Synology. Whatever is in your budget.

Yes, they’ve done things to piss off the community, and sure, a DIY build is going to give you more control and powerful hardware.

But you can get support (though Synology or the Internet communities of users), and if any family member ever needs to take it over, it’ll be easy for them to pick up and manage.

Yes, when you mount the external library (when setting up docker), you can set it as read-only. 👌

My use case:

I use a Synology NAS to backup my photos/videos. On mobile, I use the Synology Photos app for 100% of the backups, because it’s been 100% reliable for me over the years.

I basically run Immich in read-only mode, and specifically for searches. The contextual search is incredible, and after putting it side-by-side with a very expensive Windows software that uses local AI search, it came out on top… no contest.

So in that sense, I’m very happy!

Also no native Linux app so I could only use it on the app on my phone.

You can use their web interface to view/control certain models on your local network: https://support.reolink.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003981973-How-to-Remotely-Access-Reolink-Cameras-NVRs-via-a-Web-Browser/

I have the Reolink Home Hub (doesn’t support all my Reolink cameras, but enough), and I’m able to use the browser interface on Linux no problem. Of course, the app is more feature rich, but that depends on your needs, too.

I’m sure you can even access this interface through the net via remote proxy or something similar.

but in a recent firmware update they disabled the http and https capabilities

Yeah, they suck with their firmware. One of my cameras was locked out… literally unable to view, playback, or control it until I got in touch with Reolink tech support so they could force an update through. It took several days and a lot of effort to clear that up. Not cool!

mp3va.com has been listed in U.S. Trade Representative annual reports as being unauthorized to sell music. Legal experts have explicitly stated that while MP3VA claims to operate legally under Ukrainian copyright laws, “it is not legal for them to sell this music in the United States”.

I’ve never used the site, but there seems to be an argument here regarding moral law and legalities within the United States.

But the site claims that:

Service www.Mp3va.com pays full-scale author’s royalties to owners of pieces of music, trademarks, names, slogans and other copyright objects used on the site.

If that’s the case, I think the OP should feel good about it.

Buying off a site like them likely pays out more per user than listening to the same songs on a streaming platform.

I seriously only want to have options for sorting when I do a search. That’s the only thing that I need for it to be “perfect”.

I used to run software on an old phone that basically worked as a camera NVR.

At some point the battery swelled up and I’m glad my house didn’t burn to the ground. I only noticed it because the glass screen protector on that phone had popped off from the screen flexing under pressure 😮

As long as you have a way of monitoring your phones, or at least physically isolating them from important things, then you could probably do it without many risks.

Unfortunately, the only other alternative to “auto” under Profile is “main”, which I have no idea what it does.

And under level, it’s either “auto” or a bunch of numbers.

That said, I was under the impression that any manual settings would override the settings in the “auto” profile. Is that not the case?

I found my answer then! I appreciate that 👍

Have you taken very verbose logs to see if there’s differences that stand out?

Nope, but that could be a next step. I was hoping for an easy fix (like I did something wrong in the settings).

Realistically, if this can’t be solved by using the built-in setting options, then it’s not worth the trouble to “fix” anything. It still works, so I’m glad to have the option.

To match it completely I think you need to disregard the presets and set everything yourself, like CRF and everything.

Is there a way to disable the preset completely? There’s no “none” option, just “speed, balanced, and quality”, but I set everything else up manually.

Basically saving space. The dashcam I use records in h264, and I’ve been saving space (50%) by converting them to h265 (through my Samsung phone). Handbrake is far more convenient for these batch conversions.

Same version of Handbrake (1.9.2), but I’m not even sure how to check for the ffmpeg version on my NAS, or what Handbrake is using. The system panel in the Handbrake info window doesn’t list ffmpeg at all.

Thanks for the ideas.

GPU does seem to be passed onto the docker container, not only because of the dramatic increase in speed, but also because the CPU isn’t being maxed out like it was before adding the GPU hardware line.

Volumes are bind mounts.

I experimented with permissions and user groups, and noticed no difference to the behaviour in render output.

For these videos, quality isn’t super important, but file size is. I spent most of yesterday tweaking settings on my local Handbrake install to get the right balance. So, I assumed transferring the settings over would give the same results.

The NAS (Synology DS920+):

• CPU: Intel Celeron J4125 4-core 2.0 GHz, burst up to 2.7 GHz
• RAM: upgraded to 20GB
• NVME cache: 256GB
• HDD are all Seagate ironwolf 8GB x 3 and a 4TB.

Laptop (Framework 13 11th Gen intel):

• CPU: Intel Core i5-1135G7 (integrated Iris Xe Graphics 80EU)
• RAM: 64GB
• Storage: 2TB WD Black 770

I would expect a difference in speed between the two, but does the hardware affect the output quality/size if the settings are identical?

Synology’s Hyper backup can be encrypted, so yes for my use case.

From what I understand, they charge “by the hour”, so if you use less than a month, you get charged for the number of hours instead.

It’s not an egress or added charge… from what I understand 😬

It’s one of the view cloud storage options that have an official tutorial to get it working: https://community.hetzner.com/tutorials/synology-hyperbackup-to-storagebox

Some other options I’ve come across don’t support webdav, rsync, or anything else that might make life easier. LOL

Interesting, it’s slightly slower for me through the web interface both with a direct connect to my network, or when proxied through the internet. Still, we’re talking seconds here, and the results are so accurate!

Immich has effectively replaced the (expensive) Windows software Excire Foto, which I was using for on-device contextual search because Synology Photos search just sucks. Excire isn’t ideal to run from Linux because it has to be done through a VM, so I’m happy to self-host Immich and be able to use it even while out of the house.

OK, indexing finished some time yesterday and I ran a few searches like:

“Child wearing glasses indoors”

“Cars with no wheels”

“Woman riding a bike”

Results come up (immich on android) in three seconds.

But the quality of the results do appear to be considerably better with ViT-B-16-SigLIP2__webli compared to the default model.

I’m pretty happy. 👍