Attempting hardware acceleration, ffmpeg -init_hw_device says "No device found"

[TheDreadPirate]

You really don't need much to have a good Jellyfin experience (see the modest specs in my signature). It's all about matching the codecs your library is stored in with the right hardware. It's really a matter if you have AV1 media already or want to encode your library with AV1. If you don't care about AV1 at the moment, just about any 8th gen Intel CPU and newer will serve 5-10 users if transcoding. More users if there is no transcoding (don't count on this).

If you do care about AV1, any 13th gen Intel CPU will do. Or any CPU + Intel Arc A380.

I've posted this before in other threads, but here are the three tenants of a smooth Jellyfin exper

1. Know what server and playback hardware you have
2. Know what your server and playback hardware is capable of
3. Know your media library

When your library (mainly videos codecs) lines up with what your server GPU hardware can decode you will have a smooth transcode experience. When your library lines up with what your playback hardware can decode you will have a smooth direct play experience. When your library doesn't line up with your hardware's capabilities, you're going to have a bad time.