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"Infinite streaming" from Real Debrid with Plex

This page describes a minimal solution to create your "infinite" Plex library, utilizing Real-Debrid for all media, streaming through your ElfHosted Plex instance.

New accounts get $10 credit, enough to run this stack for 30 days!

Our services are subscribed to in "ElfBuckz", our in-store account credit. All new users get $10 ElfBuckz upon account creation, in order to "kick the tyres" 🚗 before commitment.

The advantages of this solution are:

  • No torrent clients, VPNs, ratios or seeding
  • No storage constraints, unpacking issues, migrations etc

The disadvantages, of course, are:

  • Limited retention - you've only "got" the content as long as your Real-Debrid subscription is current

Requirements

And from the ElfHosted store:

Add the apps above to your cart, or subscribe to all of the above, as a bundle to make it easier, here:

Get up to 50% off the required apps, conveniently bundled! 🎁

How does it work?

Here's a diagram, followed by some explanations:

flowchart TD
    K[Plex] --> |Stream|Z[User]
    Z[User] --> |Add to watchlist|K[Plex]
    K[Plex] --> |Watchlist|G[plex_debrid]
    G[plex_debrid] --> |Scan on download|K[Plex]
    G[plex_debrid] <--> |Find and add torrent|H[real-debrid]
    H --> I[Zurg]
    I --> |/storage/real-debrid/...|J[rclone mount]
    K[Plex] <--> |Library|J
  1. The user adds content to their Plex Watchlist
  2. Plex_debrid notices the change to the watchlist, searches for suitable cached torrents on Real-Debrid, triggers a download, and then tells Plex to rescan the appropriate Library
  3. Zurg + the rclone mount make it appear that the Real-Debrid account is locally mounted to Plex
  4. Plex detects the new content, adds it to the library, and it's ready to stream!

Here's a demo from the plex_debrid repo:

Demo of operation of plex_debrid

How to set it up

Here's a little more detail..

  1. Get a Real-Debrid account subscription for your ElfHosted account (can't be used elsewhere at the same time, else you risk being banned), and copy your API token
  2. Paste the token into the Zurg product on the store, and add to your cart
  3. Add at the Zurg rclone mount and Plex to your cart, and buy with ElfBuckz!

On purchase, you'll get the necessary components deployed, but some configuration will be required, see below:

Setup Real-Debrid

To satisfy plex_debrid, ensure that you have at least one file in your RealDebrid library to be detected by Zurg as "movies", and another as "shows". A helpful tool to achieve this is https://debridmediamanager.com/

Confirm Zurg and its folders are setup correctly by browsing it from your ElfHosted dashboard.

Setup Plex

Claim your Plex instance using ElfBot, and add 2 new media libraries ("movies" and "shows") pointing to /storage/realdebrid-zurg/[movies/shows]

Setup plex_debrid

Launch plex-debrid from your dashboard, and perform the initial setup per our docs, then tell it to run!

Setup updateplex.sh

To trigger a Plex library update from Zurg when your Real-Debrid content changes, edit config/zurg/plex_update.sh via FileBrowser, find this line:

token="yourplextoken"

And replace yourplextoken with the same plex token you used when configuring plex_debrid.

Success!

That's it, you're done. Adding content to your Plex watchlist should trigger plex_debrid to find it for you, and once it appears in your real-debrid account, Zurg will make it available to Plex to stream! Hope into our friendly Discord server if you have questions or suggestions!

Beware Real-Debrid IP bans

Be aware that Real-Debrid states:

You can use your account from any public IP address but you can't use your account from more than one public IP address at the same time.

So if you use RealDebrid outside of ElfHosted, it's likely that your account may be warned / banned.

How do I get help?

  1. For general use of the individual tools, refer to the each app's upstream site
  2. For specific support re your ElfHosted configuration / account, see the ElfHosted support options