Media archiv

I think in times without DVD or Bluray everybode has set his own DVD films to an media directory containing all of them. I don't see any DVD players for sale anymore. One of my VHS disc I loved very well. The uncut 18hd version of Last Boy Scout. It was on an VHS media which was destroyed by the recorder sometime. It was lost. At that time I started archiving my DVD and films.

From the time of I search for any solution using my film library to be viewing on the TV.

Kodi

At the very beginning of the archive I had a small old Raspberry Pi attached directly to TV with HDMI. In the raspbian Linux distribution it was possible to install (Kodi)[https://kodi.wiki/view/Main_Page]. The Kodi application runs first on Raspberry Pi and later on as an App of the TV app store. Unfortunately in time the stability and update possibilities got bad. Grafical options were disimproeved a lot and the access of my samba server failed because of SMB protocol problems. After some time I could not attache my Samba server anymore and need to use additional software like any media server. I uses Gerbera or other old simple ones.

Here I describe Gerbera ...

Gerbera

The Gerbera media streaming server is a small server, scanning for media on your disc and tried to retrieve some more media information out of internet databases. This Meta-data are only used and displayed if your TV is able to connect directly to the Gerbera service.

It is possible to load and look video and photos using UPnP access:

version: "3.6" 
services:
  work:
    image: gerbera/gerbera
    network_mode: host
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes: 
#     - gerbera-config:/var/run/gerbera
      - type: bind
        source: $PWD/root
        target: /root
      - $PWD/Video/:/media
      - $PWD/Audio/Music:/audio
      - type: bind
        source: $PWD/run
        target: /var/run/gerbera
    ports:
      - 49152:49152
      - 49494:49494
      - 1900:1900/udp

Jellyfin

Jellyfin is a better alternative to Kodi. Your smartTV need to support Jellyfin. But if it is the case it is far better then Kodi or Gerbera. The backend service of Jellyfin can be accessed using a web-based UI. It is possible to manage the video meta-data. It scans the video. If it is needed and the codec is not available on the client side (on TV for example). Then the Jellyfin backend will transform the video to the available codec on client side. A lot TV vendors or smartphone have apps to access Jellyfin directly. In comparison to Plex it is not needed to work with cloud services. And it is open source without cost or subscriptions.

POD_LOCATION=<data filesystem>
VERSION=10.10.7

podman pod create --name jellyfin_pod \
 --userns keep-id \
 --publish 8096:8096/tcp \
 --publish 8920:8920/tcp \
 --publish 1900:1900/udp

#--network host 
podman run \
 --detach \
 --label "io.containers.autoupdate=registry" \
 --name myjellyfin \
 --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
 --pod jellyfin_pod \
 --device /dev/dri/:/dev/dri/ \
 --volume ${POD_LOCATION}/cache:/cache \
 --volume ${POD_LOCATION}/config:/config \
 --volume <media location>/tiger/Video:/media \
 docker.io/jellyfin/jellyfin:${VERSION}