MKV Files Not Playing

[Huecuva]

I have a lot of MKV files in my library and until recently they seemed to work. I've had issues before but always seemed to resolve them or they resolved themselves. That doesn't seem to be happening this time. I found this old thread where someone is having a similar issue. The link That DreadPirate posted in there suggests that MKV is not currently supported in Firefox at all. Firefox is what I use.

However, despite this, everyone else posting in that thread seems to suggest that MKV files should work depending on whether my hardware supports it. I'm running Jellyfin in a headless Debian VM in Proxmox with a GTX1070 passed through for transcoding. As I said, I've previously been able to play MKV files so it shouldn't be an issue with my hardware or installed media codecs. I only noticed the problem a couple of weeks ago but I don't know exactly when they stopped working. It might have been around when I was able to upgrade to Jellyfin 10.11.X. That was the only real major change to the server.

Weirdly, playback isn't even the only issue. I recently redownloaded a couple of series in MKV format and Jellyfin will not even add them to the library. As far as Jellyfin is concerned, they simply don't exist. This suggests it isn't just an issue with Firefox.

At this point I'm completely in the dark. Can I actually expect MKV files to play on my system in Firefox or not? If so, why isn't it working and how do I make it work? If not, is there any work being done to support it?

I really don't want to have to install a separate browser just to watch MKV files in Jellyfin. That's highly inconvenient.

[alleycat]

I have a lot of MKV files in my library and until recently they seemed to work. I've had issues before but always seemed to resolve them or they resolved themselves. That doesn't seem to be happening this time. I found this old thread where someone is having a similar issue. The link That DreadPirate posted in there suggests that MKV is not currently supported in Firefox at all. Firefox is what I use.

However, despite this, everyone else posting in that thread seems to suggest that MKV files should work depending on whether my hardware supports it. I'm running Jellyfin in a headless Debian VM in Proxmox with a GTX1070 passed through for transcoding. As I said, I've previously been able to play MKV files so it shouldn't be an issue with my hardware or installed media codecs. I only noticed the problem a couple of weeks ago but I don't know exactly when they stopped working. It might have been around when I was able to upgrade to Jellyfin 10.11.X. That was the only real major change to the server.

Weirdly, playback isn't even the only issue. I recently redownloaded a couple of series in MKV format and Jellyfin will not even add them to the library. As far as Jellyfin is concerned, they simply don't exist. This suggests it isn't just an issue with Firefox.

At this point I'm completely in the dark. Can I actually expect MKV files to play on my system in Firefox or not? If so, why isn't it working and how do I make it work? If not, is there any work being done to support it?

I really don't want to have to install a separate browser just to watch MKV files in Jellyfin. That's highly inconvenient.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comment...fox_guide/

Works for me...

[Huecuva]

If only it were that easy. Unfortunately, it seems that media.mkv.enabled is already true on my system.

[Huecuva]

Whoops. Double post. My apologies.

[34626]

I suppose you did a backup of Jellyfi before upgrading Jellyfin?

Please try and install Jellyfin Media Player - https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-desktop/releases

MKV works fine here, but i dont use browser for Jellyfin, but just tested and mine works just fine.

Else try and spin up a new VM of latest Jellyfin to see if the issue still remains.

[Huecuva]

I can't seem to get Jellyfin Desktop to connect to my server. It just grinds away forever trying to connect.

As for spinning up another VM, I'm not sure that's going to be possible. The existing VM accesses a library on a PCIe SATA controller passed through from the Proxmox host. I can't give anything else direct access to that storage. Can Jellyfin access a library over a network?

EDIT: After some further messing around, it does appear that Jellyfin is able to play existing MKV files. It just seems anything new I download isn't being added to the database regardless how many times I rescan it. It's not a database problem in general, as I downloaded an mp4 file and Jellyfin picked it up right away. It's only new MKV files it's having a problem with it seems. In fact, not only that, but it seems to just be having an issue with one particular directory in my library. when I add MKV files to other directories, it seems to pick them up.

[34626]

Yes, you can use something like NFS to access media on another devices on the network.

It sounds like missing permissions in the folder, for testing you can set the permissions to 777 (only for testing) afterwards 755 is recommended)

You can "turn off the current VM with Jellyfin" and spin up a new for testing.. I would highly recommend you doing that.

I suppose you did not make a backup of the VM before upgrading Jellyfin?

[Huecuva]

I have a backup of my server, but not one of Jellyfin specifically.

I'm not sure why the permissions of the directory would have changed, but I will have a look into that.

[sly625]

Regarding your issue with missing Series, if that's in a Series Library, I've also been unable to get Jellyfin to properly scan that library type while using TheMovieDB as a metadata provider. My server seems to get hung up while that metadata provider is active. I'd suggest disabling it for your Series library and then rescan the library to see if your added shows are detected after that change.

I'm not sure about the MKV issue, but I've encountered a problem where some of my MKV files will not play in the browser version (I am gross and use Edge as my primary browser in Windows) of the Jellyfin Client. For me, the issue seems to be correlated to videos that have an original aspect ratio of 4:3. I've found that these videos still play in my Windows OS through the official Jellyfin Client though, so my guess (not tested) is that Jellyfin is having some trouble with this aspect ratio in conjunction with how my browser is providing the screen size it is using? I've found that remuxing these problem videos fixes this issue for some of my media though, so maybe there's an aspect that the media itself has some flaws that combine with how browsers work that cause the stream to fail, as I often rip my own media for my personal library.

I'm no expert here and usually just hack things together as I go, but maybe something I've said here will help.

[Huecuva]

I'm actually not so sure it's specifically an MKV issue anymore. It seems like it might be just this specific directory now. That directory is, in fact, a separate Series Library, set as type "Shows" in Jellyfin. It won't scan new downloads and it won't pick up the metadata for anything that's already there since I tried removing the Library and adding it again. It picked up again what was there before I removed it, except for the new series I was having issues with in the first place, but now none of it has metadata and it won't update anything.

I have qbittorrent-nox configured so that I can save a .torrent file in either ~/torrents/TV or ~/torrents/Movies and it will put the downloads into the appropriate folder and be automatically added to the appropriate Jellyfin library. It works fine for movies still, but TV shows are misbehaving.

I will try disabling TheMovieDB.

EDIT: I disabled TheMovieDB for this specific library and rescanned it. It doesn't seem to have made a difference.