Why Jellyfin doesn't just 'work'?

[Armano]

First of all I like Jellyfin, it have nice interface, remembers where I finished watching movies well etc.
But the most basic thing for a media server - playing media is often broken.

1) Often files will fail to play several times, before they will actually play. I need to try to play them 3-4 times and eventually it will play the movie.
2) Often I will get a "Playback Error, Retrying" and it will never start playing. The log file is so long I can't attach it here. The only "error" I found in log is this:

[2023-08-26 21:18:49.491 +08:00] [ERR] [44] Jellyfin.Server.Middleware.ExceptionMiddleware: Error processing request: "A task was canceled". URL "GET" "/videos/2fe74bf6-aa8e-350e-a82d-70cedb720c5b/hls1/main/0.ts".

3) Anime files will take forever to start. Around 15-25 seconds to start playing. 
4) Turing on subtitles on a movie is a nightmare. It will often have some error and I need to retry 10x times before subtitles will be shown properly. (That does not happen on Anime, only on regular movies)

None of those issues exist in VLC player. I watch movies there via DLNA server and it "just works". I know that is a totally different principle then Jellyfin media server, but if not for VLC, my last movie night would be ruined, 

Can someone assist me in solving all my issues and have a fully working and 100% dependable Jellyfin server?

[TheDreadPirate]

Can you share your jellyfin and ffmpeg logs? Upload them to pastebin and then post the link here.

We also need your server hardware specs and what OS it is running.

And we need to know what kind of device you were having issues with and what client you were using.

[Armano]

Can you share your jellyfin and ffmpeg logs?  Upload them to pastebin and then post the link here.

We also need your server hardware specs and what OS it is running.

And we need to know what kind of device you were having issues with and what client you were using.

I hope I included correct logs:

https://pastebin.com/2KA1skh2

https://pastebin.com/EQAZNc7M


I'm running Jellyfin Version: 10.8.9 on Windows 10 22H2.

Hardware specs (laptop):

CPU: i7-6820HK
RAM: 32GB
GPU: GTX 1080 (mobile)
HDD: Seagate 2TB ST2000LM


I'm having the issues in 2 devices:

1) TCL Google TV
2) Amazon Fire Stick 

Both of them are using native (installed from Play Store / Amazon store) Jellyfin apps. 

The issues are the same on both devices, as described before.

[TheDreadPirate]

Do you have hardware acceleration turned on? It is software transcoding because the subtitles are not supported by the Android TV app (this is common). But your CPU is doing the transcoding and not doing it fast enough.

frame= 55 fps=1.2 q=28.0 size=N/A time=00:00:02.43 bitrate=N/A speed=0.0511x

Settings > Dashboard > Playback

You can use either Intel Quick Sync or NVENC since you have both. I would use Quick Sync.

[Armano]

Do you have hardware acceleration turned on?  It is software transcoding because the subtitles are not supported by the Android TV app (this is common).  But your CPU is doing the transcoding and not doing it fast enough.

frame=  55 fps=1.2 q=28.0 size=N/A time=00:00:02.43 bitrate=N/A speed=0.0511x

Settings > Dashboard > Playback

You can use either Intel Quick Sync or NVENC since you have both.  I would use Quick Sync.

I did not had hardware acceleration turned ON. Seems like setting it for Quick Sync solved all 4 issues. I will check it more therougly in other movies/anime and report in couple of days.

Thank you for assistance.

[Armano]

Actually my happiness was premature.
The issues are solved only if on the client (Android TV) I will choose the Automatic player, if I change to Exoplayer the issue is as it was before.
My server is set for Hardware acceleration via Quick Sync.

While it would make me little difference what player is used by the client if the libVLC would support changing the scaling of the video. I like to streach videos to 16:9 ratio to use entire screen - but I see libVLC doesn't have such option?

[TheDreadPirate]

I'm not aware of a way around that in Android TV. This is purely client side and not related to Quick Sync on the server.

[Armano]

I'm not aware of a way around that in Android TV.  This is purely client side and not related to Quick Sync on the server.

Ok, thank you for answer.