Streamed films and shows in Plex: Usherr serves them as a drive of ordinary video files, and rclone puts it on your computer.
In Broadcast: Server, Getting media, Streaming: the Virtual drive card.
In Classic or Neu: Settings, Extras, the Virtual drive card.
| Jellyfin: pointer files | Nothing to install: Jellyfin plays the Streams library’s small pointer files.Plex ignores them. |
|---|---|
| Plex: the virtual drive | Plex sees ordinary video files and plays them like any other.rclone and WinFsp to install once, and a file is on the drive only once its release is known (played, or looked for a few a day). |
★ The virtual drive if you watch in Plex; both can run side by side.
↻ Switch the drive on or off any time; your Streams library doesn’t change.
Jellyfin plays the Streams library as it is.
Its card is on Server, Getting media, Streaming (in Classic or Neu: Settings, Extras).
Serve the virtual drive. It’s already on if Plex is your media server and Jellyfin isn’t.
Each streamed film or episode appears once Usherr knows its release: anything someone plays is kept at once, and a stream you add goes on right away (the film, or the show’s newest season). The rest are looked for a few a day, new episodes first, so your indexers’ daily limits are never spent in one go.
| This computer (the one Usherr runs on) | rclone reaches Usherr at 127.0.0.1, which never changes: the drive keeps working after every restart. |
|---|---|
| Another computer | Plex can live on a media PC or a NAS.rclone there uses this computer’s address on your network, which the router can change after a restart unless you reserve it. |
★ Whichever is true for you; Usherr works it out from Plex’s address when it can.
↻ Change it on the card any time, then run the setup command again.
Plex runs on: pick the same answer here, so the commands below use the right address.
In your router’s settings, look for DHCP reservation (some routers say static lease or address reservation), pick this computer and reserve the address it has now. Do the same for the Plex computer, and for a NAS that holds your films. Then a restart can’t move them, and the drive and Plex’s folders keep opening.
Install WinFsp and rclone from their own sites (free), then copy the two commands into a terminal: the first tells rclone about the drive, the second mounts it as drive U:.
Optional. Usherr can give you a small file for your Windows Startup folder that mounts the drive each time you sign in. It is installed as a startup item: it runs at every sign-in until you delete it. Without it, you run the mount command yourself after each restart.
Tick the box and read the warning, then download usherr-drive.cmd. Press Windows+R, type shell:startup and press Enter, and move the file into the folder that opens.
With Plex connected to Usherr (Server, Watching, Media servers; Settings, Media servers in Classic or Neu), press Add them to Plex for me on the card: Usherr makes Movies-Stream, TV-Stream and Anime-Stream. Or add U:\Movies to a Movies library and U:\TV and U:\Anime to a TV library yourself. In Plex, Settings, Library: set video preview thumbnails, chapter thumbnails and voice activity data to never, scan periodically, and untick Empty trash automatically. In Scheduled Tasks, untick extensive media analysis. Each of these would read whole films from Usenet.
When a browser can’t play a file as it is (HEVC, HDR, Dolby or DTS sound) and no Jellyfin converts it, Plex does, before Usherr’s own slower conversion. With Plex Pass, tick Use hardware acceleration when available in Plex (Settings, Transcoder) and it uses the graphics card: Plex’s dashboard then shows Transcode (hw). With Jellyfin connected too, Settings, Extras, Converting for the player chooses which goes first.
Streams you add reach Plex within minutes. For one already in your streams, open it in Library, Streams and press Put it on the virtual drive now. If Plex says a streamed title is unavailable, Something not right? in Show me how checks whether Plex can reach the drive.