Chromecast Stuttering & Freezing

[SkyeRangerDelta]

Morning everyone,

I'll get straight into it with some context; I host a small homelab that runs a handful of VMs via XCP-ng and loads most everything off of a 10Gbe QNAP TS-855X NAS connection. Jellyfin runs off a VM with the hostname electroplasma. Specs are as follows:

• Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS (latest kernel)
  
• Jellyfin 10.9.1 (via apt)
  
• 4x vCPUs on a Ryzen 9 3950X
  
• 128 GB VM SR
  
• 10GB DDR4
  
• 6TB NFS Share for media
  
• No GPU (yet)
  
• ISP/Network speed of 620mbps / 916mbps (down / up)
  

I have a small group of family and friends that will log into the server to watch stuff, usually 2 a day for a movie or a couple of episodes of something. 3 concurrent streams is the most activity I've seen on the box. One of these people is my dad who uses a Chromecast to stream media via his Android S21 Ultra to the TV. It's a newer TV with a 4k HDR display but the Chromecast is one of the first generations; the small grey disc one he's got attached to an HDMI port.

He can cast everything without flaw from any media source that isn't Jellyfin (YouTube, Hulu, etc). He's been encountering a pretty grotesque amount of freezing and stuttering when trying to cast most media. Rewinding the playhead in the remote control sometimes fixes it; other times it completely restarts the stream. It will also randomly skip ahead to the next episode in a series. 

Yesterday, I upgraded Jellyfin from 10.8.x to 10.9.1 and also took a look at my Nginx Proxy Manager configuration and updated it according to the docs with one change: all add_header and set_header flags are in their own custom location due to how NPM handles those (they don't work in the advanced section). My network is also proxied (with the exception of Jellyfin as it's set to DNS only) through Cloudflare with a full SSL certificate setting (CF cert on the proxy/origin server and between the client and CF). When I upgraded and changed out the NPM config; it got worse for him despite adding the add_header config for additional Chromecast support (from what it looked like).

This only seems to happen with his Chromecast too; I've not had...a lot of issues with mine and one of my friends who uses a Chromecast (also not a 4k) has never had any issues - so I'm scratching my head on this one. I personally use the Sony / Google TV app which performs without flaw. Just about everyone else watches via browser.

Here are some logs from various points in the day:
JF Log (5-17): https://bin.pldyn.net/raw/acazezoyij
JF Log (5-16): https://bin.pldyn.net/raw/yadobeyuqu

DirectStream: https://bin.pldyn.net/raw/fomevopipa
DirectStream: https://bin.pldyn.net/raw/egibocuraq
DirectStream: https://bin.pldyn.net/raw/atekomusar
DirectStream: https://bin.pldyn.net/raw/olulodeved

Nginx Proxy Manager configuration:
https://bin.pldyn.net/ubeherataz.nginx

I know that the Chromecast implementation for Jellyfin is...jank at best at the moment - but given performance on other Chromecast systems and streams - I suspect we can do better here. He does have an LG TV with a webOS version that allows the installation of the Jellyfin app - but after logging in, he gets a webOS error (not a JF error) that the app couldn't load.

Any insight on how to get this sorted would be invaluable to me; I don't really know what I'm missing here. If any additional information is needed; I'd be happy to provide it. I've seen this topic come through here a couple of times, but none of the fixes I've seen so far seem to have done the trick.

[TheDreadPirate]

I can't find the post/comment, but there was a call for developers who know how to work with Google's casting apps because our implementation of casting is, and will continue to be, hit or miss. With no logical explanation for why it works fine for some and not for others.

Honestly, the easiest solution is to get an Android TV or Roku dongle/box.

[SkyeRangerDelta]

I was hoping that I wouldn't need to do that but he likely needs to upgrade it anyway as the thing is...not new, lol

[34626]

How is the playback if he plays media on his smartphone?