Playback Issues on Jellyfin – Need Guidance on Fixes

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Hi everyone!

I've been using Jellyfin successfully for over a year, but recently (around 2 months ago) I've run into major playback issues. Videos now intermittently fail to load and display random errors. 
Two consistent problems I’m seeing:

• Playback stuttering and pixelation: Video becomes pixelated and jumbled, then catches up and appears fine for about 10-20 seconds before repeating the stutter.
  

• Video freezing with audio playback continuing: The video will freeze completely, but audio keeps playing without issue.
  

For testing, I tried playing the movie Hook, which freezes the video entirely, while Dumb and Dumber wouldn’t load at all. Interestingly, these movies play without issues on VLC, so it appears to be specific to Jellyfin.

My library includes about 1,500 movies across three folders. I’m not fully versed in all the hardware acceleration options but I have tried several combinations to troubleshoot. 
The last tested setting was AMD AMF, though I typically use VAAPI, which has worked previously for quite some time.

I’ve attached logs from this morning (freshly generated, containing only tests of these two movies). 

Any advice on resolving these playback issues would be greatly appreciated. Thank you to anyone who takes the time to look into this! And I apologize in advance if I'm missing anything, be happy to provide whatever is needed, thanks!

I should add I removed/readded my Jellyfin app on both my iPhone and my Roku devices and have restarted my server each subsequent time.

Specifications:

• OS:        Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS/Gnome 46/Wayland/Linux 6.8.0-47-generic
  
• Jellyfin: 10.10.1
  
• MB:        Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. B450 AORUS PRO WIFI
  
• CPU:      AMD Ryzen™ 5 2600X × 12
  
• GPU:      AMD Radeon™ RX 5600 XT
  
• RAM:     32GB
  
• Storage:4TB/2TB/1TB NVME (Ubuntu server is on disk with 100gb free)
  

Logs:
https://pastebin.com/dl/5Cw60S2g
https://pastebin.com/dl/cn9NywEw
https://pastebin.com/dl/XdfEAQxC
https://pastebin.com/dl/zFeSek10
https://pastebin.com/dl/utTETAFb
https://pastebin.com/dl/C44sZ2Wt
https://pastebin.com/dl/XPJ9AVF3

[TheDreadPirate]

For Dumb and Dumber I see you have HWA set to AMF. AMF only works in Windows. You need to set HWA to VAAPI.

For Hook, it is just transcoding the audio. Is the issue you are describing only happening with Hook?

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I probably should have set my settings back to VAAPI before posting the logs. Yes, that resolved the Dumb and Dumber issue.
and No, It's not only happening with Hook. I will clear my logs, run a few more movies and post new logs.

Just for future readers - setting my HW acceleration back to VAAPI resolved the Dumb and Dumber movie not being played. (That was a bad pick on my part).

The issues that still remain are: Movies playing and being pixelated every 10-20 seconds on my Roku device, and movies freezing frames but still playing audio on my iPhone and then the movie will catch up for a second, before freezing again.

New logs coming soon..

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OK, just tried the following:

For 'The Good Place' TV Show, it's showing pixelated every 20 seconds-ish.. It happened a handful of times during the playback in the first few minutes. When I play this in my VLC player, there is no pixelation at the same parts in the show. Here's the log:
https://pastebin.com/JSL1ExmS

For Hook - on my Roku device - there is pixelation immediately, here is the log:
https://pastebin.com/GwN87Nbj

Life Stinks - on my Roku device - there is pixelation immediately, log:
https://pastebin.com/Hcgt7B61

and for Hook on my iPhone device - where it's freezing the frames when I play it but the audio still plays here's the logs:
https://pastebin.com/Kr0DjYnN
https://pastebin.com/gVTwS5Hy

Star Trek Into Darkness - on my iPhone where it freezes as well:
https://pastebin.com/vKKVFzT8
https://pastebin.com/yJChyeJC

[TheDreadPirate]

Do TRANSCODES work right? If you were to select a low bit rate on your clients, triggering a full transcode, does the issue go away?

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Figured I'd follow up here.. turns out I actually had either bad memory or bad nvme ssd drive. I replaced both. I'm now rebuilding my collection. Long story short I was putting my movie in one folder, the moving to another drive. The checksums weren't matching when I moved the files.. causing the pixelation and artifacts.