Tools to migrate from Plex to Jellyfin?
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Given the recent news about Plex soon charging for remote access, I wanted to finish up my switch to Jellyfin.
What tools/methods have you all used to migrate watch history to Jellyfin?
I have a few family members in there, and would like to get everything switched over without resetting their watch history.
Not the answer to your question but thanks for the reminder to cancel
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Not really. Or at all. Both of those are multi-purpose devices which you can use for other things. A plex license is singularly for Plex. It doesn't do anything more for you than to stream your own media, something you can already accomplish for free.
Of all the examples you could have chosen you essentially picked the worst two.
It doesn't do anything more for you than to stream your own media
Sure it does, which is why we're not all using VLC to stream our media.
Furthermore, they do provide a simple way to share our media with friends and family via their authentication servers along with their relay servers if direct access to your server goes down for whatever reason which have associated costs. I have a lot of my own gripes about Plex, but this particular change is probably at the bottom of the list, and I think acting like this software has zero value is disparaging not only Plex but Jellyfin and the army of volunteers over there working hard to make their product better for you and everyone else at no cost. You're essentially saying all their work is worthless since their product accomplishes all the same things as Plex.
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It’s not the same at all.
Plex practically doubled their prices to access features that users previously had for free.
Can’t remember the last time a HDD manufacturer put previously free features behind a paywall or when a Mullvad doubled its prices.
How have they doubled their prices? The monthly fee and lifetime license are still the same price and they've always charged for Android and iOS playback if you didn't have the Plex Pass. I won't argue that this change is a good thing but I don't think it's anywhere near as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. They aren't changing anyone now who streams from a server that has the Plex Pass so now my users can watch on their mobile devices for free using a license I paid for once close to a decade ago.
HDD manufacturers have been increasing their prices as of late for the same products that were previously cheaper, and Mullvad is still charging you the same monthly fee even though they've removed important features like port forwarding, so what's the difference? Hosting a server has costs associated with it and this is another one of those costs if you want to use their completely optional solution to use and share your library.
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If someone wants my Lifetime Plex account they can have it.
I’ll take it if you haven’t already given it away. This Plex change is not great for me, since I’m using remote access. I’ve got a Jellyfin server too, but I’m finding it less convenient for me, mostly for various nitpick reasons
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Just buy the lifetime Plex Pass before the price hike and you're golden.
That would probably work, until Plex decides to introduce another subscription tier on top of the lifetime license, and/or demand more money from its paying users. I could totally see them doing that
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How have they doubled their prices? The monthly fee and lifetime license are still the same price and they've always charged for Android and iOS playback if you didn't have the Plex Pass. I won't argue that this change is a good thing but I don't think it's anywhere near as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. They aren't changing anyone now who streams from a server that has the Plex Pass so now my users can watch on their mobile devices for free using a license I paid for once close to a decade ago.
HDD manufacturers have been increasing their prices as of late for the same products that were previously cheaper, and Mullvad is still charging you the same monthly fee even though they've removed important features like port forwarding, so what's the difference? Hosting a server has costs associated with it and this is another one of those costs if you want to use their completely optional solution to use and share your library.
How have they doubled their prices?
HDD manufacturers have been increasing their prices as of late for the same products that were previously cheaper
Nope. Most recent delta is a decrease of $0.0000022 per MB. And the general trend has been decreasing for decades.
my users can watch on their mobile devices for free using a license I paid for once close to a decade ago.
You sound like a boomer talking about the house they bought decades ago for $75,000.
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pay the license costs for the codecs your using...
granted... none of us care about that. but thats what they're doing. also developement on the software (for good and bad)
Doesn’t the player itself handle the codecs, not the Plex Media Server?
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Doesn’t the player itself handle the codecs, not the Plex Media Server?
Transcoding...
Since Plex is distributing software that can re-encode video, the codecs that comes with the software must be licensed for many of the codecs.
Here's an article that covers some of the shenanigans around h264... Now realize there's at least a dozen others as well that are likely just as screwy.
https://jina-liu.medium.com/settle-your-questions-about-h-264-license-cost-once-and-for-all-hopefully-a058c2149256 -
I think you're looking for https://github.com/arabcoders/watchstate Watchstate will pull from Plex and migrate it into a Jellyfin instance. Emby is also supported. Works with multiple users as well, just do yourself a favor and make sure all usernames match up!!!
I just used this to migrate from Emby to Jellyfin, works really well. I already have tracked setup on my main account but for my kid nothing goes out to the cloud so their account was all done with watchstate. It was also handy to keep Emby and Jellyfin in sync during the transition.
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All the folks saying "just buy the lifetime pass" gonna be in for a big disappointment in about 5 years
If we got 5yr it's more than paid for itself. Even FOSS needs support - stop whining.
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Just buy the lifetime Plex Pass before the price hike and you're golden.
BuT I wAnT mY fRrrreEeeeEEeeee
These whiny people should stay with Plex if only to save FOSS devs the headache of dealing with them. They aren't going to support them either.
(Thanks for helping clarify)
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I think you're looking for https://github.com/arabcoders/watchstate Watchstate will pull from Plex and migrate it into a Jellyfin instance. Emby is also supported. Works with multiple users as well, just do yourself a favor and make sure all usernames match up!!!
This tool is neat for updating watched status live amongst backends AFTER it’s been set up, but have never gotten it to work to bring a new back end in line with an existing one. I moved from Plex to Jellyfin, then again from Jellyfin to Emby and both times it only marked some of my watched content as played on whatever the “new” system is. And not even on a show by show basis either. If you go from Plex where you’ve watched every episode of a season of a show that has 10 episodes, when it exports that status to Jellyfin or Emby, it’ll mark episodes 1,2,6,9, and 10 as played but not the others. It’s remarkably consistent in this behavior and even after scrapping the DB and starting over it always behaves the exact same.
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If we got 5yr it's more than paid for itself. Even FOSS needs support - stop whining.
Thing is, Plex turns out to be less and less of a good thing with each passing day. Bloat, spying, removal of features, price hikes etc.
If you want to pay for software that is good, there’s always Emby.
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It's not getting shittier, they're just asking for you to pay because you haven't been paying. If anything, the service is improving. I paid once and never have to pay again and I'm saving a ton needing to pay for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Paramount, AppleTV etc. etc.
It is getting shittier. I paid for Plex for years and I bailed not because of the cost, (I pay Emby now), but because of the bloat they keep shoving into it, spying on our content, and removing features entirely.
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If we got 5yr it's more than paid for itself. Even FOSS needs support - stop whining.
PLEX is not FOSS, plex is a proprietary fork of XBMC.
My point is that in 5 years a lot of these plex users will wish they made the switch to jellyfin sooner. We've seen this before with other FOSS projects that gets forked into proprietary bullshit to make money.
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If we got 5yr it's more than paid for itself. Even FOSS needs support - stop whining.
I don't get the people down voting you... It's not like services are free. I've been paying for Plex since 2019, and I just recently got a lifetime pass. It's only fare to pay for it to use it ...
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How have they doubled their prices?
HDD manufacturers have been increasing their prices as of late for the same products that were previously cheaper
Nope. Most recent delta is a decrease of $0.0000022 per MB. And the general trend has been decreasing for decades.
my users can watch on their mobile devices for free using a license I paid for once close to a decade ago.
You sound like a boomer talking about the house they bought decades ago for $75,000.
I had not seen that about the Plex Pass doubling.
Yep the most recent delta shows the price of the Seagate drive increasing over what it was in early 2024 and 2023. I can attest to this personally as I've been buying at least one 8-14TB drive each year since 2018 and back then I could get new 8TB drives at $105 but now WD wants $176 for the same 8TB Easystore. Your link shows multiple different options each quarter which is an apples to oranges comparison.
You sound like a boomer talking about the house they bought decades ago for $75,000.
Oh really when the license is still the same exact $120 price a decade later? Have you ever heard of inflation? Apparently not as you talk about how things used to be cheaper while not even realizing that this $120 license should cost $162 if they had kept up with inflation, but please keep telling us about how you used to wear an onion on your belt back when prices were cheaper as you call others "boomers."
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PLEX is not FOSS, plex is a proprietary fork of XBMC.
My point is that in 5 years a lot of these plex users will wish they made the switch to jellyfin sooner. We've seen this before with other FOSS projects that gets forked into proprietary bullshit to make money.
Or Plex currently does everything they need it to, and $120 for 5+ years of keeping that going without any interruption of service is very reasonable. In the meantime, jellyfin will only get better and there might even be other options available by then.
Stop trying to make the issue black and white, one-size-fits-all. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for people to use both Plex and Jellyfin.
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I think you're looking for https://github.com/arabcoders/watchstate Watchstate will pull from Plex and migrate it into a Jellyfin instance. Emby is also supported. Works with multiple users as well, just do yourself a favor and make sure all usernames match up!!!
Thanks this looks great!
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I think this is the tool you are looking for: https://github.com/luigi311/JellyPlex-Watched
I haven't used it myself but I plan on it eventually when I do make the switch.
Thanks! Looks like it will work.
