Best environment and settings for Jellyfin Player on old i7 CPU (HD 4600))

[dakazze]

Hey guys!

I am running a Jellyfin server with hardware transcoding on a Xeon 2176 which does a great job streaming to all of my clients.
My current issue is with my backup server which uses GPU passthrough on a VM to output video directly to a TV. This VM is only used to play Jellyfin but I am having a hard time getting it to work right.
I know that the HD 4600 of the i7 4765t is pretty weak but in theory it should work to play/decode most 1080p formats. This BU server is only running proxmox backup server and this player so the player is getting 90% of all the resources.

I am currently trying ubuntu and giving the VM 6 Cores (direct/host) and 12 GB RAM. My test file is a 50 GB movie in HVEC10 4k and the stream currently is running over Gbit LAN.

Even though CPU and RAM utilization is below 50% in direct-play AND transcode mode I keep getting small stutters.

In this ubuntu environment I already installed the latest VAAPI driver, tried firefox, chromium and the jellyfin player.

Since this machine is only intended for jellyfin I am free to install any operating system that promises the best playback experience.

What OS/player/settings could you guys recommend to get the best result when playing 4k blue-ray content in 1080p?


edit: oh and I forgot - the main issue might not even lie with the video stuff since I am getting audio issues even when video playback is fine. I already applied the recommended fixes for GPU/Audi passthrough which made things better but not fully fixed it. I feel it is worst when playing 5.1/7.1 content over stereo.

Oh wow, when I set ubuntu to 5.1 even though I only have stereo speakers (missing a lot of the audio) 90% of the playback issues in direct play and transcoding are gone... what might that be?!

Oh and btw. performance wise firefox is absolute king! Using the Jellyfin player my CPU cores max out in both modes.

[TheDreadPirate]

The 4765T does not have any HEVC decoding capability, so the CPU has to all the heavy lifting if you aren't transcoding to H264.

I'd need to see your jellyfin logs to figure out what is actually going on on the server side.

As for setting the audio to 5.1, the JMP client is likely also downmixing the audio locally when set to stereo. Straining an already strained CPU.

Firefox may be handling things better because the server is transcoding everything server side and Firefox is just playing the video.

[dakazze]

The 4765T does not have any HEVC decoding capability, so the CPU has to all the heavy lifting if you aren't transcoding to H264.

I'd need to see your jellyfin logs to figure out what is actually going on on the server side.

As for setting the audio to 5.1, the JMP client is likely also downmixing the audio locally when set to stereo.  Straining an already strained CPU.

Firefox may be handling things better because the server is transcoding everything server side and Firefox is just playing the video.

I know that the CPU is sub-par but I really dont think the issue is that it is too weak for the task as load stays pretty low all the time, even when playing 4k and the target is 1080p/60 Mbit.

Here is the log:
https://pastebin.com/F3MFELFN

Since you are the big boss here I need to take the chance and ask in general what your recommended transcoding settings are for my server and maybe also the client player since I dont know enough about these topics myself. The server has a xeon 2176m.

[TheDreadPirate]

That is a Coffee Lake CPU, of all the codecs listed for decoding in Jellyfin it supports all of them except AV1. Same on the encoding side. Low power encoding for H264 is supported, but not HEVC low power encoding. Low power encoding is OPTIONAL for Coffee Lake.

Tone mapping on the server is supported. It does require that you install Intel's OpenCL package, if you have not done so already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quic...d_encoding
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/admini...nux-setups
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/admini...r-encoding

Without being on your client system, it is hard to say what is going on. The ffmpeg log you shared is downmixing the audio from 7.1 to 5.1 while sending the 4K video unmodified.

Do you have issues across the board with 4K content? Or just this particular movie? If it is just this particular movie, the problem could be a malformed container.

[dakazze]

That is a Coffee Lake CPU, of all the codecs listed for decoding in Jellyfin it supports all of them except AV1.  Same on the encoding side.  Low power encoding for H264 is supported, but not HEVC low power encoding.  Low power encoding is OPTIONAL for Coffee Lake.

Tone mapping on the server is supported.  It does require that you install Intel's OpenCL package, if you have not done so already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quic...d_encoding
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/admini...nux-setups
https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/admini...r-encoding

Without being on your client system, it is hard to say what is going on.  The ffmpeg log you shared is downmixing the audio from 7.1 to 5.1 while sending the 4K video unmodified.

Do you have issues across the board with 4K content?  Or just this particular movie?  If it is just this particular movie, the problem could be a malformed container.

Thanks a lot for the settings help, especially with the low power encoding!!
The issue WAS not only with 4k and not only with this one movie. I changed a new setting for my proxmox VM on the client and it seems to have fixed everything!
I activated vIOMMU=Intel in the machine settings and now everything except for HEVC runs butter smooth in direct play. Setting "always transcode HEVC" in the linux player fixed that too. Since CPU load stays pretty low now I was right in my initial assumption that the CPU might be old but good enough! Direct play for h264 and transcoded HEVC works well.

There is only one last thing I would like to ask:
Since I want to use the jellyfin linux player in some sort of kiosk mode (always exclusive kiosk mode) I would like to disable/remove the "exit full screen" button in the lower right corner of the playback controls. Is there a way to achieve this?

[TheDreadPirate]

I'm not aware of a setting to do that. But Jellyfin Media Player's UI is based on jellyfin-web, I'd think that using CSS to hide the element for the full screen button is probably possible.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-web...ex.js#L495

It looks like .btnFullscreen is the name of the web element?

[TheDreadPirate]

I haven't been at home to check, but there appears to be a client setting to force fullscreen?

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-med....json#L111

[dakazze]

I haven't been at home to check, but there appears to be a client setting to force fullscreen?

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-med....json#L111

Thank you very much for all the help, I really appreciate it!

Sadly CSS and linux are things I am not familiar enough with to edit stuff like that.
If you mean the option under "client settings --> [] Full screen" this makes the player exclusive fullscreen but pressing the fullscreen button in the bottom right undoes this setting and you have to enter the options screen again.

[TheDreadPirate]

Dashbard > General > Custom CSS Code

Code:

.btnFullscreen {
    display: none;
}

That appears to work.

[dakazze]

Dashbard > General > Custom CSS Code

Code:

.btnFullscreen {
    display: none;
}

That appears to work.

I cant thank you enough!
I guess it is time to donate to the project, you totally earned it!