derekshreds/snacks-docker repository overview

⁠Snacks — Automated Media Library Transcoder

Snacks is a free, open-source, self-hosted transcoder for video and music libraries. It scans, analyzes, remuxes, encodes, verifies, and automates ongoing library maintenance from one web interface.

Website: snacksvideo.com⁠ | Documentation: snacksvideo.com/docs⁠ | Source: GitHub⁠

⁠Quick Start

services:
  snacks:
    image: derekshreds/snacks-docker:latest
    container_name: snacks
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - /path/to/media:/app/work/uploads
      - /path/to/snacks/config:/app/work/config
      - /path/to/snacks/logs:/app/work/logs
    environment:
      - ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production
      - SNACKS_WORK_DIR=/app/work
      - FFMPEG_PATH=/usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffmpeg
      - FFPROBE_PATH=/usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffprobe
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
    restart: unless-stopped

Change the three host paths, remove devices if the host has no Intel or AMD GPU, start the service, and open http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:6767.

Host networking lets cluster UDP discovery reach the LAN. For a standalone bridge-network deployment, remove network_mode: host and add:

ports:
  - "6767:6767"

Bridge networking requires manual node URLs if you later create a cluster. Automatic discovery uses the fixed UDP port 6768.

⁠What Snacks Includes

• Separate video and music pipelines with persistent SQLite library state
• H.264, HEVC/H.265, and AV1 output with MKV, MP4, and WebM containers subject to their compatibility rules
• Smart filtering that skips media already meeting the selected policy
• Quality presets plus detailed video, audio, subtitle, crop, HDR, and file-handling controls
• Optional Advanced Video recipes, ordered source-property rules, policy validation, library-impact previews, and JSON policy sharing
• Automatic scanning, exclusions, change detection, and interrupted-transfer protection
• Live progress, queue controls, encode analytics, library health checks, diagnostics, and per-job logs
• Output verification with retry paths for decode, subtitle, and hardware failures
• Distributed encoding with coordinator and worker roles, device-aware slots, schedules, and shared-storage support
• Plex and Jellyfin rescans; Sonarr, Radarr, TMDb, and TheTVDB connectivity
• Webhook, Discord, ntfy, and Apprise notifications
• Homarr compact iframe tile and native Media Transcoding widget support
• API-key authentication, environment-variable overrides, OpenAPI, SignalR, Prometheus metrics, and health endpoints

⁠Persistent Storage

Mount any separate output or scratch directory into the container before selecting it in Snacks. Back up the complete config directory as one unit while Snacks is stopped.

⁠Hardware Acceleration

Snacks tests real encoder availability at startup and can fall back to safer decode, subtitle, or software paths where the selected policy permits it. Linux detection checks every /dev/dri/renderD* device rather than assuming the first render node is the desired GPU.

QNAP commonly requires privileged: true for /dev/dri access because its video/render group layout differs from conventional Linux hosts. Unraid normally uses device/group access instead.

⁠NVIDIA NVENC

Install the NVIDIA Container Toolkit⁠, then add this to the service:

runtime: nvidia
environment:
  - ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production
  - SNACKS_WORK_DIR=/app/work
  - FFMPEG_PATH=/usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffmpeg
  - FFPROBE_PATH=/usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffprobe
  - NVIDIA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=all
  - NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITIES=compute,video,utility

Passing /dev/dri or enabling privileged mode alone does not provide NVENC.

⁠Healthcheck

healthcheck:
  test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:6767/api/health"]
  interval: 30s
  timeout: 10s
  retries: 3
  start_period: 40s

⁠Supported Hosts

The container runs on QNAP, Synology, Unraid, and Linux Docker hosts. Native Windows 10/11 and Apple silicon macOS 11+ downloads are available from the latest GitHub release⁠.

⁠Links

• Complete setup and operations guide⁠
• OpenAPI specification⁠
• GitHub source and issues⁠
• Latest releases⁠
• Discord community⁠