Any recommmedations on sharing multimedia files among family?

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Weaksauce
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With many people located all over the place and pictures and video being generated from Iphones to Androids, I wanted to figure out a way where we can all share files. At first I thought was to build a NAS but after doing some googling, remote NAS access seems really complicated to setup. My next thought was to setup a ftp server but me think some of the older family members might struggle with that...but that seems the easiest option for me so far.

Has anyone here done something similar for their family and can suggest a more practical route.
 
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Mega6

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SFTP from your select 24/7 box (read - Linux), set up winscp clients for them and it will be a cinch.
 
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Weaksauce
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Mega6 said:
SFTP from your select 24/7 box (read - Linux), set up winscp clients for them and it will be a cinch.
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Thats a good idea.
Does winscp work with Iphone and Andriod? I use winscp at work, do like the easy easy interface.
 
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BlueLineSwinger

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Jellyfin/Emby/Plex if you want users to be able to play the media directly from the NAS with a nice media server interface.

If you just want to provide the ability to download the files to user devices, then some kind of web interface such as WebDAV (available in most NAS boxes) should work well. Teaching less technically-inclined users to use SFTP/SCP sounds like a headache.
 
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Zepher

Zepher

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Are the users going to add files to the shared library as well?
maybe a shared Goolgle Drive folder
 
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Weaksauce
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$9.99/momth for me. Instead of committing 100/year for cloud storage, I rather spend the money on a mew ssd every year....
But, i'm having heck of a time trying to setup a ftp server on my win 11 laptop....this didnt use to be so hard in the win98 days
 
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westrock2000

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File browser is like your own version of mega/Mediafire/etc. Run it on your hardware from your house. Use Dynamic DNS to give your home IP address a fancy domain name. Assuming you have decent upload speeds. Probably want at least 75-100mb/s upload if you want people to be able to download stuff and you still have a good internet experience.

Users can create account and give out shareable URL’s. You can also browse the folders on the back end through normal folder heiarchy, since it doesn’t obfuscate files or anything.

https://filebrowser.org/

If on Windows, you can also use Everything which has a web server component that creates a searchable index of all files you give it access to. People can’t upload with Everything, but downloading is super easy. Just be careful what you give it access to see.

https://www.voidtools.com/

If you are wanting to share video and music specifically, then plex and adding other users as friends is perfect. They can watch your library from anywhere. Again, you will need ample upload speeds and you might even want a video card that can handle transcoding just in case.
 
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kydsid

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I run filerun (think Google drive alt) that gives people a login and personal space, plus upload. I run plex so grandparents can watch home movies. I run piwigo for specific picture book presentations. I use photsync for auto uploads from our phones at home, I don't do that for relatives, could with more config. Photostream handles the 1000s of home pics for wife and I to sort.

All of this is accessible via a cloudflare tunnel, where CF is a man in the middle providing additional security via a required login. I use Google for SSO for everyone so it's one click on mobile devices or computers logged into their Google account.

Even the grandparents can do this. Minus the upload part, lol boomers.
 
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westrock2000

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vegeta535 said:
Do people have to buy a plex pass to watch media on your NAS?
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No, you don’t even need a plex pass to share with others. Hardware Acceleration on transcoding is the major reason to get Plex Pass. The other perks seemed meh to me. Though they do offer a dashboard feature that I like and use.
 
TheSlySyl

TheSlySyl

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I use plex to share video with friends and family, it works fantastically and its extremely easy for them to setup. 100% free if they use it on a console/TV box, and has a really nice interface and all of the fun/complicated transcoding work is done on my end so they don't need to worry about it.

My friends affectionately call it "SylFlix"
 
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