Concepts

Library#

A library is one root folder plus the media types it holds: movies, series, or both. You can have several side by side, each pointed at its own folder, and each with its own set of users allowed to see it. See Libraries.

Inside a library, a media is one movie or one show; a show is further broken into seasons and episodes. Each of those has one or more media files on disk: normally one, but a movie kept in two cuts, or an episode you re-downloaded in a better quality without deleting the old file first, both have more than one file attached to the same media.

Metadata#

Posters, backdrops, descriptions, cast and genres come from TMDB and TVDB. A library scan matches what it finds against these providers automatically; when it can't (an ambiguous name, or a file that legitimately isn't in either database), the title still appears using whatever Fliks can read from the filename, unidentified. See Metadata.

Quality and language profiles#

These only matter once you've installed the download plugin and are grabbing releases, not for browsing an existing library:

• A quality profile lists which qualities are acceptable and which are preferred (1080p over 720p, for instance), and rejects anything below its floor.
• A language profile lists which audio and subtitle languages you want, in order of preference.
• A custom format is a scoring rule (title patterns, release group, and so on) layered on top of a quality profile to prefer or penalize specific kinds of releases.

A title (or a season, or an episode) is monitored when Fliks keeps working on it: the download plugin looks for a missing or better release of it, and automatic subtitle search covers it.

Requests#

A request is how a non-admin user asks for something to be added to the library: search for a title that isn't there yet and submit it. An admin (or an auto-approval rule matching who asked and what they asked for) approves it, and from there it follows the normal acquisition pipeline. See Requests.

Users, roles and permissions#

Every account has one role, and a role is a named set of permissions (read the library, create requests, manage users, and so on). Fliks ships three default roles (Admin, User, Readonly) and you can create your own with any combination of permissions. An account flagged as administrator (a super-admin), like the default admin, has every permission whatever its role. Library access is separate from roles: which libraries a given user can see is set per user (a role only picks the libraries a new user starts with). See Users and permissions.

Playback: Direct Play, Direct Stream, and Transcode#

When you hit play, Fliks decides how to get the file to your device in one of three ways:

• Direct Play: the file is sent as-is. No CPU or GPU cost on the server, the fastest and highest-quality option, used whenever the device can decode the file's codec and container natively.
• Direct Stream (shown in the app as "Remux"): the video is copied without re-encoding, just repackaged into a container the device understands, with the audio converted only if the device can't play it. Cheap, and no loss in picture quality.
• Transcode: the video is actually re-encoded, because the codec, the resolution, or the bitrate doesn't fit the device or the network. This is the expensive path, and the one that benefits from hardware acceleration.

See Streaming and transcoding for the full decision, and Transcoding dashboard to watch it happen live.

Plugins#

Fliks ships with no way to acquire media by itself; you add that capability with a plugin from Settings > Plugins. A plugin is either:

• Data: ships static data (a JSON catalog, for instance) and executes no code at all.
• Process: runs actual code, but in its own child process with its own database schema (and, when the server runs as root on Linux or macOS, its own system user), so it can't reach another plugin's data, or yours, outside what it's explicitly granted.

See Plugins.

Live TV#

Live TV is a separate concept from the library: it turns an IPTV subscription (an M3U playlist or an Xtream account, both things you bring yourself) into a lineup of channels with a program guide, sitting next to your library rather than inside it. See Live TV.