There are four different methods to getting media onto your new media server :-

Copy media files from a USB pen drive

Copy media files across the network

Synchronise a media folder from a server on the same network

Synchronise a media folder but only the past X number of months worth

1. Insert a USB pen drive into the Pi Zero 2W containing Video, Music, Pictures directories.

this will automatically mount and copy the media from these directories into the /var/lib/minidlna folder

works out of the box on a fresh install.

2. Copy media files manually via samba share to mini-pi.local across the network.

This can be slow.

works out of the box on a fresh install.

3. Run Configure_server_sync.sh file.

This script will walk the user through setting up a timed synchronisation from a media folder from a server or a nas box at 1 am by default. Note this can take a while to run and WILL sync the whole contents of that folder every day, so you need to know how much data is needed for this.

Not enabled by default but the user is asked if they want to set this up during install.

4. Rotating-server-sync.sh.

This script can be setup to sync a folder form a server or a nas box at a set time every day and will sync the past X number of months of media.

Can be setup to sync Music or Video to the /var/lib/minidlna folder.

The script is intelligent that if it sees a media file already named the same but the file type is .mp4, it wont re-sync this file down.

This is because a user can set up a mkv2mp4 batch convert script that runs every night at midnight that looks for mkv files in the /var/lib/minidlna/Video folder and transcodes / transmuxes these mkv files into a mp4 file.

Ideally the end user would either set up a rotating server sync or a configure server sync on the mini-pi, not both.

by default these two synchronisations are not setup.

so the options are up to you how you want to set up your media server.

happy media streaming.