Can't stop active device playback

[Bumpsy]

Hey there, I'm  quite new to Jellyfin (it's only been a few days) and I've come across an issue today, related to the admin dashboard.

It started when I suddenly could not play media anymore with my admin account. I was testing subtitles and thus stopped/started the movie frequently in a short amount of time. Then, it suddenly stopped playing at all. This has happened before, but I was able to resolve it by closing and opening the application (I use the Jellyfin Media Player for Windows, by the way). This time, it did not work. Instead, the movie simply refuses to play and the whole app freezes.

I then checked the dashboard, and under "Active Devices" the app tells me that the movie is actually playing (although with the admin-account, which I was currently using and NOT playing media). Simple enough, I think, trying to stop it from playing. But it just doesn't work. The app does not react to clicking the pause- or stop-buttons.

This leaves me in a bit of a quandary. I've of course used Google to find a solution, but nothing similar came up (not sure if that is due to Google's crappy search or due to my singular problem). Has anyone experienced this? I've not yet tried to completely shut down the Jellyfin server, but I guess that will be my next step.

   

EDIT: restarting the server did remove the device from active playback, but only until I try to watch a movie again. Playback itself is still broken and instantly freezes the app. No idea, what I should do now Playback on my Android device works without issues, so I guess it is a problem with the Windows player.

EDIT2: I have found that this problem seems to be limited to just one specific movie. I can play others of the same format (mp4) without problems. However, I was able to play that movie before just fine. Maybe Jellyfin broke the file somehow?

[Deleted User]

a couple things you can check

if you feel it is the file itself -
play the file directly on the failing PC outside of JF
check the file with ffmpeg - a simple transcode can show errors most of the time, ffmpeg -i <file.mp4> -map 0 -c copy <newfile.mp4>

it could also be different client settings
if the playback is being transcoded for windows playback but not android it could explain failing only on windows

check your JF logs for any indicators
check process information when playing back media both on server and client

these few things can help you or others here further along in finding the core issue