Not sure if Starlink or Jellyfin issue..

[Spacecraft]

I've got Jellyfin running on a Hetzner dedicated server. On my home internet everything works beautifully, transcoding or direct play. I have 3 other people regularly using my server as well and they all appear to have no issues at all.

However when I try to stream when I'm on Starlink, nothing will load. Just spins forever. Currently I am getting between 150-200 Mbps and cannot get anything to play. I've tried using the private internet access and PureVPN VPNs in case Starlink was doing traffic shaping or something weird. On either of those VPNs I'm still seeing 150-200 Mbps and cannot play anything. I even turned on Starlink priority data to test, still nothing plays.

Other streaming platforms like YouTube work no problem even at 4k: https://i.imgur.com/ImFFlJ0.png



I'm leaning towards this being a Starlink issue, but wanted to know if anyone has experienced anything similar or have some advice on changes I may need to make to my set up.

[TheDreadPirate]

Share your jellyfin log with us via https://sourceb.in/? I'm assuming you are able to connect to jellyfin and browse but can't get a video to start.

[Spacecraft]

Share your jellyfin log with us via https://sourceb.in/?  I'm assuming you are able to connect to jellyfin and browse but can't get a video to start.

Yeah I can connect to Jellyfin but videos won't start. Which log file? The most recent log_date.log file?

[TheDreadPirate]

log_date.log. And if there is an FFMPEG.transcode log, share that too.

[Spacecraft]

Here is the most recent log_date.log: https://sourceb.in/KdC7uyvlRV

And most recent ffmpeg log: https://sourceb.in/gWjsTw7VCi

[TheDreadPirate]

There are some oddities in your main jellyfin log, but doesn't clearly point to what the problem is.

My only guess is that Starlinks CGNAT is doing something that jellyfin doesn't like. But using a VPN should have gotten around any of that.

Your ffmpeg log is incomplete. Not sure that matters, but I want to check its content. Just in case.

[Spacecraft]

Well, Jellyfin is doing something new that is odd. It's taking an obscenely long time to load the page on Starlink (getting ~150 Mbps at the time of the attempt). As a test I went and turned on my cell booster and loaded jellyfin over my cell network. Everything loaded super fast, but it also would not play. I tried loading a file that I have watched on the iOS Jellyfin app from my home network.

Here's the transcode log from that attempt: https://srcb.in/tPED45FCBk

Edit: Here's the log after the last few attemps on starlink and cell network: https://srcb.in/QeWvpLfLl4

[TheDreadPirate]

The ffmpeg log is still incomplete.

But in the main log all the transcode reasons are "TranscodeReason=ContainerBitrateExceedsLimit". Somewhere you have it configured that remote connections are transcoded when above a certain bit rate. This can be both on the client and on the server.

Change the bit rate limits so that it doesn't transcode.

And do you know if transcoding has ever worked? Is that the problem? Normally you don't transcode, but it is now and you are finding out it is broken?

[Spacecraft]

The ffmpeg log is still incomplete.

But in the main log all the transcode reasons are "TranscodeReason=ContainerBitrateExceedsLimit".  Somewhere you have it configured that remote connections are transcoded when above a certain bit rate.  This can be both on the client and on the server.

Change the bit rate limits so that it doesn't transcode.

And do you know if transcoding has ever worked?  Is that the problem?  Normally you don't transcode, but it is now and you are finding out it is broken?

I'm not sure why it's incomplete. That's the entire contents of the log file.

Huh, I don't remember changing any setting like that. I will look through the transcoding settings and see if anything looks off. Transcoding does work normally. I've inspected the playback info for myself and other people while they were playing something and I've seen it transcoding just audio, the container, etc successfully.

[Spacecraft]

I'm not seeing any options that would trigger that transcode message.

Under playback > streaming there is the "Internet streaming bitrate limit (Mbps)" setting which is currently blank.

Here are my transcoding settings: https://i.imgur.com/DM3vPWQ.png