Heavy buffering on Chrome on remote client

[Xiandros_]

I'm in a long distance relationship (I live in Italy and my GF lives in Serbia) and one way we spend time "together" is by watching movies.
I setup a jellyfin server hosted on my PC and I'm sharing it with her via DUCKDNS and Caddy and she connects via Google Chrome on a laptop.

All the files I download are 4k (I have a 4k monitor), we had no issues with smaller HEVC files while she got very heavy buffering with big REMUX HEVC files to the point where it's unwatchable at every quality setting.

My files are stored on an external HDD and encoding/decoding was left to software.

I'm getting a Samsung T7 SSD today (for unrelated reasons) so I'll move the libraries there. I followed a guide on the Jellyfin site and switched to AMD AMF hardware encoding and decoding, should that fix the issue? Should I leave "enable hardware encoding" and "allow encoding in HEVC format" on?

I'm a complete noob so I'm trying what seems logical

My PC specs:
Windows 10 64bit
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
AMD Radeon 7900XTX
32gb ddr4 ram

Internet speed: 60 Mb/s down, 20 Mb/s up (she has the same download speed)

[TheDreadPirate]

Your upload speed is pretty limited for 4k. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a factor. But your system should have been able to handle transcoding to something smaller with just the CPU.

Hardware transcoding should improve things. Yes, turn on "enable hardware encoding". You should "allow encoding in HEVC format". I think all the codec boxes should be checked except MPEG2 for your card.

I would also change the Internet max bit rate to half your upload. 10Mbps in your case. Settings > Dashboard > Playback > Streaming tab (at the top center of Playback).

Test this out before your next watch party.

[Xiandros_]

Your upload speed is pretty limited for 4k.  I wouldn't be surprised if that was a factor.  But your system should have been able to handle transcoding to something smaller with just the CPU.

Hardware transcoding should improve things.  Yes, turn on "enable hardware encoding".  You should "allow encoding in HEVC format".  I think all the codec boxes should be checked except MPEG2 for your card.

I would also change the Internet max bit rate to half your upload.  10Mbps in your case.  Settings > Dashboard > Playback > Streaming tab (at the top center of Playback).

Test this out before your next watch party.

Thank you for your reply!

She's not streaming at 4k resolution, she either does 1080p or 720p. 
I am watching at 4k 120 but since I'm doing it directly from my PC where the server is hosted it shouldn't be an issue, right?
Also do i need to change the ffmpeg path? It just says ffmpeg now (installed jellyfin with windows installer)

[TheDreadPirate]

I've never used jellyfin server on Windows so I don't know how that works. I would just leave it alone. It was probably set to whatever it is during install and I'm assuming the installer knows what it is doing.

[Xiandros_]

I've never used jellyfin server on Windows so I don't know how that works.  I would just leave it alone.  It was probably set to whatever it is during install and I'm assuming the installer knows what it is doing.

OK, fair enough. 

I feel like I've solved it but we'll see. Thank you again!

P.S. couldn't find the global bitrate limit in the Playback section in the dashboard so I set a limit on her profile.