My journey with hexos to JellyFin with Intel Transcoding 💖

[thomasmillergb]

My setup is a bit of mix of new and old where i wanted hexos for the simple purpose of, i want to backup my **** and have easy access to them including my movies.

The setup has room for growing

i7 4gen + 16GB DDR3 ram  (The old)

12TB x 3  IronWolf pros + Intel ARC A580 (The new)

 

Ok What i learnt about HexOs

Is it easy to setup 3 hardrives in a Z1  with having no previous experience?

- Definitely and not only that the  get me started guide and UI is very helpful

Is it easy to setup my Folder SMB?

- It was a breath of fresh air, however it would have been nice if there was an example of how to mount the SBM on linux so i can say instead my dec

 

JellyFin Setup via TrueNas

Ok this got a bit challenging as there are multiple steps to follow and requires going into truenas for the first time.

The main bit which is so easy to miss is the following Jellyfin | TrueNAS Documentation Hub regarding setting up the storage.

Passing the GPU through was as simple as checking the pass through option. (So nice no drivers were needed to install)

JellyFin Transcoding 

Now all the JellyFin inital **** is now taken care of, diving into the unknown for me was how to setup transcoding.

First the jellyfin docs are amazing Intel GPU | Jellyfin provding you love reading detail and every line.  But long story short use 

The next question is how do i know i set this up, as i was initially disappointed with transcode types.

First setup open up any video and do a wack screen size or set a custom  bit limit. 

Open PlayBack Info

Ok we can see some transcoding is happening. To verify its actually using the GPU my first thought was just to pull the GPU and then play the video again. Yay transcoding now fails

Ok but what about usage,  this is where i struggled, as TrueNas does not support GPU metrics 😞 i thought maybe i could export the raw metrics, pump into my prometheus and grafana but no metrics.

However there is light, if you open up the truenas console or ssh in (this is off be default) you can then run the following

$sudo intel_gpu_top 

Sweet

 

Now i am finally happy, where i have moved away from a pi5 under the stairs with 4 usb hardrives hanging out of it..

[Todd Miller]

I've heard a lot about Jellyfin and am interested in hearing from folks who have used both recently.  It seems to be on many folks list of what to work on next but since I have a lifetime Plex pass I am hesitant to take up new software that me be in an upcoming phase of this project like Plex and Imich are in the first phase.  And because the world of NAS systems and software is not my speciality I want to hear more success stories before I upset the apple cart myself.  Perhaps not the best approach for a beta testing effort but i'll pull my weight yet.

Though I can't access Plex externally yet, it was very easy to load both my movies and episodic tv.  I head to do a little renaming of the files but everything show up with the correct episode name and date.  I have a few issues where the episode order doesn't match Ples or IMDB for that matter but those feel like a small price to pay for every DR Who episode from Eccleston through Whittaker to just work.  If the Jellyfin install falls under the new template option it sounds like is coming next I may give it a go but I don't want to break HexOS because I couldn't wait and did something in TrueNAS.  I am really in over my head there.  As an aside, how did the PI5 work?  I have a kit but haven't done anything with it yet?  If it can run HexOS, that sounds like street cred and bragging rights.  Ugh, I suppose the kids don't say it that way anymore.