AV1 Direct play on Google Pixel 8

[Calamity1911]

Hello all,

I recently was able to configure a Jellyfin server on my spare laptop, and have since started transcoding a bunch of my existing Blu Ray rips to AV1 to save on some size since it's a more efficient codec compared to H264/5.

I read online that Jellyfin should support direct playing/streaming of AV1 content, but when I use the Jellyfin app on my Google Pixel 8 which does support AV1, it says it's still transcoding to H264.

This usually isn't a huge issue since I usually am on my local network when I am streaming, so I could just increase the H264 bitrate. That being said, it would be nice to enable AV1 streaming.

For some context, the device running Jellyfin is an older Dell XPS 15 with an i7 10750H and a GTX 1650 mobile GPU (neither of which have native support for AV1 decode/encode). The files are being stored in an MKV container, some of which have PGS subtitles and some of which don't have any subtitles.

One target device is (as mentioned above) is my Google Pixel 8. Another device I use occasionally is my desktop, which has an RX 7800XT which also supports AV1. I ensured that I have the AV1 extension from the Microsoft Store installed, and I can verify that YouTube does play some videos using AV1. Also, my browser on the desktop is Firefox if that makes a difference.

I don't know if the server not supporting hardware transcoding of AV1 should affect being able to direct stream any content, but I have no other ideas as to what could be stopping this.

Any feedback is appreciated.

[TheDreadPirate]

Make sure that the client settings in the Jellyfin Android app are set to integrated player instead of web player. Click your icon in the top right, client settings, change the player to integrated.

One quirk with Jellyfin right now is that if the audio needs to be transcoded the output will be in a TS container, which does not support AV1. So sometimes if you have audio that needs to be transcoded it will HAVE to transcode the video due to container restrictions. When 10.9 is released it will allow transcodes to be output in the fMP4 container, which DOES support AV1. So audio only transcodes won't also trigger video transcodes.

[bitmap]

Additionally, PGS, VOB, and some ASS subs will require transcoding. Your Pixel is an exception if you use VLC as an external player with the Jellyfin Android client. It will direct play AV1 and any kind of subs without transcoding server-side.