Certain videos playing as "live"

[TheDreadPirate]

You would need to make sure that Jellyfin can write to that folder on the hard drive. Either as the owner or in the group that owns it. Writing to /dev/shm is the no additional config way to write to ramdisk.

[skribe]

So I tried changing the transcode location to a folder on the hard disk drive but that got me no playback instead of ridiculously slow playback. Do I need to set certain ownership and permissions for that folder to work as the transcode location.
Also how would I go about writing it to RAM disk as an alternative?

I do not suspect that this issue has anything at all to do with your storage. The Pi 4 is simply not a powerful device. It really cannot be used to transcode media. You just need to ensure that your media never needs to be transcoded, or use a server device which can handle such functionality. That is not a factor of the storage speed. It's a factor of the computational power of the device itself. You can keep troubleshooting the storage if you want, but a Pi based server really should just not be used for transcoding at all.

The solution here is in your media, really. Just don't serve content with a Pi 4 based Jellyfin server that a client cannot direct play.

[DGinSD]

Ok so I've done some experimentation and digging. I have a duplicate hdd that is plugged into my router which can run a DLNA server and it plays the media files that Jellyfin is transcoding without issue.

I also did some inspection of the problem media files and the only difference I can find is resolution the videos that won't play are 720X480 while others that will play are 718X462 or other various resolutions in the range of SD.

Is there any way to "reset" the server without starting over from scratch? As I'm guessing it's some setting I've changed that's causing some random issue with a few files.

[skribe]

Again, your server logs, as stated several posts ago, will tell us exactly why Jellyfin is choosing to transcode the files that it is transcoding. We can simply look to see why they are being transcoded, which will tell you what you would need to change to avoid it.

I'm not sure that I understand your question about "resetting" the server or why you think it might be necessary.

[AshipaEkO]

So the transcode is being written to a microSD card. I could change it to a folder on the source materials hdd. Might that help?

As far as turning off transcoding, I was mistaken I turned off hardware acceleration as I wasn't 100% it was supported and couldn't determine the mode to use.

You could try changing your transcode location to   /dev/shm

that's RAM only.  but its dependent on the size of your RAM, and allocation in /dev/shm


I wonder though why disabling transcoding isn't working for you.   I have disabled transcoding, and in my library settings ensured only embedded TEXT subtitles get read.  That makes sure the server ignores other embedded subtitles formats which i find are the main cause of mysterious transcodes

That way if the file is not compatible with the player. rather than trigger a transcode, playback fails.


If you are going to to be stuck with using a Pi, i'm afraid the best case scenario for you will be to direct play only.  Its just not a great experience transcoding with a a Pi/SD Card etc