Intel A380 HWA & other general questions regaridng Jellyfin

[TechZen]

Greetings fellow Jellyfin Connoisseurs,
As I've been working on setting up my new dedicated Jellfyin server, I've noticed some significant stutters, and down-right complete failure to play media if it's being trans coded.

I am wondering if I can have someone more experience, help share their insights into why how/why my server may be struggling in this regard. I admittedly am very much a newb, however I was expecting better results, especially considering my server hardware setup (see below).

As you can see in the attached screenshots, my Intel A380 GPU seems to be doing QSV HWA, which is good! However, I am concerned with the following:

1. Is it typical for the dGPU to be hitting 100% utilization for transcoding a single 4k stream?
   
2. Is my HWA config seem correct (see attached)? I've double checked it against the HWA docs, and don't see any glaring issues (all other settings are default)
   
3. Is there a best practice for what a client's bitrate should be? It seems to prevent transcoding I must have the quality setting to have a bit-rate higher than the media source.
   
4. What is a rough estimate on the number of concurrent 4k streams I should be able to handle if transcoding, direct streaming, or a mix of the two.
   

Jellyfin Install:
Jellyfin Server Windows x64, ver:10.8.13

Jellyfin Client(s): 

• LG C1 OLED (via WebOS App)
  
• iPhone 14 Pro (native iOS App)
  
• Desktop/Laptops using Windows Thick Client
  
• Additional devices using the HTML web client.
  
• Xbox Series X via the Edge Browser (as it seems the native Xbox app was deprecated)
  

Hardware:OS: Windows 11 Home 23H2
CPU: Intel i5-12400 with Intel 730 iGPU
GPU: Intel Arc380 w/ 6GB of VRAM, driver ver: 31.0.101.4575
RAM: 2x8 GB DDR4 @ 3200 MHz
Storage: 512 GB M.2 SSD (Used for Server/Cache Install)
Storage #2: 12 TB Seagate Exos 7200 RPM Hard Drive

Media:
All my media is ripped 4k Blu-rays using MakeMKV. I am not using handbrake to transcode my media to H.264, as I want to maintain the highest audio/video quality possible (however open to suggestions here).

Thanks for your time, insights, and help!

Sincerely,
TechZen