This is something that has been increasingly prevalent with my server, for the longest time I could torrent, have two people watching and everything’s fine, but lately, especially with specific shows, it will take upwards of a minute for a show to start.
I’ve looked into it and the culprit is ffmpeg most of the time, I assume this has something to do with the specific files not having transcoding “baked in” but I don’t know enough to know if that’s the case. Can anyone help me optimize my pipeline at all?
If everything is working correctly, whether or not you transcode is basically whether or not the end device can play the file without changes.
For example, my old Roku can play a raw 4K File under H264 with no problem. But if I throw an H265 at it, it requires the server to transcode. It also has problems with AAC audio. And my server is so old that just trying to rip the 4k apart entrance to the audio is often too much for it.
So to start, make sure your client device can play the files directly. If it can’t, you’re going to need to handbrake it before you put it on your server.
Jellyfin Dashboard will tell you what’s causing a streaming session to have to be transcoded. I believe it’s the little info “I” circle on the session thumnail. Logs should also tell you. I’d suggest starting there and identifying the cause, in order to then find the proper prescription.
It says direct playing the source file is entirely compatible with this client and is receiving the file without modifications, this is as I look over to the hanging episode
If you aren’t transcoding, and the player is taking too long to cache the video before starting, you might be having some sort of storage issue. You would need to try a couple of different things to figure out what, specifically, is taking so long to send the video out.
The first thing that comes to mind is that your storage is on an SSD, and it is nearly full. An SSD that is nearly full will usually perform much much worse than it would if it had more space to work with. https://pureinfotech.com/why-solid-state-drive-ssd-performance-slows-down/
The next thing that comes to mind is that your files are stored on the same drive that jellyfin transcodes onto, and it is not using an SSD. If you have jellyfin reading from a single drive, jellyfin encoding to that same drive, and also everything else also running, you might be causing your hard drive to seek a lot in order to get everything up and running. You could test this by changing the jellyfin transcode location to a different storage device.
I’ve also found that page and video loading times tend to be directly affected by the storage medium’s seek times. If you had jellyfin installed on the same hard drive as your videos, it will be slower than if you had installed jellyfin on a ssd separate from the drive you store your videos on. This one wouldn’t likely result in minute loading times though.
Are you streaming to a Chromecast, by any chance? Or a older Galaxy device?
The 4k Chromecast with Google TV does not support AV1, but the 1080p version does. Jellyfin tried Direct Playing AV1 files, which obviously went poorly.I run the same CPU in my NUC as you do, and all data is on a NAS shared with NFS. It’s been absolutely bulletproof for about a year, so I’m confident you should be able to make this work.
Any other containers running at the same time?
No cooling issues?Just asking because mine dropped massively in temp when repasted.
Check the log then, it’ll tell you the speed. 1x speed is exactly realtime. 0.5x is unable to keep up, and playing at half speed. 2.0x is streaming at double playback speed.
Do any videos play well? What’s the difference between those and others?
Check your disk access usage maybe? Like if you store things on an external drive with USB2 or something you’re gonna have a bad time with multiple videos/high bitrate stuff because you’re saturating the bandwidth of the connection
Disk usage is actually alright, but CPU usage hovers at a straight 100
Is it Intel?
If so I would use GPU acceleration
Edit: I see it is a N100. Definitely use hardware acceleration. I would also make sure that you run your media though Handbrake if it is in raw form.
Given they use a N100, I’d suggest redownloading instead of transcoding for time, energy and quality savings (i.e cost).
Downloading from where?
You get the content from blurays typically (you surely aren’t talking about piracy)
Given OP mentioned torrent and watching media in the same sentence I assume they didn’t rip their own media, and pirated it instead.
If my assumption is wrong, I apologize.
Piracy and Morality
Whether they own a physical edition of that media I don’t know. In my opinion owning a physical medium of the media is a big part in the morality discussion of piracy.
But in my juriscition I’m legally not allowed to break the encryption used for CD/DVD/Blu-ray, so I’m technically pirating even if I rip my own discs. There’s obviously no way for copyright owners to find out if their discs were ripped for a private copy, but that’s also (nearly) the case for Usenet/Torrent with proper precautions.
Anyway, if you read until this point, thank you!
Yes, I did, I do not apologize. Fuck big streaming. I only redownload if the size is too big however, finding the “exact” correct codec is just kind of a pain in the ass.
Do you use the *arr apps? Radarr lets you set profiles that can prioritize file size as well as codec. Then the process of acquisition is more automated but still prioritizes your preferences
I tried to figure that out, but it is a little confusing
why are you transcoding at all? it’s the first thing I turn off on jellyfin (and previously plex) installs. negligible cpu usage on both server and client when directplaying content.
So you have absolutely no devices that are a different resolution than you download? You don’t direct play 4k on a 1080p screen for example.
I am asking the dude doing the transcoding why he’s doing it. I am not waging a crusade against all dudes doing transcodings.
to answer your question, no, I don’t, all media I got is 1080p and all my devices can display it.
Is that an option? It was my understanding anime stuff typically comes with several subtitles and in my case dual audio for each episode
Especially anime often use the superior .ass subtitle format, which many devices don’t support. Sadly Crunchyroll is switching to .srt which has broader support, so it likely won’t require burning them in the video (transcoding), which is the only positive thing (still a shame imo).
https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1nuxuzs/crunchyroll_has_downgraded_their_subtitles
It’s immature but I laughed when I read superior .ass format.
not knowledgeable about them things but normal movies and shows with multiple audio streams and subtitles play just fine with directplay, selecting them from the client works fine, etc.
the only reasons I know of for transcoding would be if you have ancient clients that can’t play e.g HEVC or something, or if you’re on shitty broadband and it ain’t feasible to stream 4K to a phone.
I watch a bunch of weekly anime stuff myself. Never have to worry about transcoding with my devices (locally) and just directplay it. Unless I watch it remotely then it transcodes, I never mess with the default settings and it’s fine.
My cpu is i3 8100 so I think you would be fine as well, unless it’s multiple streams at once I have no reference for that.
How are resources everything in a mini PC?
Just upgrade the components, well, except the GPU or cpu
