Jellyfin Media Player help fixing poor quality video playback

[Djevans7]

This is a recurring issue that has me at my wits end and tempted to abandon Jellyfin. The main issue is that audio and video are out of sync. This is an issue regardless of codec and can sometimes be fixed by just pause/unpausing or restarting the content. One the video and audio are in sync it does not unsync again during playback unless you pause or skip to somewhere else in the media.
The other issue is that playback is noticeably worse both in quality and choppiness in Jellyfin Media Player. This is compared to VLC on the same device but also Jellyfin Media Player on other devices. Below are more details laid out as simply as I can

• The issue only occurs using Jellyfin Media Player on the same device that the Jellyfin server runs on (a windows NUC in the living room attached to the tv directly via HDMI)
  
• I have tried disabling hardware encoding in user settings but it did not help. The issue appears to be account independent and persists on any account logged into the NUC but all accounts on other devices are fine.
  
• I have upgraded and uninstall/reinstalled Jellyfin Media Player on various versions to no benefit
  
• Using Jellyfin Media Player on other windows devices works perfectly regardless of account
  
• The LG TV Jellyfin app and Android Jellyfin app also work perfectly
  
• Playing the media back directly from file using VLC and other players works perfectly
  
• The NUC does not appear to be running hard at any point, CPU and RAM usage range between 60-80% (for reference it is Beelink U59 that sits in the living room used for running the server and watching media via Jellyfin Media Player or Formula 1 with a vpn and adblocker. It has no other normal background processes beyond windows defaults and the server)
  

This leads me to conclude it is some setting that needs tweaking in the local media player and not the server itself, but I cannot for the life of me work out what it needs to be. I have already tried disabling hardware decoding in client settings but that just made the image artefact and if I'm being honest, I'm not savvy enough to identify which other settings could help.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[TheDreadPirate]

Try disabling Windows Defender temporarily.

[Djevans7]

Which elements of defender? Turning off the virus protection and firewalls just now made no difference.
This is Win11, should have specified in the main post

[TheDreadPirate]

I was referring mainly to the virus scanner, yes.

Is the PC connected to a VRR capable TV/monitor?

I vaguely recall that JMP has long had issues with VRR. I'm trying to find the github ticket.

---

Can you give Jellyfin MPV Shim a try?

[Djevans7]

No VRR as far as I can tell. I can certainly try MPV Shim - how does it work? Does it just change the player and we use jellyfin like normal?

Just thinking about the headache of teaching my family something that looks new and different!

[TheDreadPirate]

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-mpv-shim

MPV Shim is a little different. It will present you with a login prompt but won't do anything afterwards. It will just sit in the Windows system tray. What you now do is use your phone or browser on another device, anything you are also logged in on, could even be a browser on the same NUC, and MPV Shim will be an available casting target. You select MPV Shim as your casting target on your, for this example, phone and when you play your video on your phone it will launch on MPV Shim.

If you all share the same account, this should not be an issue. I have NOT tried controlling MPV Shim from someone else's account, though. But there is a setting so that non-admin users can control devices of other users. But don't know, 100%, if this would allow the user to control MPV Shim if they aren't also logged into MPV Shim.

Dashboard > Users > Select non-admin user > scroll down to Remote Control and check "Allow remote control of other users"

Back to Jellyfin Media Player, this user appears to have found a workaround if you want to try that instead of going down the MPV Shim route.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-med...issues/875

[Djevans7]

I had a go at the workaround listed in the post you linked but sadly just got an application cannot start 0xc0000142 error. I assume based on reading around there is perhaps another version of the libmpv-2.dll file that might fix my issue but not sure how to work out which one would be compatible. It might just be that the CPU is too old, as when I updated to JMP 1.12.0 I did have to install the legacy version.

[TheDreadPirate]

Oooohhhh. I didn't think your CPU was old enough to need to install the legacy version. But now that I think about it more, the issue with legacy vs non-legacy JMP has to do with AVX support. Which the Gemini Lake CPU in your NUC does not support (or any low power Intel family, AFAIK).

Did you have stuttering issues when you were on JMP 1.11.1? I recall a user in the discord/matrix chat having success resolving their stuttering issues by reverting to that version.

[Djevans7]

Apologies for not replying after you spent time trying to help. I got busy and it kept slipping my mind to reply. Regarding your last message we have had this issue on every JMP version we have tried historically, but will try reverting to even older versions when I have a free weekend and see what works.

In the meantime, MPVShim worked great for me but not for members of my family who complained they couldn't make it work, so we ended up just using the smarttv app which despite being woefully underpowered compared to the NUC runs with no issues whatsoever, apart from being unable to fastforward/rewind which we've learnt to live with.