Micro stutters / single frame drops

[podonnell]

I don't recall you mentioning Jellyfin Media Player as a player you've tried.

Since it seems only the audio is being transcoded a lot of the time, what I'm wondering if is the CPU usage from the audio transcode is causing some weird muxing issues.

JMP should be able to direct play your videos.

I do have that as well, haven't tried it.
Just tried now, it seems the 'playback info' doesn't have dropped frames unfortunately.
However, taking a look it does not appear to be dropping frames from what I can see.
Does this media player do something different with audio transcribes?

As a test, I went back to watching on the other player, and I kept the video running until the red bar in the "active devices" went all the way to the end, presumably finishing the transcode? After that finished, I did continue to drop frames. Would this mean its not the audio transcode causing it? 

You may be on to something with the JMP, any way I can confirm no drops there?