What's my problem?

[ClearlyNotNeo]

Hello everyone

I'm new here, just created the account. Kinda banging my head around an issue that I would love to understand a bit more if anyone can elucidate me.

I'm trying to use Jellyfin as a "server" for my media content but I'm having inconsistent results. 

Use case

I want to watch Movie A, start watch everything seems fine, mid movie "buffering hell". Now, no matter what I do, I cannot for the love of god continue to watch the movie. Restart client, restart Jellyfin, update Jellyfin, run jellyfin on different machine, switch disks.. I honestly don't know where I'm getting it wrong.

I started with a Raspberry Pi 4, played several movies with no issues, but then this started to happen (it's not only with movie A, there's other movies with same issues).

Then I thought, maybe I don't have enough CPU power, so I picked up a server I had from old company with more ram and cpu power. Same thing...  (ubuntu)

Then I thought, maybe I need a decent GPU, so I picked up my desktop (i5 4th gen, 16gb ram, gt 960), still issues.. I try to play locally, on the iPhone, always the same problem. (windows 10)

The movie is always in an HDD but I've changed between the HDD available. 

Quality of the movies 1080p in h264. 

I know my hardware isn't state of the art, but shouldn't it be able to run and playback this movie, scrubbing back and forth with no issues? 

What am I missing here?

Ah and I've tried using playback encoding with NVIDIA, Intel etc but watching the activity of task manager, the GPU seems to not increase at all so maybe I'm not using the GPU correctly?

Apologies if I'm "structuring this post a bit over the place" but I kinda lost on why the hell doesn't this work?

I'm just frustrated that my PC can run Crisis but can't playback a 1080 movie correctly >.<'

Thanks in advance!

[tmsrxzar]

that's quite a post and i can clearly see there is "a" problem but i fail to see what it is from all that information

start with what client is failing, they are not all the same and each can have quirks
next what it ISN'T doing is playing a 1080p movie encoded in h264; but what IS it doing instead? buffering, stopping, skipping, flashing, bad colors etc?
is the client trying to use direct playback or not?
what audio codecs are in use; f.e. my device will freeze due to DTSHD-MA but has nothing to do with video
are there any subtitles in the video; sometimes these can cause issues

mediainfo output for the video could answer a lot of that
providing a server log can further provide answers
and if there is an ffmpeg log it will be most informative about codecs etc; if not then a mediainfo output would be useful

be sure all personal information is redacted, api keys, ips, domains etc. but please use the word "REDACTED" as it will be clear that it is there and not lead to a misconfiguration guess

[ClearlyNotNeo]

that's quite a post and i can clearly see there is "a" problem but i fail to see what it is from all that information

start with what client is failing, they are not all the same and each can have quirks

All. I used Swiftfin or Jellyfin for iOS, JellyFin Web Windows, Jellyfin for Mac. All seem to fail.

next what it ISN'T doing is playing a 1080p movie encoded in h264; but what IS it doing instead? buffering, stopping, skipping, flashing, bad colors etc?

Buffering.. just the spinner

is the client trying to use direct playback or not?

Tried both, same result

what audio codecs are in use; f.e. my device will freeze due to DTSHD-MA but has nothing to do with video

Hmmm it's the default one never checked, never thought to check thanks for the idea.

are there any subtitles in the video; sometimes these can cause issues

Yes they are, didn't know that was a possibility, will try turning off

mediainfo output for the video could answer a lot of that
providing a server log can further provide answers
and if there is an ffmpeg log it will be most informative about codecs etc; if not then a mediainfo output would be useful

Will gather all the information regarding this

be sure all personal information is redacted, api keys, ips, domains etc. but please use the word "REDACTED" as it will be clear that it is there and not lead to a misconfiguration guess

Gotcha! Thank you for patient and time. Sorry for the rant post. Will gather everything related to that.