stuttering sometimes on Fire TV stick

[Lance]

Hello,

lately i noticed that on some movies jellyfin on my fire TV stick starts to stutter. Like i have a freezeframe, then a couple of seconds nothing, then a freezeframe or maybe 1 sec of movie with a freezeframe at the end , then again couple of seconds where nothing happens and so on. Audio plays fine, its only video.


I have (at least) one movie which i can play for like 30 minutes perfectly fine, then starts to stutter.
I also have another one which stutters from the beginning and cant even watch.

Both movies are 4k movies. I ran these movies with the jellyfin app on the current gen fire stick 4k (i think its even the 4k max). My server is a 13th gen intel processor with hardware transcoding, but i doubt it has anything to do with the server as my CPU usage is low the whole time. I also doubt its a server problem because when i open jellyfin over the webbrowser on my pc, i can resume the first movie fine and is playing fine and the second is also playing fine. And thats despite having to transcode on my webbrowser.

It feels like the fire stick is too weak, which i cant really believe because its made for 4k movies. Not really sure whats going on. I think about switching to a rasperry pi with kodi and then use the jellyfin app over the pi (i want to switch to a pi in the future due to other reasons, but if that would solve my stutter problem, i would just buy one sooner).

Did someone else had similar problems with the Fire Stick? Or know why some videos stutter sometime during playback or at the start of the movie?

Thanks for any help/ideas!

edit: Jellyfin Server is 10.9.1, Firestick is like i said above current gen and should have all updates.

edit2: made a update along the searching process, server is now 10.9.3

[TheDreadPirate]

Try setting the Jellyfin app on the TV to only use libVLC. Does that make any difference? Also set the max bit rate to 120Mbps instead of auto.

[Lance]

Just tried it, no improvements. Bitrate was already at 120 MPbs, but i switched to the other media player.

One thing which i forget to mention and noticed again: If i restart the movie and everything become choppy/stuttery again, the fire stick doesnt react to inputs on my remote (e.g. i can press left/right/up/down to change the language, bitrate, any other setting, and i cant even exit the movie. I have to either switch the tv off, or press the "homescreen" button to go back to that starting screen of the fire stick to start the jellyfin app again. That last part however leads me to believe that its not a power problem because then the whole fire stick would be unresponsive.

Also when i am on the home screen, i can still hear audio bits from the jellyfin movie Every one or two seconds there comes a short audio blip which is the same from the movie.

[TheDreadPirate]

What settings do you have in jellyfin for refresh rate switching? Disabled, scale on device, scale on tv?

[Lance]

Currently its on disabled (well, always has been)

[TheDreadPirate]

For the lulz, change the setting to one of the others. Try scale on TV first.

[Lance]

Ok, i switched to scale on tv and first i wanted to say that it works now, but then i rememberd that i restarted the server in between and then checked again with deactivated and both run smooth now. So the problem lies elsewhere. Seems to be somehow indeed server related.

I also checked the second movie again (the one with stuttering from the beginning) and tried to lower the bit rate. When i go down to 60 mbps (should be 1080p) then it runs smooth, only when i go up to 120 mbps and 4k again, it gets all stuttery. That sounds like a power problem of the fire stick again. Certainly not a server problem as CPU usage is highly unimpressed of the chosen bitrate. I dont think its a network bandwith problem as i tried this movie more than once over several months and it was always the same.

[TheDreadPirate]

Can you upgrade the server to 10.9.3? Backup your server data first.

I recalled I had a similar issue on my CCwGTV 4K, but only on 1080p+ media. Upgrading the server to .3 appears to have resolved it for me. I'm wondering if this is the same problem on your Firestick.

[Lance]

Yeah, should have mentioned that the reason for the server restart was the upgrade to 10.9.3. So now my server is on 10.9.3.

Well, maybe this is the reason why the first movie now works. I am so stupid, i should know better to not mindlessly upgrade things when looking for a solution. Should have checked after i did the upgrade if it worked now.

I think i will resume watching the movie and see if the same problem appears again. I wont do anything else, so the logs wont be cluttered with other random stuff and may be more helpful.

[Lance]

Ok, i tried it again today. I resumed the movie from yesterday at the around 30 min mark with refresh rate switching deactivated. It was stuttery again. Then i switched to scale from TV and it plays fine. So that setting seem to make a difference and thought that i had found a solution. But after an additional 20 min of watching the same stutteriness happened again even with scale to tv.

I also took a look at the logs and there is nothing. Not sure if that should be but there is no mentioning of me starting a movie. Also there is no transcode log, because the movie is direct playing.


I feel like i am not one step closer to knowing why the movies are behaving that way nor if the server or the fire stick is the culprit... I am still leaning towards the fire stick, as everything plays fine on my webbrowser...


edit: out of curiosity i resumed the movie where it started to stutter yesterday. Now it plays fine. But i suspect its only a matter of time until it starts to stutter again. Maybe there is some kind of buffer/cache problem with the fire stick?

edit2: just to mention again that its only some movies, i just watched another 4k movie and it went smooth and without any problems from the beginning to the end. File format in both cases was .mkv, the file size was even larger now than with the stuttery movie.