SOLVED: Jellyfin Media Player Linux never shows subtitles

[eobet]

Even if I toggle subtitles on, either in the menus before playing, or during playing, they simply don't show up.

This goes for both embedded and srt.

Worse, so many reports I've seen on this say to use various add-ons and stuff. How come such a basic thing like this is such an issue? Isn't this media player 101 and should be basically bulletproof out of the box?

I've installed Jellyfin via Flatpak on EndeavourOS and the official media player is also via flatpak on the same machine.

[Host-in-the-Shell]

The Jellyfin flatpak is not officially supported and has been known to cause issues. Your best bet is to reinstall using the recommended way under Arch/derivatives. That said, even the Arch package is maintained by Arch packagers and not the Jellyfin team; it can lag behind sometimes and any issues should be reported to them first.

As for the flatpak, just taking a guess here, it sounds like some sort of permission problem, perhaps paired with an inability to transcode incompatible subtitles for whatever reason. Some remuxing could be happening when direct streaming and that also can remove subs. If the problem persists even after reinstalling using the recommended way I mentioned before, more information would be helpful to identify the problem such as your server specs, version of Jellyfin installed and logs, particularly any ffmpeg logs in which the problem occurred.

[eobet]

I just want to comment that this is an extremely high bar all of a sudden.

Flatpak, I was up and running in two seconds.

Now, well... apparently I had to update my system first. Then I had to update some mirrors list. Then I was allowed to install jellyfin... but now I have to create a bash script file? And in that file, I need to point out a ffmpeg directory... but in Arch, that came as dependency package and it's not located where the example on that page says it should be... so, what do I do now? The instructions doesn't really say.

[Host-in-the-Shell]

I haven't installed Jellyfin on Arch before, as I host it using Debian, but I don't see anything there about a bash script or pointing towards ffmpeg. I think you're reading some steps that are beyond the Arch section. What I imagine the installation process would be, is something like:

sudo pacman -Syu jellyfin-server jellyfin-web (which should pull jellyfin-ffmpeg as a dependency)
sudo systemctl enable --now jellyfin

and that should be it.

[eobet]

Oh, ok, thank you for that information!

But I must admit I am running into trouble again, because I'm spoiled by the ease of GUI:

1. When I installed the server from flatpak, it automatically opened a webpage when I ran it. That systemctl command doesn't do that so I don't know how to reach the webpage.
2. When I uninstalled the flatpak, I chose to leave the config files in place. They are in "/home/eobet/.var/app/org.jellyfin.JellyfinServer", and by doing some searching, the pacman install puts the config at "/etc/Jellyfin" (or "/var/lib/jellyfin" different search results say different things) but it does so with a Jellyfin user, and I can't open that folder even with sudo... apparently I need to start a privileged terminal, but I don't see how to do that on my Gnome desktop (I don't have a shortcut for it and no context menu has it and no menu option in my terminal app either).

Sorry, I'm just voicing my frustrations as a recent Windows migrant (and yes, I should have chosen something not-Arch based perhaps, but I went through four different distros before I found one where I managed to get remote desktop and samba up and running without issues).

[eobet]

So I was able to open those folders in question with the Gnome File Manager (noticed that sudo -s also would work) and found the jellyfin.env ...wonder if I can replace all the folders in there with the ones from the flatpak release and then somehow figure out how to restart the server and see if it can reuse the Flatpak version's setup?

[Host-in-the-Shell]

It should be http://<your device local lan ip>:8096. Unfortunately, that number is going to depend on what your router has assigned to it. It's also a good idea to go into your router settings and assign a static IP to your machine hosting Jellyfin, so it's always on the same address locally. Doing that is also something that is going to depend on your specific router.

As for the config files, I'm not sure how compatible across these formats they are, but might be better to start fresh to avoid any issues just in case. There's really no way around the fact that both Arch (particularly base Arch) and Jellyfin do require some degree of familiarity with certain things such as system administration and system services management; you don't have to be an expert, but will have to dive a bit deep through a lot of documentation, particularly in terms of administration post install. EndeavourOS only facilitates the installation process with a graphical installer and does introduce some out of the box system management beyond what vanilla Arch does, but outside of that, you will need to learn how to administer, configure and troubleshoot your system; in other words, read through the archwiki a lot. This is why I prefer base Arch, since it doesn't abstract the installation process and prepares you for Arch's more hands on system administration model.

[eobet]

I must admit, I'm very close to giving up now and just live without subtitles on the flatpak...

   

I've installed the separate jellyfin-web and not even from the same machine am I able to start the first run process...

With flatpak, I was able to see that the app is running on the Gnome desktop, with this systemctl I guess there's new terminal commands I have to learn to discover if it's even running or not? (Yes, apparently system ctl status.)

[Host-in-the-Shell]

If you still have the flatpak installed it needs to be removed, as I suspect both services could be conflicting trying to run on the same port. Anyway, you can use the command

Code:

systemctl status jellyfin

to see if the server is running and what errors are happening. If not, you can start it with

Code:

sudo systemctl start jellyfin

and we can trouble shoot from there.

[eobet]

Yes, thank you, as I mentioned, when I uninstalled flatpak I left the configs intact hoping to be able to reuse them. However, I've now tested to point the jellyfin.env to the flatpak folders and systemctl tells me that jellyfin then fails to start.

So, starting from scratch it is, and after restoring the jellyfin.env (from backup) and restarting my machine, I get this far when I just click next (as I plan to just run it locally, allowing no incoming connections):

   

I can wait forever and the spinning won't stop, and if I reload the page, the process starts over. Flatpak version did not have this issue.

System ctl status (and log as well) has only this to say:

jun 14 23:51:18 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:51:18] [INF] Core startup complete
jun 14 23:51:18 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:51:18] [INF] Startup complete 0:00:03.1358426
jun 14 23:51:20 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:51:20] [INF] Clean up collections and playlists Completed after 0 minute(s) and>
jun 14 23:51:21 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:51:21] [INF] Update Plugins Completed after 0 minute(s) and 1 seconds
jun 14 23:51:43 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:51:43] [INF] Saving system configuration
jun 14 23:51:43 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:51:43] [INF] Setting cache path: /var/cache/jellyfin
jun 14 23:51:43 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:51:43] [INF] Stopping NAT discovery
jun 14 23:51:43 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:51:43] [WRN] No users, creating one with username jellyfin
jun 14 23:56:07 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:56:07] [INF] Saving system configuration
jun 14 23:56:07 leplup jellyfin[3316]: [23:56:07] [INF] Setting cache path: /var/cache/jellyfin