Need help with remote access media server.

[ShikuTeshi]

Generally for this feature I use an SMB File Share over my local network if I wanted to watch content from my PC on my Android device.
Now I wanted to be able to access the same files over the internet to allow family and friends to view outside my local network.

What I currently do is utilize a program called ZeroTier which functions like the more commonly known Hamachi so that devices on different networks are seen as being on the same local network.
This would work pretty flawlessly between desktops. However it's practically unusable on mobile for some reason.
I've also been made aware that SMB through the internet is a vulnerable method. Though SMB3 over Wireguard VPN is passable. However I don't know how to set that up.

So I've been looking for other methods of internet media sharing.
I've taken a look at Plex but I dislike the navigation. And any real feature I want is locked behind a subscription as well as not knowing how to share the media server with other users.

All I'm looking for is a simple and free way to allow read access to media on my drive over the internet. I'm trying to access the data from both a desktop and mobile device. It should allow content to be streamed but not required to be downloaded off the server beforehand. And I don't know how video buffering works if that's by protocol or integrated per media player but it would need to have that in case there's multiple users accessing the drive at once.

[Electronics Wizardy]

give jellyfin a shot, its like plex, but open source and free. Since you only need media it works pretty well.

[ShikuTeshi]

I've taken a look at it and it was almost it.
My problem is that on Windows and Android it doesn't yet support a built in way to use an external video player.
I believe there's an opt in beta for Android that has external player support. But Windows doesn't.
I'm aware that I can just copy and paste the url but's only going to work for me who's the more technically inclined compared to the rest who may access it.
An external video player is mandatory here since it doesn't play HEVC videos without them. And I reencode every video I have to save space.
Of course this is with transcoding off as it eats all of my CPU resources of my 6700K just to do so.
 

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 hours ago, ShikuTeshi said:

I've taken a look at it and it was almost it.
My problem is that on Windows and Android it doesn't yet support a built in way to use an external video player.
I believe there's an opt in beta for Android that has external player support. But Windows doesn't.
I'm aware that I can just copy and paste the url but's only going to work for me who's the more technically inclined compared to the rest who may access it.
An external video player is mandatory here since it doesn't play HEVC videos without them. And I reencode every video I have to save space.
Of course this is with transcoding off as it eats all of my CPU resources of my 6700K just to do so.
 

I can play h265 videos just fine in jelly fine on devices on windows in the browser. jellyfin can transcode footage to a format your device can plan realtime. Your 6700k should be able to handle a few streams at once easily with transcoding, esp if you use quicksync.