v5: Tunnel file I/O over TCP — no shared filesystem required

What's new

v5 completely replaces the shared filesystem architecture from v4. The server now runs a patched ffmpeg that tunnels all file I/O back to the client over TCP. No NFS, no SMB, no shared mounts — just one TCP port.

Highlights

• No shared filesystem — file reads and writes are tunneled over the connection. No more NFS/SMB setup, path mapping, or mount maintenance.
• Pre-built ffmpeg binaries — releases include patched ffmpeg and ffprobe with broad hardware acceleration support (NVENC, QSV, VAAPI, AMF, VideoToolbox, and more), built on jellyfin-ffmpeg 7.1.3. No need to install ffmpeg separately.
• Cross-platform — Linux x86_64/arm64, macOS arm64/x86_64, Windows x86_64. Windows arm64 client only.
• Unix domain sockets — use unix:/path for same-machine setups without TCP overhead.
• JSONC config — // and /* */ comments, trailing commas. Config file search across 8 locations.
• HMAC-SHA256 authentication — every command is signed with a shared secret.

Getting started

See the Quick Start guide.

Upgrading from v4

See the upgrade guide for breaking changes and a migration checklist.

Supported platforms

	Client	Server + ffmpeg
Linux x86_64	✓	✓
Linux arm64	✓	✓
macOS arm64	✓	✓
macOS x86_64	✓	✓
Windows x86_64	✓	✓

v4.0.0-alpha1 - Rewrite in Golang

This is the alpha release of the Golang rewrite, it features the following

• Support for unix sockets
• Support for reading config path from environment variables
• [INTERNAL] Much less memory usage, smaller binary size

v3.0.1

• Meta update adding homepage to manifest

v3.0.0

• Change the lookup order of the configuration files (it looks for specific paths before general paths.)
  Use --debug-print-search-paths to see the paths it will look for the configuration files.

Note: The releases are generated from the client and server javascript files using pkg. We may be able to use Node.js Single-App-Executables (SEA) in the future.

v2.0.0

• Move dependencies to devDependencies since they are already bundled
• Rename pathMappings to rewrites
• Register both ffmpeg-over-ip-server and ffmpeg-over-ip-client as npm executables
• Do not search for config file in same directory as executable (this messes up pkg etc)

v1.0.0

• Initial release