Jellyfin is Better than Plex and Emby | How to Use Jellyfin to Organize Your Media

i've been a plex user for years now and

i imagine many of you are as well if not

maybe you use inby and i started

tinkering around with jellyfin about a

year ago and then i found myself using

it more and more and then as more and

more features were added to jellyfin i

just eventually completely stopped using

plex and i never really got into envy

plex was my choice between the two so

i'm now exclusively using jellyfin

to sling media into my eyeballs and i

want to talk about why

and i want to help you get set up with

jellyfin

before we get started let's head over to

who keys and unlock our copy of windows

using coupon code ts25 you can get 25

off these prices here i use windows 10

pro you can also get windows 10 home and

both of these will upgrade to windows

11. you can get that also note that the

windows 10 keys have been working with

windows 11. google it and make sure that

this is still a thing whenever you're

purchasing your key also i want to note

that if you get windows 10 home and you

upgrade it to windows 11 they will force

you to use an online account with

windows 11 pro however you can use a

local account just so you know you can

also get office 2019 with that same

discount or if you like you can get

windows 10 pro and office 2019 in a

bundle and save even more go ahead and

put ts25 in here as your coupon code hit

apply and then you can see we can get

windows 10 pro for 14.85 once you're

finished if you want to access your key

you click on your name on the top right

click on user center and you'll see my

purchase orders right here you'll be

able to view the keys that you've

purchased just by clicking on view keys

and codes then you'll see your code

right here just go ahead and copy this

code press start type activate you'll

see activation settings come up click on

that then click change product key right

there you can paste in your code and hit

next and then you will be activated it's

very simple so don't pay those retail

prices for your copy of windows or

office head over to hookies.com and use

coupon code ts25

so one of the things that got me started

was you know some of the stuff i wanted

to do with plex like download media

remotely was locked behind a pay wall

and i you know i don't like pay walls so

you come up here we've got you know it's

features all these things for pros if

you want like their some of their

premium apps well you got to pay for it

the same thing with mb 54 a year which

if you're using this all the time it's

probably a better deal than like netflix

you can still host your own media but

that's you know if you want access to

offline media hardware transcoding and

all that kind of stuff but then we have

jellyfin which i find works really

really well it offers all of that stuff

and it does it for free the only thing

we have here is a contribute button so

if you want to contribute to the project

you can otherwise you can use all of its

functionality which is vast for free and

this is something that

people think is kind of silly to talk

about i like this interface better i

think it looks better

it's cooler you know it's definitely

cooler looking

this interface is great i i think it's

better looking than plaques and envy you

know what if you're happy on plex and

you're just using it in your house

and you're not using it on your mobile

devices and you don't need to download

it or anything you you're just fine with

the free version joker

by all means

go ahead and use it that way

i mentioned you because we were talking

online and i said i like jellyfin so yes

so i was going to show you how to do all

the installation and everything but

there's plenty of tutorials online you

need to download a client but you also

need to download the server so when you

first get here click on downloads and we

can grab the media server

and we have it for all different

versions docker and stuff or if you have

a nas you can just hop into your nas and

check the applications panel and see if

you have a version there you can

download so pick your flavor and then

install

this as a server next up you'll need a

client so you can download this for any

of your devices if you're on android you

can just go into your app store or

whatever and find jellyfin there all the

way down at the bottom are the desktop

versions i really like the jellyfin

media player it's pretty

jellyfin

mpv shim

is something you might want to download

as well because it gives you more

control

over the transcoding or the lack of

transcoding that you can have hardware

acceleration and that kind of stuff it

runs in the background for most people

download this if you want more control

you can also download this and just let

it run in the background so i'm going to

go ahead click on github and then get

that over here is the release and then

just grab your flavor and i won't insult

your intelligence by telling you how to

install it i will say that when you're

installing this on your nas make sure

you don't just click next 20 times you

want to look at each page and see if

they're giving you any instructions

sometimes they say hey you need to set

up a user with permissions to view your

library and the user's name must be

jellyfin so just make sure you you look

at that before you click next next next

next and then after that we will be able

to log in now on your first login it's

going to ask you to put in the ip

address and create a name and password

just go through all of that and then

your client will open up and ask you to

add some libraries uh click the plus

button to add a new library you have to

pick the content type

now movies and shows have different

metadata

information so make sure you pick the

correct content type and it's also

really advisable to have all this stuff

separated on your hard drive so for each

library that you want you're going to

want a separate folder on your hard

drive because once i say like okay i

want to do

music

well you're gonna have to add a folder

that corresponds specifically to this

and you can break it down as much as you

want like if you want to do you know you

can just scroll down and be like where's

that folder oh there it is it's also

really cool if you wanted to add the

direct network location

you can do that right here if you know

what that is now you can see here we

have some metadata downloaders how did i

get all these

we're going to cancel out and i'll show

you that all right we're going to

continue to look through just our

settings here and i want to kind of skip

over most of this and go down to the

special stuff that's the plugin section

now the plugin section we have a catalog

where we can download new functionality

and add it to our device

you can see here we've got all this kind

of cool stuff i've added a bunch of

stuff to mine mine's gonna show

more than yours is and that's because

i've added more sources for the plugins

by adding some repositories here

so i'll put a link in the description

someone on reddit was really nice and

they made a list of all the repositories

that they could find

and then what stuff you could get from

them so you know just scroll through

here and see if there's a plugin that

you think you'd really like and then you

could just copy

this url then we just go over here to

our repositories

plus and then drop the url there

you can name it whatever it was you know

whatever you had it named you can name

it whatever

once you add it it'll show up here and

then all those plugins will show up in

the catalog so which ones do i recommend

well it all depends on what you want

to do with your device i do watch anime

so anime db or anadb i really enjoy

um you can add a few of these so that's

what i've done

i've added in a db and a list

and a few others

i highly recommend open subtitles you'll

need an account for that but it's pretty

easy to set up

and you go through here and just find

out what else you need now after you're

done grabbing your plugins the different

metadata plugins or whatever

go over to my plugins and just make sure

they don't need anything i'm going to

click on fan art got a personal api key

that we can use for the fan art but it's

okay as long as we're not downloading

too much at one time now for open

subtitles when you click on that one you

need a name and a password and an api

key it's really easy just create an

account on open subtitles by clicking

here and then once you're done you click

here to create your api key you can name

your api key anything you like so it's

very easy i don't need to walk you

through that as you can see i have the

anime plugin that comes with it it

covers

anadb

and a couple other things so that's all

we need there

so this is what i use don't need too

much this is the open movie database

now let's go back to our home page now

that we've got our library set up now

we've got like our different categories

here and i've just put some custom

images there by clicking on the dot dot

dot and you can edit images

so we've got that one there

you can add more images you could

download your own you push plus you can

drag and drop your own images so if you

wanted to make a separate image for your

movies category versus your anime movies

category or whatever you can do that so

that's how you change the images

for your uh your media okay so you can't

edit things from right here

you have to click here go to your

dashboard

then go to your libraries then you can

edit stuff

so from here i can actually manage

library now once you're managing your

library that's when we can do some cool

stuff

like

add and subtract metadata downloaders so

you can change that behavior and then

towards the bottom here

you can check your subtitles now i have

mine downloading subtitles in english

are the damn things just make sure you

got um

here we go i want to select english and

then for open subtitles i always check

mark this i tell it to skip downloading

subtitles if they're already available

and i would it comes unchecked i would

recommend checkmarking this because if

you already have subtitles that are

embedded you probably don't need to be

downloading extra subtitles but

that's how i've got that set up

and then when you look at like just like

my movies

i've got a managed library on my movies

for that metadata i don't look at the

analyst or the anadb that's just going

to waste time and those movies like my

regular films that are not animated

they're not going to be there so i'm

just using the movie database and open

movie database and then i'm also going

to use some stuff in here i use fan art

which has some really cool artwork and

stuff

and then i do the same thing for

subtitles tell it to skip if it already

is you know already contains it now i'll

show you how we do the artwork here if

you have like some shows and the

artwork's not working or whatever well

there's a few things we can do let's see

if we can find something without our

work okay everything's wicked what is

this this is all wrong wicked city this

is

i don't know anything about this movie

so what we can do

is you click little dot dot dot you can

click it here

or you can even click it from this page

click on the dot dot dot and click on

edit metadata

wicked city so now i you know i need to

find this

online so we can fix this it's got the

wrong

information here from the movie

databases

so one of the cool things here that we

can do is just go to imdb and i'm just

going to look for wicked city that's

what i'm looking for the 1987 anime

there it is

so this is the information i want see

this number up here just grab that and

then we're going to put that here

see

if i get rid of that it'll it'll

automatically fill in the movie database

i also want to get the anna db so let's

let's find that one and a db here and a

search for oops wicked city sit right

there wicked city i'm also going to grab

this number up here 10 40.

so i'm just going to do a couple you

don't have to do them all you can do i

mean you can if you wanted to fill them

all in but sometimes it'll automatically

fill it in

now i'm going to save these changes i've

changed the movie it's updating on its

own hasn't updated yet so what we're

going to do is click on the dot dot dot

again

go to refresh metadata

click on replace existing images and

then click refresh

give it a second if i click in here

it'll start doing stuff it's not doing

it yet come on

it's confused right now just have to

give it a second

there we go just took it a second then

it found

all that stuff

um if you really want to get crazy you

can go through and actually add in

the images and stuff

for these individual actors so that

one's good got the artwork there it's

ready to go

now let's say we wanted to change the

artwork on one of our

movies or whatever

well we can do that let's uh let's see

here which one do we want to change how

about ninja scroll let's get some

different artwork

for that one there i like that one

that's pretty but let's see what else

we've got available

if you just click now you can click here

or anywhere else and just click on edit

images

all right we've got our primary and our

backdrop click on this it'll search our

different sources we've got the fan art

looks pretty good

uh creepy snake lady what do we got

which one looks good

you know i like the one we already have

but this one's pretty cool let's see how

it looks when you click on it it'll show

you what we got

that one's pretty i like that yeah let's

let's just use it for the sake of the

video

so you just click here on the little

cloud it downloads it and the backdrop's

fine it's whatever

and just give it a second and that will

show up there

after sometimes you have to go back

out and then go back in and it'll update

cool

all right so that's uh pretty easy

that's how i've got everything all set

up here

i guess i love this artwork it's

beautiful

you can sometimes depending on the anime

there'll be lots of artwork available

not just backdrop they'll also be like

logos and stuff let's see here let's go

to some of the shows here and see if we

can find anything

lotus for

edit images we've even got a logo for

this one because it's available

so we can look for logos we've got

logos from fan art

i like i liked here this one

yeah i like just the simple one it it's

even though this is very pretty let's

just you can we can switch it back and

forth you know there we go and the

primary artwork looks good the backdrops

fine i guess

cool

so that's what we've got

and you can get very nerdy with this

while we're here let me just recommend

an old sci-fi show that's all i'm going

to say doesn't over explain itself

either which is something that i love

can't stand when all the hollywood

people are like we must explain in

detail every little thing

and we can't just accept that this is a

different world that's pretty cool

before i leave i do want to mention that

we do have some client settings here i

think for the client i'm going to open

gl just to give it a little boost in

case it needs it i like to set my um

tiny or small depending but i like to

set my subtitles

center bottom and then you can set them

anywhere you like make them huge if you

want i don't care it takes the whole

screen do whatever you want

so anyway that's how i have my jellyfin

set up so i think i'm going to go and

watch some content let me know what you

think and uh if you have some questions

in the comments place them or just do it

on the forum if you can't figure out how

to get something installed then

i can help

over there much better because i can

write a lot more than i can on youtube

or whatever so anyway let me know what

you think about this in the comments let

me know if you're using this let me know

what your favorite plugins are as well

i'm very curious especially the metadata

plugins and all that so let me know

which ones you like

and we'll talk about it goodbye

[Music]