Streaming video is expensive. LTT did it with Floatplane, even going so far as to develop their own backend. Watcher and some other YouTubers did it with Vimeo as their backend, but Vimeo still takes a large cut.

At the end of the day, people are doing this, but YouTube still offers a compelling value compared to other platforms. It’s hard to beat their scale, sophistication, and the discoverability of their platform.

Text, photos, CT scans, stats, testing, graphs, etc. Still a work in progress, but it’s come a long way.

https://www.lttlabs.com/

I’ve personally gone with an N100 Mini PC running Proxmox and two of these daisy-chained (purchased on sale). https://www.amazon.com/MAIWO-Enclosure-Cooling-Storage-Expansion/dp/B0D28Q187R/

The MAIWO DAS uses garbage JMicron firmware by default, and there are significant issues with their sleep functions. Because of that, it took me forever to figure out why SnapRAID kept failing mid-sync. Fortunately, new firmware seems to have fixed their issues and they’ve been rock solid ever since. I specifically had to update the firmware for all 4 of the USB controllers on each DAS.

Direct link to firmware that worked for me. https://gbatemp.net/attachments/bin-16028_jms578_std_v00-04-01-04_self_power_odd_20190611-zip.230929/

JMS578_STD_v00.04.01.04_Self Power + ODD.bin

MD5: 7701fb7a968e3ad4ca926dd7854806ff

Firmware updater tool for Windows found here. I ran this from a Virtualbox Windows 10 VM inside my Arch install: https://gbatemp.net/attachments/jmicron-jms578-sata-crystal-enclosure-fwupdate-zip.216335/

FwUpdateTool_v1_19_16_24.exe

MD5: 735ec8d9f99c457ce793739480c55706

Mirrors for posterity:

https://files.catbox.moe/e4121s.zip

https://mega.nz/file/OJAX2KhQ#67kIDJun92nqi56mFur_9vALSi2yTJXXv7ew5pYSJVY

Blog post detailing firmware update procedure for an external drive: https://ralimtek.com/posts/2021/jms578/

Detailed post on JMS578: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-update-firmware-of-jmicron-jms578-usb3-0-sata-enclosure-black-screen-lock-music-stop.569158/

Alternate FOSS software for flashing I found later, but never used. https://github.com/BertoldVdb/jms578flash

I’ve used syncthing for this, and personally found it to work really well.

I’ve heard Taildrop (Tailscale feature), works pretty good too.

Would Proton Bridge fit your needs?

I’m stuck on Joplin personally, but have you taken a look at Standard Notes? I think it checks all your boxes.

https://standardnotes.com/help/self-hosting/getting-started

https://github.com/standardnotes/filesafe-relay

Oh dang, you’re right. I used to use StaxRip back when I was doing more encoding and then finish with MKVToolNix, but I think the gui is Windows only.

Probably should have recommended Handbrake.

AAC is higher quality for the same compression level and generally preferred by Apple. MP3 should be fine too though.

EDIT: To be clear though, the programs I listed can handle all kinds of codecs including AAC and MP3. fre:ac is also good for ripping CDs if you’re into that sort of thing.

I’ll have to check it out. If you want to listen to Audiobooks specifically, I will say that the Open Source app BookPlayer has been fantastic for me.

If you really need to convert the files to something like AAC for native iPhone playback, I would suggest either fre:ac (audio only) or MKVToolnix (video and audio).

Installing VLC on your iPhone is probably the easiest solution. It should play the Opus files without any transcoding needed.

If only Coreboot supported more devices…