I’ve listened to every MPU from 1-700 and I know this is going to be a very unpopular opinion but IMO they really should replicate the same time of episode like the ones with Window managers. I know it’s really hard to come up with good content, but these interviews don’t provide me any educational value. Most of them operate significantly under the ‘level’ of the average MPU fan that listens to the show.
I wish they would do more comparisons of software or talk about deep features of the Mac platform (Similar to MacMost).
Not every episode is for everyone, and that’s totally fine!
I’m pretty familiar with most of the hardware and software covered in the MPU episodes, however there is always some person using it in a way I never think of. So for me this type of episode is more interesting!
I’ve only listened to the last 500 or so episodes … but I found this episode interesting and useful. I guess we are all a little different.
How many MacMost type podcasts do we need? I just Googled ‘apple related podcast’ and one site came up with a list of the Best 70! Want to guess which podcast was listed as #1 
I started listening to MPU around ten years ago because it was different and I am still listening to it today for the same reason. There are other podcasts/YouTube channels that I visit occasionally for software reviews and/or how to’s .
I think I speak for most here when I say that while some of us may disagree we still welcome everyone’s opinion.
+1 for that! We all have different tastes and not every episode is for everyone.
I would guess that the amount of work it takes to pull together an episode like the one on Window Management (a deep dive episode) must be significant, so it makes sense to change up the content and look at different things while speaking to different people.
Too many deep dive episodes would reduce the quality of the pod (because as much time couldn’t be spent on research), would just need too much of Stephen and David’s time reducing their time for their other pursuits, or may make it less appealing to some listeners.
Keep up the good work @MacSparky and @ismh
Plex File Naming. So for a long time I was just pointing my Plex Server at my iTunes database and everything worked well. Around the time of the split to the TV app I started to find that media that was in the TV app wasn’t showing up in Plex - though it appeared to be somewhat random. My question is, does anyone have a good way to rename files to match the Plex requirements, without screwing up the TV app - or is the app sophisticated enough to be able to cope with renaming?
I went through this journey back in the iTunes days, things would break in one or the other regularly.
If you amend something in the TV app, it may break Plex, and if you change the naming for Plex, it’ll break it for the TV App.
With iTunes there was a setting in preferences to copy new content to the iTunes Library which could be unchecked, so you could leave your content where it is.
To be confident, I’d pick one or the other (Plex or the Apple TV app) and use that.
So I prefer to use iTunes/TV app seeing GetiPlayerAutomator links with it, but Home Sharing is APPALLINGLY slow, and so if I’m anywhere other than my MacMini I’d like to use Plex.
Guess I might have to break from iTunes/TV app and put some time into renaming based on Plex requirements.
I used to use Home Sharing as I had old Apple TVs (pre apps) but once I got Plex above about 100 films and 1000 episodes of TV, it was unusable
It is good to listen to Casey when he cannot shoehorn his politics into the tech conversation. I enjoyed the show.
The show was great I appreciate the content, thank you 
. Regarding fine naming, I don’t use what Casey recommended and don’t have any issues with Plex picking up the Metadata. Perhaps it was more picky in the past. Just an FYI!
File formatting I follow: ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. 2019.1080p.DTS.mkv’
A great show! Really cool to explore more of Casey’s media management in depth. Also, I like that he got to plug Callsheet a bit more to a new audience. It’s such a good app that I use daily.
If you haven’t tried Callsheet, I recommend you do!
Enjoyed the episode as a media manager myself, but can’t believe jellyfin wasn’t even mentioned. FOSS (free and open source) software that does similar things as Plex. It is basically a server that runs in the background, but it does not require external verification, like Plex does. Sure, it’s not quite as advanced, but you also don’t have to pay for things like hardware transcoding. (also, if you’re the type into downloading certain files, you probably should not be using Plex as they do have access to your Files as it passes through them for initial access). I use jellyfin to put my whole Blu-ray collection on my NAS.
Also, huge vote for the Infuse app on Apple TV. This was kind of glossed over in the episode, but it is phenomenal for media playback. I do use Jellyfin (previously Plex) to store and host all the files, but infuse app allows direct stream of audio such as DTS master audio, and Dolby true HD. The Plex app does not allow this and down scales audio to 5.1 Dolby. For a regular TV this probably does not make much difference, but whenever I’m watching in my primary listening room with 5.2.4 surround sound it makes a huge difference.
TLDR: consider jellyfin over Plex, and infuse app on Apple TV if you have a higher end set up/media room
I have to agree on Infuse. It’s phenomenal and a much better front-end to Plex even than the real Plex client.
Jellyfin wasn’t for me.
- Remote access. I got it initially setup, but trying to get remote access configured wasn’t a walk in the park. It requires a web server setup and running on your local machine and then configured to route outside of your network. There are a lot of tutorials on how to do this, but in the end I already own Plex so I didn’t see the benefit in going through all of that legwork.
- Jellyfin clients for Roku and FireTV aren’t as advanced as Plex and I found them a bit lacking for my use.
- Closed captioning. This isn’t baked in like it is in Plex. You have to use a 3rd party plugin and it was sub par in my testing. Plex isn’t perfect, but it works 95% of the time.
All that said, if you want something totally open source and configurable (or you’re having an issue with Plex) then definitely take a look at Jellyfin.
Fair points.
- Remote access I already have a reverse proxy set up on my synology (does require a bit more technical knowledge). The benefit however is that there is not the plex 3rd party log in so data is not all running through Plex. This means they can see what you stream.
- The Jellyfin clients are pretty bad at this point on roku and fireTV, but myself and my family are all apple TV so not an issue. I used to use infuse app on ios as well, but I think the jellyfin app has improved enough that I use it. The one nice part about infuse on ios is I do find it a little easier to download episodes for remote playback however.
- Closed captioning does require a plug in. I actually remove all the CC when I rip my bluray anyhow.
Probably the biggest benefit that I didn’t mention (and why I started using jellyfin backend) is that Plex requires a plexpass to get hardware transcoding, Jellyfin has this built in. And while I rarely need this, it makes a huge difference on my synology DS918+ (software transcoding unusable, but HW works fine for 2 streams of full Bluray rips).
For my family they didn’t even notice a difference Plex to Jellyfin since frontends are just Infuse on Apple TVs. Also, was much easier to run multiple instances of Jellyfin (while I have separate libraries for Bluray, DVD, home moves, etc), I occasionally will spin up a second docker of Jellyfin for work videos etc to share the links rather than giving out access to my personal media server.
(PS. on point 1, Next TV OS is supposed to have VPN support. I am hopeful this will include say openvpn/tailscale etc. This would allow me to just turn it on and load my infuse to my local network without having to use my reverse proxy and when traveling for work be a more trusted way to stream my content without the RP/hotel wifi).
Unfortunately doesn’t work for Apple TV (yet). See my post above, hopefully coming soon.
For remote use still need to RP into it for Apple TV.
This does work fine for iOS device however that you can turn on vpn.
I enjoyed this episode. Being an avid ATP fan, Casey is somebody I enjoy listening to. I don’t need every episode to be packed with descriptions of how power users keep track of their tasks or how they use obsidian. Sometimes it is nice to just listen to smart people talk about how they deal with relative mundane things like Media Management (not actually mundane).
My only negative comment is that I believe they gave Plexamp short shrift. I have all of my music in Plex in two libraries, one for popular music and one for classical music (although Plex doesn’t do a very good job with classical music) and I find Plexamp to be a kick-ass music player.