media files at my ubuntu pc - watch from my android phone

[marchello_lippi2]

As SeijiSensei says, try BubbleUPnP on the phone.

My phone is on 192.168.1.0 network and plex server is on uplink router 192.168.0.0 network. Probably this is why BubbleUPnP android app can't find my plex server. Can't see where to set plex server ip address manually.
So... continue trying it from my chrome or firefox browser at android.

[TheFu]

Just a followup. I got some high quality video about nature which I was not able to watch on my weaker notebook. But with plex it is possible to choose quality, like in youtube. So it is cool.

Yep, it is. That is usually automatic for the most popular player devices, but how well it works depends on the Plex Server hardware. Lots of people are putting a Plex Server on a raspberry pi. This computer can't transcode 4K video to 720p for a weak tablet. Trade-offs.

What is not so cool is that when plex scans my folders with video, it also looks for appropriate name and poster for the movie. Don't know how it works, but in many cases its finding is not appropriate at all. For example, I got cartoons series for kids and each file starts from number of episode. So plex looks for some movies with that number in its name. The result is funny. Any idea how do I turn off this option? I would rather prefer it to show filename as is...

Plex folders can be configured for the types of files stored. You **must** put like content together and you MUST pull out content that doesn't fit that type into other directories not in the directory path for any other content types.

/Movies
/TV
/Music
/Photos
/Videos

Then you configure the appropriate scanner for each of those directories. Don't put TV shows into the Movie directory. Don't put home-movies in TV or Movies either. Put those into /Videos and do not configure any scanner. The web interface controls that.

Do not fight against the organization. All media center programs work the same way. Kodi uses the same structures.

Also, if one of those directories fills up a HDD, don't worry. You can add another HDD and add those directories into the list for the different types. I have 5 different directories for recorded TV, for example. Those are on different storage. No need to use any fancy directory merging tools.

[TheFu]

My phone is on 192.168.1.0 network and plex server is on uplink router 192.168.0.0 network. Probably this is why BubbleUPnP android app can't find my plex server. Can't see where to set plex server ip address manually.
So... continue trying it from my chrome or firefox browser at android.

DLNA uses a broadcast method to announce it is on the network. That is specific to the subnet/netmask used. By default, Plex allows "local access" with out their remote client to a /24 subnet. This can be changed in the web-admin interface.

You can list other subnets to be allowed non-authenticated plex access too. This is generally a bad idea, but I suspect you have a very good reason. My wifi subnet is separate from my wired LAN and requires using a VPN to gain access.

Plex is good for many things, but not great in all ways or at everything it does.

[MartyBuntu]

You might be better off with a simpler UPnP server/client setup like UPnPlay.
I agree with TheFu, Plex might be overkill...even though it's quite good overall.

[ajgreeny]

I use both minidlna and Plexmediaserver in my home and for an Android client I find VLC simplest and great to use as it finds the minidlna server immediately.

Just open VLC, go to Local Network and the minidlna server will show in the list. You can then drill down into the folders you have set up in the minidlna.conf file on the server, thus playing whatever video, music or image you want; brilliant!

[marchello_lippi2]

Hi again, how do I disable plex from running on startup?

[sisco311]

sudo systemctl disable plexmediaserver.service