Direct play issues

[Sora]

Hi,
I'm new to jellyfin and I would like to understand something. When I stream from jellyfin most of the time it's using direct play. But the issue I have is that I can't skip forward when I'm direct playing, it just don't want to. I can only skip forward when transcoding. Most of my files are x264 mkv. Is there some parameters that I can change to make it work or it's just normal behavior ?

[TheDreadPirate]

This problem is usually caused by a poorly muxed MKV file. Manually remuxing often solves the problem. No re-encoding required.

What OS is the server running so I can provide a more specific ffmpeg command.

[Sora]

I'm using ubuntu 24.04 !

[TheDreadPirate]

Code:

/usr/lib/jellyfin-ffmpeg/ffmpeg -fflags +genpts+igndts -i "/path/to/video/mkv" -map 0 -codec copy -max_muxing_queue_size 2048 -max_interleave_delta 0 -avoid_negative_ts disabled newFile.mkv

[Maxdiken]

I have the exact same issue. I recently built a new server and my media was playing perfectly fine on my old build, just 1 week ago. I am not sure if the Jellyfin versions were the exact same on both systems. Everything runs very smoothly on Firefox where it basically transcodes all the time, but Microsoft Edge and Jellyfin Media Player are a huge mess because of direct playing. My currently server version is 10.10.3 and I am using the latest version for Jellyfin Media Player, even though this shouldn't be the source of the problem I am having issues when direct playing on Microsoft Edge as well.

Edit: Forgot to mention that the media sometimes takes a minute to load and then runs just fine, sometimes less, sometimes it just won't. I am having a hard time figuring out a pattern.

Edit2: After further testing, it seems that the media player is able to skip forward for small amounts only. If I tried to leap forward for more than 20 or so seconds, the cursor goes back to where it originally was. I tried playing some files on VLC through an SMB share on Windows and I didn't notice any playback issue whatsoever with this method.

[Maxdiken]

Good news, I have identified the source of the problem.
Personally, I use Cloudflare tunnels to share my server outside of my local network (which I didn't before, I was reverse proxying with Caddy). When I logged into Jellyfin with my local IP, all the playback issues were gone.
I am still trying to figure out how to make it work properly with Cloudflare, any pointer would be appreciated.

[TheDreadPirate]

Using cloudflare's proxies or tunnels to serve video is against their TOS.

[wilberfan]

This problem is usually caused by a poorly muxed MKV file.  Manually remuxing often solves the problem.  No re-encoding required.

What OS is the server running so I can provide a more specific ffmpeg command.

This newb is having the same issue, I think.  Often takes more than 30 seconds for the playback to begin.  My Jellyfin server is running under docker on my Synology NAS.  Can you provide a proper equivalent ffmpeg command for my situation?

[edit]. What would be ideal is the ffmpeg command that would find all .mkv files in my /tv directory and all subdirectories, and convert them to .mp4, write them to the source directory, then delete the original. 

[RostigerSpieler]

I agree with wilberfan's statement. It is better to convert the videos to mp4.

I use the program “AnyMP4 Video Enhancement” for this.

I use it to convert all my formats (mkv, flv, avi, mpg and m2ts to MP4 (x265). They then run without any problems. The program uses the graphics card for conversion. It is therefore very fast.

[Sora]

I agree with wilberfan's statement. It is better to convert the videos to mp4.

I use the program “AnyMP4 Video Enhancement” for this.

I use it to convert all my formats (mkv, flv, avi, mpg and m2ts to MP4 (x265). They then run without any problems. The program uses the graphics card for conversion. It is therefore very fast.

But isn't there issues to use mp4 ? I mean when you convert to mp4 you loose image quality no ? (I'm new to this so sorry if it's incorrect or dumb)