cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36604428
Hello everybody,
I want to ask for some opinions on my current setup and how I pretend to use it for my Media Server:
Current Layout
I currently use an UGREEN DXP2800 NAS running TrueNAS Scale with two 4 TB HDDs in Mirror mode. This is planned to be my “long-term storage” for backups, photos, and so on.
Additionally, I have 1 TB SSD installed in the system. I created two datasets on it: one for Docker containers and the other one for Media, following the TRaSH guides folder layout
My current plan:
My idea is to use the SSD for the torrents and the seeds, and once the file (e.g. the ~~movie ~~ Linux ISO Image) is completed, to move it to the HDDs. From there, Jellyfin would read the corresponding dataset and play the media.
The question:
The TRaSH guides puts a lot of emphasis on hardlinks and atomic moves, and that forces you to operate in one single filesystem. Is it worth it to stick to the TRaSH guide or my current setup would work just fine? What do y’all think?
Thanks in advance and happy self-hosting!
Yeah this, the guide is great but the size limits and such can be kind of nuts. I went back and used the guide but stick to 1080p for more chances at finding stuff and less bloat.
A lot of the guide feels geared to hosting just for you if you have a great TV setup. Considering half the people that use my stuff are on a phone, 1080 is fine, saves transcode and headaches with things that older decides can’t even stream.
No one listens to me, so no one updates their stuff so sadly I still can’t use 265 cus it doesn’t work on a lot of stuff :(
I bit the bullet and invested in a dedicated transcoding GPU. Then I setup Tdarr to transcode all the things nightly into x265. I figure the money I saved in storage offset the cost of the GPU. And it handles multiple streams pretty flawlessly, for any devices that don’t support the codec.
Subscribe.
I’ve got TrueNAS running on a reasonably recent PC but not a ton of space on the drives. I’d love to transcode the handful of 8GB+ movies and 40GB+ seasons sitting around taking up space. How complicated was it to set up tdarr and how long does it usually take to transcode?
Tdarr leaves a lot to be desired as far as the friendliness of the UI goes. They do include a tutorial mode when you first fire it up, I definitely suggest slogging through it, or else you will likely be totally lost. Once I got it dialed in and my custom library transcoding logic tweaked the way I want it, it’s basically set-and-almost-forget.
I do check it every couple days, because I have some size threshold guardrails. Some shows it will fail because the final size is actually larger than the original, in which case I add them to the ignore list.
I have a Quadro P2000 that is pretty much dedicated to transcoding. The sweet spot for me seems to be 2 simultaneous x265 10bit transcode jobs, using handbrake (versus ffmpeg). This puts me at ~90% encoder capacity. I would say your average full length movie takes a job 10-15 mins, including some hygiene steps in my logic. TV shows can be much swifter. This is using the following flags:
-e nvenc_h265_10bit -E copy --encoder-preset slow -q 24.0 --all-subtitles --all-audioThe great thing is you can set schedules. So basically I have it grind through any new files from like 11PM - 7AM, when no one’s really using the server for anything.
I feel like I should say this is all anecdotal, I am not an expert at this, I’m still very much learning, but I do spend A LOT of time working on my server.
EDIT: One more thing. By default Tdarr will use your drive for transcode cache. If you’ve got RAM to spare, consider spinning up a tmpfs ramdisk and pointing the cache path at that. Just be sure to make it’s max size bigger than whatever file sizes you’ll think you’ll be transcoding at once.
For instance I don’t expect to be transcoding individual files bigger than 24gb, multiplied by two simultaneous jobs. So I create my tmpfs max size to be 48gb.
I am lucky to be running 128gb RAM, so I can get away with this, especially at night when nothing much else is using resources. Your mileage may vary.
Thank you for the detailed write up. I’m going to give this a shot and see if I can save myself some space.