools if you're more than happy to pay just a little bit of money to save time MB is also going to have you back there as well because you don't have to go for the premium platform like Plex tells you to and you can just go ahead and pay single five knicker or five dollar on a handful of devices for you to unlock those apps and you're absolutely fine long term you can always re-download that app but if you are going to be configuring your media a lot on the fly a lot of transcoding if you're going to be using more specialized formats again like those audio ones that we mentioned earlier on for when you're going to be doing audio books still and you're going to be running real raw media there these are ones where you're going to need transcoding even high dense media that isn't hevc and you're thinking you're not going to need to do Hardware accelerate transcoding some of those files have got quite dense audio media that will need transcoding there something to bear in mind there and if you've got a little bit more time to play with and you're a little bit more tech-versed and you don't mind configuring these devices for all of your friends and family and relatives jellyfin will be appealing as it is between these two truly open source in a way that jelly sorry um MB is sort of abandoned the complete open source position that it once had and between the two of them I think jellyfin is only going to get better over time but MB is already better now and again given it's slightly older nature and a little bit more pedigree behind it I think they've earned that position that they've got at this point but this has been MB versus jellyfin remember the whole focus of this video has been about these platforms on NAS not in of themselves from a client side but how they are to configure and share with other users from a Nas perspective there will be a third part in this series we'll be revisiting the subject of MB versus Plex something we covered uh around about a year and a half two years ago here on the channel and things have moved forward a great deal since then ever since jellyfin now has become a great deal more established so do stay tuned for that I hope you've enjoyed this video I'm sure it was a bit long did repeat itself in places in but I think just the necessary points needed to be highlighted just that a little bit more if you have enjoyed this video and if you are looking to get hold of a Nas server or looking for support not only is this article linked to the description along with links over to protected Azura's um own information there that we talked about earlier on but on top of that if you are going to shop at Amazon and this video has been helpful to you very important those two things are true before you uh do the next bit please use the link below in that article to take you to Amazon if you do that anything you buy while you're at Amazon or is it on a kickback coming back to me and Eddie here at NAS compares the only people here that run this and it won't cost you anything to do and it really helps us keep the lights on here and keep things moving forward alternatively there is links to the free advice section over on NAS Compares which you can use for me and Eddie to help you out choose the right setup for your needs with regards to Media Service as well as links to links to other resources that you can use to help you on your journey towards setting up your own media server other than that thank you so much for watching have yourselves a fantastic week and I'll see you on the next video

Channel: NASCompares

Views: 24,602

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Id: krIxM7DT_3w

Length: 28min 34sec (1714 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023