Background
We all love movies, TV shows and other videos on the Internet. After some deliberation, the idea came to write a small and very simple server with the ability to watch videos on different devices.
Main features
View on different devices
Automatic collection update by scanning directories
Ability to continue viewing from the same place where you left off
Ability to add new videos to the collection
Make the service as lightweight as possible so that it can run even on a weak Raspberry Pi
Refusal of unnecessary services / dependencies for the sake of saving RAM
Maximum supported number of formats, without re-encoding and segmentation
Stack
As the first solution, I want to take Python and FastApi for the Backend, it's hard to say what will be the main Frontend solution, but it will definitely support external video players, for example, VLC. In the future, a built-in player will probably be added to the web page, but I anticipate problems with codecs and so on. I will consider Frontend solutions in more detail in the next parts.
Outcome
We have roughly decided on the task, in the process I think that it will become more complicated and acquire new features. As for analogs, I know perfectly well at least about Kodi for the same Raspberry Pi, and it all looks like creating a bicycle, but this is just an idea that maybe someone will pick up as a pet project or an IT student will need a project for a coursework work :)
Leave your ideas related to libraries / features / tools and others in the comments, in the next part I will try to expand the list of features and roll out Backend with a description.