Files that play back in emby but not Jellyfin

[Maccabbi]

I tried to search the forums but couldn’t find anything, so before I start digging too deeply, I thought I’d ask in case there’s an easy thing I’m missing. 

Set up:
My setup is a synology DS1019+ with a celeron j3455. Not powerful but I’ve used it with plex for a while and it works well enough for my purposes. I’ve been using Jellyfin for six months or so now. Jellyfin sever in a docker container. I have plex and emby dockers too. Playback is on appleTVs. I have the Swiftfin app, plex app, emby, and infuse (an app that can use multiple back ends and feels a bit more complete than swiftfin.) 
 
Issue:
Jellyfin handles most things fine but I have a bunch of anime that’s h265 with multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitles. When using Jellyfin as the backend, these files play fine on my newer apple tv but not on my older one. On the older one, it normally shows a blank screen and plays the audio. Sometimes it shows a still frame from the video while it plays the audio but doesn’t actually play the video. I thought, no big deal, the device is old. Probably doesn’t support h265. Plex also struggles to play them on that device. I get sound and video but very choppy video from plex, but plex has the option to choose playback quality on an individual video. I just set them to 720p and the server converts and they play fine on the older appleTV. Jellyfin doesn’t have that feature. I was curious if emby did, so I set that up the emby docker and to my surprise, when using emby as the back end, the files play fine. It does have the option to set playback quality on a specific video but I don’t have to use it. It will play in the emby app, and the server cpu usage goes up to 98%. Or I can play it in infuse and the cpu usage barely ticks up at all. No choppiness or changing video quality. They just play like any other video when emby is the server. I know there are some differences like what version of ffmpeg is being used between emby and Jellyfin, but like I said, before digging to deep I thought I’d ask if there’s some simple setting or something else I’m just overlooking.

[TheDreadPirate]

You can try setting the max bit rate in the Jellyfin app on your TV. Our official clients don't have resolution selection. We use a combination of the original video's bit rate/resolution, the client's display resolution, what codecs your server can transcode to, and your desired target bit rate to dynamically determine what resolution to output.

Also, how are you installing Jellyfin? Docker? Or from Synology's app store? What server version are you running?

[Maccabbi]

Docker. Latest image. 10.11.11

That's a good idea. I'll try that tonight. I considered a separate user with a limited rate because I mostly use infuse as the player and I don't think it had that option but I could use swiftfin on that device.

I don't expect to find a way to set resolution or bitrate per video. I get that's not an option. The server can software transcode so I was thinking is there a way to trigger it to do that. The rate limit sounds like a good answer. Or the device seems to be able to play the file. Emby not using the cpu to transcodes makes me think it's handing off the file to infuse and let it do the work. So I thought there might be some setting for that as well.

[TheDreadPirate]

Are you NOT using Infuse with Jellyfin? Because Infuse is Jellyfin compatible.

If you are using Infuse, I don't see how it would work fine with Emby but not Jellyfin.

[Maccabbi]

I am using infuse with Jellyfin. Run the Jellyfin docker, open infuse, select an episode and it plays the audio and maybe a frame or two of the video. Stop the Jellyfin docker, run emby docker, open infuse, select that same episode and it plays fine. That’s the bit that confused me too because infuse has its own player. It’s not like a difference in emby and jellyfin’s ffmpeg version or setup. Maybe a difference in how it decides when to let the device handle playback? I looked for direct playback settings and played with them but no luck.

[TheDreadPirate]

Can you reproduce the problem then share your jellyfin log via pastebin?