Occasional video stuttering and broken subs rendering

[chicocheco]

Hi guys, I love the project and am a huge fan. We watch on an old laptop (like 10 y/o or more) and at the beggining it would suddenly get really slow while watching a show, video starting to stutter. After enabling HW decoding it got almost perfect but still sometimes it has hiccups. Like as if it dropped a few frames while the audio track plays smoothly. Is there anything I can do about that? I would love to have a smooth experience. Would buying some kind of TV stick, dedicated for this purpose only, for HDMI port help?

Another issue is that sometimes in Jellyfin Media Player after starting a playback it crams all subtitles to the bottom left, like all letters on top of each other. I have to turn the subs off and on to fix that. That is probably a bug only in JMP, not web client.

Thank you!

[TheDreadPirate]

The subtitle issue is a known bug. Toggling full screen will reset the subs.

If you have an older and or underpowered laptop, using the browser might be a better experience. But only if your server is pretty capable and can transcode.

Jellyfin Media Player should direct play everything, whether your client is capable of smoothly playing the video or not. Depending on your laptop's specs, it may not even have the hardware decoders for most modern codecs and it is software decoding everything.

[chicocheco]

Thanks for the reply and confirming the issue. So it really occurs only in JMP and it has been there since May this year. Good to know that I can temporarily fix it by clicking the fullscreen botton. Before I was re-selecting the subs and the list of subs was pretty long sometimes...

Anyway, With JMP it got smoother in comparison with a web browser. In a web browser it had different issues. Sometimes it stuttered really bad like it did not just drop a few frames, it even stopped audio for a seconds or more when that happened, very distracting. Definitelly worse experience than JMP. I can live with the subs bug if it gets fixed eventually.

I was decided to buy a fire stick to replace the old laptop, but now I read that they might drop adroid apps completelly... So I am still looking.

[TheDreadPirate]

Roku is also a good option. Other android TV devices that aren't Amazon made.

[chicocheco]

I was considering Xiaomi TV Box S 2nd Gen but there is a thread here on this forum about that it makes video stutter too. Amazon is probably moving away from Android, eventually. What I shame, it seems it has pretty powerfull HW. Roku does not run Android either anymore, does it?

I will investigate a bit about Roku devices. Thanks

[TheDreadPirate]

Roku has always used their own OS, AFAIK. Their devices are pretty capable.

I personally prefer Android TV, but there are not many devices I can comfortably recommend. Especially outside the US. Except the Nvidia Shield PRO, which is expensive.

[chicocheco]

If I can expect stable releases of the JF client for it and it works smooth, great. BTW does it have an app for Wireguard? Thanks

[TheDreadPirate]

Most TV clients don't allow, or make it easy, for VPNs to run in the background. Roku definitely not. You might be able to get a VPN to run on an Android TV.

[chicocheco]

Yeah.. I wanted it for travelling mostly. VPN is important for me. So I guess I will give the Xiaomi box a chance. Thanks