2023-11-26, 11:29 AM
Just wanted to put a clarifier here; technically mkv isn't supported across all platforms (url the jellyfin codecs page as inserted by paulc above), but as long as your video/audio codecs are supported the remxing that JF will do is negligible, as in their own words, "If the container is unsupported, this will result in remuxing. The video and audio codec will remain intact but wrapped in a supported container. This is the least intensive process. Most video containers will be remuxed to use the HLS streaming protocol and TS containers. Remuxing shouldn't be a concern even for an RPi3." Since the video/audio streams are left untouched there'll be no visual distortions.
The larger difficulty is that h265 is not universally supported by all platforms (due to licensing/etc) which isn't on JF; but using a player that supports a wide range of codecs (JMP as is DreadPirate's suggestion) will make it so you don't have to do on-the-fly transcoding (and thus cause potential artifacting as you mentioned). That said, it seems like in your ask there's more than just local users, and at non-native resolutions. These are going to require transcoding in some format. As long as you only have 1 or 2 streams going, even CPU transcoding will be feasible even on dated hardware (I've personally had up to 3 1080 -> 720p streams on an older intel duo quad without issue); and you can tune the transcoding in setttings -> dashboard -> playback (namely encoding preset and the crf values) to attempt to circumvent visual artifacting.
The larger difficulty is that h265 is not universally supported by all platforms (due to licensing/etc) which isn't on JF; but using a player that supports a wide range of codecs (JMP as is DreadPirate's suggestion) will make it so you don't have to do on-the-fly transcoding (and thus cause potential artifacting as you mentioned). That said, it seems like in your ask there's more than just local users, and at non-native resolutions. These are going to require transcoding in some format. As long as you only have 1 or 2 streams going, even CPU transcoding will be feasible even on dated hardware (I've personally had up to 3 1080 -> 720p streams on an older intel duo quad without issue); and you can tune the transcoding in setttings -> dashboard -> playback (namely encoding preset and the crf values) to attempt to circumvent visual artifacting.