Unmanic on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
by cloudimg
Automated media library optimisation and video transcoding
Unmanic is a self hosted media library optimiser. It watches a library of video files on a schedule and through a filesystem event monitor, tests every file against a configurable plugin flow, and queues anything that does not already match your target format. Queued files are transcoded with ffmpeg through a worker pool you size to the machine, and the web dashboard shows the pending queue, live worker progress and a full history of completed tasks. The result is a library that converges on a single container and codec without anyone manually running conversions.
Why the cloudimg image
Unmanic ships with no authentication on either its web interface or its API, and its default configuration listens on every network interface. The cloudimg image closes both: the application is bound to loopback and fronted by a reverse proxy that requires a password generated uniquely on the first boot of each VM, never baked into the image. The official video transcoder plugin is pre installed and enabled, so the library scanner has a real plugin flow to run on day one, and short synthetic demo clips are seeded so the queue and history show real work immediately. A dedicated data volume holds the library, the application state and the transcode cache, keeping in flight transcodes off the operating system disk. Every image ships with a paired deployment guide and 24/7 support.
Common use cases
- Converge a mixed video library on one consistent container and codec
- Automatically transcode new files as they land in a watched folder
- Reclaim storage by re encoding an archive in the background
Licensing and pricing
Unmanic is licensed GPL-3.0 and is free software - there is no per-seat, per-library or per-transcode fee, and no licence key is required. The cloudimg hourly charge of $0.04 per vCPU covers packaging, hardening, security patching, image maintenance and 24/7 expert support.
Getting started
Deploy the VM, then read the per-VM administrator password from the root-only credentials file and browse to the VM over HTTP. The full walk-through, including how to point Unmanic at your own media library and tune the worker pool, is in the deployment guide: https://www.cloudimg.co.uk/guides/unmanic-on-ubuntu-24-04-azure/