Hi folks, I know many of you are elite system admins running custom built NAS solutions networked together with servers tucked in every spare closet and space in your home, which is awesome. Having said that, I am still newer in my self hosted journey and my existing knowledge is more from running Linux as an daily driver OS since 2005 rather than actually hosting anything. For this reason, even though it’s not ideologically pure, I opted for a SynologyNAS for simplicity of management. This was the next step for me after dipping my toes into self hosting after messing around with some VMs and an old laptop.
With the new DSM update, Synology removes several apps and codec support, most notably h.256. I experienced something similar on Linux where I cannot view videos recorded on my action cam. I don’t know how many of these photos and videos I have in my file system, but my NAS is local network only and basically contains my photos, videos, ebooks, documents, etc. in separate shares containing a hierarchical folder structure.
My questions:
- How can I most easily search my NAS for files needing the removed codecs so I can gauge how much this will actually effect me? I want to approach the problem in a simple way that I can understand.
- With Linux and Synology DSM both dropping codecs, I am considering just taking the storage hit to convert to h.264 or another format. What would you recommend? I havent recoded video in ages so I’m learning from scratch, but I do have a desktop with dual 1080s that should be up to the task.
- I access my shares via dolphin on KDE. When it comes to thumbnails for a remote filesystem like this are they generated and stored on my PC or will the PC save them to the folder on the NAS where other programs could use them. I just want to make sure I can visually browse the videos and photos on my NAS and have them show up appropriately.
I’m a bit frustrated and kind of favoring just moving things to a different format. I bought a Synology device for an easier experience, and having said that, even if I built a custom solution, didn’t Debian remove h.265 as well? I will probably do a TrueNAS or whatever at some point, but I’ve had way to many family events in the last few years and have to take an easier path right now.
My Linux knowledge is intermediate and my self-hosting knowledge is still fairly basic.
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If you are accessing your files through dolphin on your Linux device this change has no effect on you. In that case Synology is just sharing files and it doesn’t know or care what kind of files they are.
This change is mostly for people who were using the Synology videos app to stream videos. I assume Plex is much more common on Synology and I don’t believe anything changed with Plex’s h265 support.
If you were using the built in Synology videos app and have objections to Plex give Jellyfin a try. It should handle h265 and doesn’t require a purchase like Plex does to unlock features like mobile apps.
Linux isn’t dropping any codecs and should be able to handle almost any media you throw at it. Codec support depends on what app you are using, and most Linux apps use ffmpeg to do that decoding. As far as I know Debian hasn’t dropped support for h265, but even if they did you could always compile your own ffmpeg libraries with it re-enabled.
How can I most easily search my NAS for files needing the removed codecs
The mediainfo command is one of the easiest ways to do this on the command line. It can tell you what video/audio codecs are used in a file.
With Linux and Synology DSM both dropping codecs, I am considering just taking the storage hit to convert to h.264 or another format. What would you recommend?
To answer this you need to know the least common denominator of supported codecs on everything you want to play back on. If you are only worried about playing this back on your Linux machine with your 1080s then you fully support h265 already and you should not convert anything. Any conversion between codecs is lossy so it is best to leave them as they are or else you will lose quality.
If you have other hardware that can’t support h265, h264 is probably the next best. Almost any hardware in the last 15 years should easily handle h264.
When it comes to thumbnails for a remote filesystem like this are they generated and stored on my PC or will the PC save them to the folder on the NAS where other programs could use them.
Yes they are generated locally, and Dolphin stores them in ~/.cache/thumbnails on your local system.
Thank you for the incredibly detailed and patient reply. I will try some additional applications like Jellyfin and Immich instead of the built in synology stuff. It was always my intention to have docker images running on a separate server but stress went up and free time went down and I settled for using the built in applications. Luckily, I havent significantly invested in video center as I just used it to preview files while sorting in DSM.
I had some issues with copying files over SMB. I can write fine, I can delete, but copying seems to fail. My guess is because the local user on my laptop is different than the user on the SMB share. In any case, I was using the file explorer in DSM in Firefox to sort through old media by hand. I’ll have to use NFS and continue to sort via Dolphin.
I’m glad to hear the situation isn’t as dire as I had initially imagined. Perhaps I’m a bit shell shocked from all the enshittification that I jumped to worst case scenarios.
Thanks for giving me the push to try some more third party apps. I’ve been playing with docker for a few days now and am feeling far more comfortable than before. I still worry about mounting shares in the right places with the right permissions and the right way of handling that, but overall, this community’s encouragement helped me take my self hosting to the next level. Maybe I’m begintermediate now :-)
Wait why are distros removing HEVC?
Unless you’re watching the videos directly on the Synology, I don’t see this affecting too much unless you’re strictly relying on transcoding for other devices you’re positive don’t support it. Even then, you could always just default to rendering on the remote device directly which isn’t a huge deal. If you’re using Dolphin, it shouldn’t be an issue. You could always use VLC as well and it shouldn’t be a problem.
Maybe I’m missing something else?
For anyone who’s not in the Synology ecosystem, this is what the release notes are:
Starting from this version, the processing of media files using HEVC (H.265), AVC (H.264), and VC-1 codecs will be transitioned from the server to end devices to reduce unnecessary resource usage on the system and enhance system efficiency. These codecs are widespread on end devices such as smartphones, tablets, computers, and smart TVs. If the end device does not support the required codecs, the use of media files may be limited.
This mostly affects things like streaming to a TV, streaming box or tablet with limited codec support.
When watching videos on Linux, the support on the NAS itself doesn’t matter, just the support only your PC. When opening videos over SMB in dolphin, the codec support on the NAS does not come into play. The thumbnails are generated by your PC.
Just install VLC on your PC and it will play whatever you throw at it, regardless of OS codecs. I would not re-encode anything.
edit: It looks like the biggest impact is using Synology Photos - it can’t generate thumbnails for HEIF photos/HEIC videos anymore
Recode to AV1, free and open codec with a better compression and quality than 265.
Its future proof and more and more supported out of the box everywhere.
Either go tdarr, or check https://github.com/gardiol/media_fixer for a neat bash script capable of find and convert your videos automatically
Encoding to AV1 is good to cooking CPUs.
I do it on daylight when my FV pumps out Wh…
A little bit day by day.
I doubt their box has AV1 support, so this is a non-solution.
Their box is not going to play those videos, so AV1 is game.
Anyway software playback of AV1 is a thing, and works, you know.
I use tdarr to recode to h264 for compatibility. But most apps or devices have the codecs.
It should only be a real issue if you use surveillance station or Synology photos.
Nothing stopping you installing frigate.
Look into FileFlows, I used that after my tdarr server shit the bed to act as my conversion utility for my media libraries. Done a very good job of transcoding my Library into a consistent format.
If you have any inclination to use docker, they offer a generator to make the compose file for you
