So I’m back with Netflix and Amazon. I’m kind of done with jellyfin at this point. I’ve been recommending it to everyone and honestly I’m not sure that I still would.

Jellyfin as a product simply doesn’t work. There, I said it.

For a media system I’d hope for the basics to be able to play a movie or show with subtitles, selecting audio channels, and scrubbing and it to remember where I was left. I wouldn’t even need posters and all that, I’d get my own subtitles, etc.

I have multiple TVs, but let’s go with the old one with a chrome cast. I use my Android phone to cast a show episode. Scrubbing sometimes works. it works better than before because before it would just break everything to the point of the app requiring a reinstall. At least that’s fixed now but scrubbing still is SLOW, 10 seconds ahead takes 20-30 seconds to do. Worse though, it borks up subtitles by leaving the subtitles that were there when you started scrubbing, and places the new ones on top of that. The only way out is to exit casting completely, kill the app, restart all from scratch. Obviously JF doesn’t continue where I stopped (seriously, requests on that timeframe were made, it can’t be that hard to register that, can it?) and so I need to scrub again which, you know, borks up subtitles. So I’ll start just from the beginning, I can rewatch the same 5 minutes twice but it annoys the hell out of my wife.

Then, subtitles is a mess. The above, but also switching subtitles will cause similar issues. Don’t touch anything when having subtitles!

Then: it’s slow. It’s godunholy slow. I have a 16 core and Rhyzen 5 cpu, 64gb men @3200mhz, 1tb M2 Samsung Evo 989 pro, and ~60tb over 3 exos drives. An AMD rx7800 XT finishes up the config. It’s not the best of the best, but my system, u believe, ranks in the higher ranks of jellyfin installations

Jellyfin cannot play a movie or show without stuttering at least a few times, flat out freezing for minutes during shows, especially in the second episode for that day… If I run transmission in parallel, it just freezes up so much that it’s undoable.

Logs don’t indicate any major issue, I saw a freeze and had all logs on tail and literally saw no messages whatsoever during that freeze. System utilization was near zero.

Wife isnt tolerating jellyfin anymore and now I have Netflix and Amazon accounts again.

I understand it’s open source software, you do what you can, but right now it simply isn’t a system that is for the general public. It can be used by nerds like me who have the patience to deal with all the issues.

Edit: Really? 17 downvotes? I’m trying to tell you that the thing doesn’t work and that I’ve spent plenty of time trying to fix it, reading docs, posting questions, nothing has fixed anything so far but can’t have people talk about that, or what’s wrong?

  • LoganNineFingers@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    I’m a Plex user lurking in foreign waters but even with my Plex server, when I hard wired the computer instead of WiFi it was significantly better. Even if you’re hard wired in it sounds more like network issues than software…

  • phoenixz@lemmy.caOP
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    7 months ago

    Things improved with a Google tv device, though some issues persist. I guess amongst the larger issues is sudden freezes with movies, subtitles many times not working at all, and jellyfin just being dead if transmission is running on the server even though load is next to 0, and one thing really shouldn’t influence the other

  • navigatron@beehaw.org
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    7 months ago

    Your network flow is from your server, to your router, to your android phone, to your router, to your chromecast. If that’s all wifi, then every frame crosses the air 4 times, and you’re doing transcoding on the phone in the middle.

    Casting sucks.

    • phoenixz@lemmy.caOP
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      7 months ago

      Great to know. Transcoding is done by my phone, though? Is that a joke or are you serious?

      Edit: and if all that is true, why does Netflix have no problem? Lower bandwidth, perhaps? Netflix always has kind of a crappy quality on tv…

      I kinda figured that casting would have some weird network routing but I didn’t really think it would go all through my phone.

      What is the solution then, from here? That TV I have only had Chromecast, it’s a 10 year old Samsung without “smart” TV crap (which I like)

      How would I get jellyfin on my tv?

      • Chaphasilor [he/him]@feddit.nl
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        7 months ago

        The Chromecast with Google TV is less than $30 right now and runs Android TV. There is a native Jellyfin app for it. Or get a Shield TV. Or Roku. Or Kodi.

        If Netflix always has crappy quality I’d try lowering the bitrate in the Jellyfin player to a very low value, say 6 Mbit/s or something. If that works bettery your problem is likely a network issue. You could also try connecting a monitor to your server and seeing if a Jellyfin client running on the same machine also has these issues.

  • Meuzzin@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Do you have an Xbox or PS? I grabbed an Xbox Series S to use as my media center (Series S is super cheap). Works quite well…

    • phoenixz@lemmy.caOP
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      7 months ago

      I’d think so too but this is an at-home network, were the only two there, there is nothing streaming, nothing in the way, and Netflix, for example, is a breeze.

      • This is the behaviour I’d expect if you were selfhosting and both the client and server were on WiFi.
        There might be nothing else, but WiFi isn’t fullduplex.

        With Netflix, it’d hit your WiFi in only one direction.
        With self-hosted, if both devices are wireless, it’d be on the WiFi network twice and performance would drop like a brick.

        • CarrotBottom@lemmy.ml
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          6 months ago

          I use an old wifi router, a raspberry pi 4, which accesses an old NAS on wifi, which plays to the TV via wifi. I have a mix of h265, h264, vp9 in various formats from over the years.

          I don’t have any problem with streaming (except with exoplayer on my Android phone which sometimes, not always, wants to transcode vp9 YouTube downloads).

          I’ve even used it from outside the network in relatively slow internet and it’s okay.

          It’s got it’s issues sure, but not clear what that guy is doing wrong!

  • atomWood@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    While I have not experienced these issues, it sounds like your problems come from casting your media. Have you tried using a proper Jellyfin client? I primarily access Jellyfin through the Android TV app, or though Kodi, and it has always just worked.

    • phoenixz@lemmy.caOP
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      7 months ago

      What would be a proper client? This is an older LCD screen that doesn’t have any "smart"capabilities, so I’d have to buy something like an apple tv, I guess? But obviously then an open platform that allows a jellyfin client to run… Any suggestions?

      • BronzedBonobo@midwest.social
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        7 months ago

        Ive been extremely happy with jellyfin on my Roku 4K stick. Quite fond of it, overall. But for jellyfin the only issue I’ve ever come across was with a maaaaasssive 4K file that saturated my WiFi. I downscaled it a little and back to perfect.

        • phoenixz@lemmy.caOP
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          7 months ago

          Got a Google TV device, it’s a huge improvement over chrome cast, but still issues. I’ve had multiple movies freeze on me requiring to restart the TV, subtitles many times refuse to load, and still if transmission is running, jellyfin server just completely freezes up, though one should have nothing to do with the other since “server” load is next to nothing

  • Chaphasilor [he/him]@feddit.nl
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    7 months ago

    I’m doing software transcoding of 4K movies using a Ryzen 3600G, what the hell.
    Are you running on Windows or something like that?
    Maybe the clients are the problem, but the server should be running great!

    • Meuzzin@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Sorry to butt-in here, but I have the same processor, and can’t seem to utilize it for transcoding. What OS/Drivers are you using? I’m on Ubuntu Server. My thoughts were maybe Ubuntu doesn’t recognize the APU, since I don’t have X or any kind of GUI installed, as it’s a headless server. Tried installing amd-gpu and amd-gpu-pro, but no dice…

      • Chaphasilor [he/him]@feddit.nl
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        6 months ago

        No need for drivers, since I’m not using the GPU at all. It just has enough performance.
        I’m running TrueNAS SCALE based on Debian. What do your transcoding settings in JF look like?

  • Scary le Poo@beehaw.org
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    7 months ago

    There is a reason that most of us that actually run our own servers keep repeating “Plex”.

    Jellyfin is not ready for anything other than pure hobbyism atm. As of this moment, Plex is the only realistic option.

    • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
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      7 months ago

      What exactly are you doing with streaming videos that is not “hobbyism”? That is such a weird argument to make.

      I mean I have seen some people talking about using Jellyfin in a hotel situation for streaming stuff to rooms or whatever, and its definitely not going to be a smooth experience necessarily. But other than that every other usecase is “hobbyism” and thats not a negative thing.

      • Scary le Poo@beehaw.org
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        7 months ago

        Hobbyism as in just playing around with the software.

        If you want to use it in the real world and share it to real family members and friends, you need to be using Plex.