I’m curious how you have automated/optimized your workflows for downloading, saving, archiving media.
For instance:
- On my laptop I download an epub into a folder that Calibre watches.
- Calibre copies and imports that epub into the Calibre library and removes the old epub.
- Calibre Library is hooked up to SyncThing, which passes the epub to my eReader.
My workflow is probably not the most efficient, but I’m hoping I can be inspired by people’s approaches.
We don’t do the piracy Mr FBI
i torrent video files via qbittorrent from my PC onto a truenas folder on my server (my old PC), which is attached to a jellyfin jail, from where i can watch it with every device i have wireguard vpn installed on. boom. private video streaming service.
for ebooks, the same thing happens, but i manually move the files onto my kobo libre 2. i don’t have very many ebooks to manage.
the syncthing idea is great, but i suspect your ebook reader is running android. the libre 2 runs a closed down version of linux i believe.
Why the VPN and not a normal domain?
You didn’t ask me but possible reasons are:
- Only exposing Wireguard leaves your server with minimal attack surface
- Domains cost money
- Makes port forwarding a lot easier if you’re the only one having access via wireguard
- No need to secure each service manually (mostly with TLS via a reverse proxy)
Normal domain only for allowing others access to specific services (like friends+family into emby/plex/jellyfin). VPN for easily secured access to all the backend interfaces like radarr/sonarr/qbittorrent or private services like vaultwarden.
I also run the VPN to keep mobile devices behind pihole for adblocking.
the simple answer is: me big stupid
i had a domain, but dyndns and all the other stuff required is too complicated for me to figure out.
Download thing, open thing in vlc or music bee. People make complicated systems to automate this stuff but I don’t consume enough new media to make doing all of that worth it. Neither do I need my media remotely accessible, if I’m out doing something then I am busy and don’t need to be watching a movie or whatever. If I know the boredom situation is dire then I will bring my psp or a book with me. I’d rather consume media in my sort of nice audio and game setups than anywhere else anyways.
Music bee is like itunes from 10 years ago but without drm. I leave qbit and soulseek open cos sharing is caring
Ombi > Radarr/Sonarr > Emby.
I want to watch something: open a webpage I host, search for title (results from thetvdb/themoviedb), click ‘add+search’. Around 15min later I get an email notifying me it’s available to watch. I then open another webpage I host and stream away.
My friends and family have access to this as well. Items they add will email me for approval before downloading, but is otherwise the same.
I am about to go on this adventure of setting up a full *arr stack! I had it kind of almost working once, had a kid, and now finally getting time to work up a proper server to handle everything
I’ve been catch and release for 5 years or so now.
Archiving is such a huge drain on time / effort / resources.
catch and release
Brilliant phrase! I’m an archiver myself partly because it takes me ages to watch things, and partly because some things get returned to again and again. I could definitely do with a cull, but it’s easier to commit to more storage.
Yeah look, everyone has to find their own way, I’m not trying to make the case that catch & release is going to be better for everyone, and there’s certainly a case to be made for archiving.
The thing that eventually got me was maintaining a big raid array. Lots of heat, power, drives dying every now and again. When it only takes a few minutes to download something and I never go near my bandwidth quota (or it’s unlimited maybe) going to catch & release made a lot of sense. I’m not religious about it but I generally delete things after I’ve listened / watched.
Yea I feel that, if it wasn’t for my many years of GDrive unlimited (RIP unlimited) I wouldn’t have anywhere near 200TB+ of “Linux ISOs” lmao
I have a bookmarklet that I use on youtube to send the url to a flask app I wrote that runs it through yt-dlp and saves it to my plex server.
The Saturday Night Live channel has over 6000 videos. I downloaded its metadata and loaded it into a database and wrote another simple web app to browse it quickly and choose the videos I want to download. I have a plex library for SNL alone with about 700 sketches. I should generalize this for other channels but it was mostly a one time thing with throwaway code.
Lately I’ve been trying to automate ersatztv channel setup but it doesn’t have an API so I’m writing to its sqlite database and hoping that will work.
There isn’t much more you can do to streamline that workflow for ebooks, though the default Calibre library filesystem of subfolders by author makes it frustrating if your library is large and the books author is towards the end of the alphabet.
My new workflow (which is my old workflow but it’s been broken since Calibre companion was bought by some asshole) is use syncthing to sync your calibre autoimport folder, then use the Calibre reading list plugin to upload it to your device next time it connects.
For my reading app I use KOreader, it will allow you to connect to Calibre as a wireless device and let you browse your OPDS server if you have it enabled. Also it’s available on basically anything.
I eventually intend to host my Calibre library on my server and run it through a reverse proxy so I don’t have to worry about being connected to my home network for updated, but that’s a bit further down the road lol.
I do Lunasea to search and add to sonarr/radarr/lidarr from my phone. That’s gets posted to Plex and Jellyfin (backup incase Plex really goes dow hill). If I’m outside the home I have wireguard setup so I connect in and run the same if my friend mentions something I should watch or listen to.
I would like to set something up for my kindle but haven’t gone down that rabbit hole yet.
I also wanted to set something up for my switch like running my own private eShop but that’s a whole different rabbit hole.
I’m also curious about the extended scripts that someone posted not to long ago for subscribing to YouTube shows, for now I just do adblock or smarttube.
I’ve been thinking of hosting a Telegram bot on my server that I can send album links from Spotify to from my phone, and then it downloads all the songs directly through Zotify. Just haven’t gotten to it yet.
