Jellyfin's an awesome open source home media server. I'll show you how I use it to organize my movies and TV shows.Part 1 (how I rip media to my computer) he...
If only the container was an issue, you would have a direct stream which doesn’t impact quality, it just repacks it in a container that is compatible with the client.
You can see the transcode reason on the dashboard by clicking on the i symbol. Start playback on android TV, open jellyfin on your phone and you should see the transcode reason.
I think they’re in ASS format, according to the subtitle selection menu, embedded in the mkv file.
Is there no way to convert that to something that is supported?
It doesn’t help that this is Across the Spider Verse, so it’s not exactly what most video codecs are expecting. The playback quality with no subs is light-years ahead of the transcoded version.
ASS format is the worst of all subtitle formats. It’s not even a real format, the spec is a badly written word document that’s missing half the features. It’s only popular with shitty fansub groups that discovered you could use it to basically render whatever you’d like on top of videos.
Disable video transcoding for the account your client connects with. Then check the log to see why it needs to transcod it the video fails. Could be the bitrate limit. I’m not having issues and using the same client.
Checked on the dashboard as per the other comment.
It’s subtitles. I’m probably going to try Kodi as a client, see how that goes. Shame, because I quite like the Jellyfin client UI, it just doesn’t work with some files.
It’s strange because Jellyfin claims to be able to extract and convert subtitles on the fly, and even has an option to disable that, but for some reason it’s choosing not to do it. There doesn’t seem to be a definitive list of what does and doesn’t work. You just play things and hope it doesn’t trigger the transcoding dance.
Kodi’s player does work (to an extremely impressive level, including DVD rips I made years ago), but I’m really not keen on the UI, dating as it does from before Android TV was a thing. All the buttons seem configured just differently enough from everybody else that simple things like checking how long a video has left, to backing out so you can finish watching tomorrow are borderline infuriating. I did get a keybinding editor for it, to make it so pressing back stops the video, but knowing all the functions is something that takes more knowledge of it than I have. I’ll probably get it configured eventually, but it’s annoying to start with.
The Jellyfin UI on the other hand is great. I love the detail on each film, all the cast and blurb and all that. It’s just the player is Exoplayer, and every limitation in that is now Jellyfin’s limit too. There does seem to be an option to swap it, but what with? I’m not sure what Kodi uses internally. Maybe it’s their own thing.
Jellyfin is almost perfect for me, I just need to find out why it decides to randomly transcode when it needs to do nothing when serving client.
Yeah, why is it doing that?
Especially when I’m using the Jellyfin Android TV client. The quality goes from ok to complete shit.
Does it not like mkv files?
If only the container was an issue, you would have a direct stream which doesn’t impact quality, it just repacks it in a container that is compatible with the client.
You can see the transcode reason on the dashboard by clicking on the i symbol. Start playback on android TV, open jellyfin on your phone and you should see the transcode reason.
Subtitle codec is not supported.
I think they’re in ASS format, according to the subtitle selection menu, embedded in the mkv file.
Is there no way to convert that to something that is supported?
It doesn’t help that this is Across the Spider Verse, so it’s not exactly what most video codecs are expecting. The playback quality with no subs is light-years ahead of the transcoded version.
ASS format is the worst of all subtitle formats. It’s not even a real format, the spec is a badly written word document that’s missing half the features. It’s only popular with shitty fansub groups that discovered you could use it to basically render whatever you’d like on top of videos.
I think YOU are in ASS format!
This comment isn’t helpful to anyone in anyway, but it IS funny
That’s what I was going for!
Disable video transcoding for the account your client connects with. Then check the log to see why it needs to transcod it the video fails. Could be the bitrate limit. I’m not having issues and using the same client.
Checked on the dashboard as per the other comment.
It’s subtitles. I’m probably going to try Kodi as a client, see how that goes. Shame, because I quite like the Jellyfin client UI, it just doesn’t work with some files.
I think the subedit program can convert subtitles… I forget :(
It’s strange because Jellyfin claims to be able to extract and convert subtitles on the fly, and even has an option to disable that, but for some reason it’s choosing not to do it. There doesn’t seem to be a definitive list of what does and doesn’t work. You just play things and hope it doesn’t trigger the transcoding dance.
Kodi’s player does work (to an extremely impressive level, including DVD rips I made years ago), but I’m really not keen on the UI, dating as it does from before Android TV was a thing. All the buttons seem configured just differently enough from everybody else that simple things like checking how long a video has left, to backing out so you can finish watching tomorrow are borderline infuriating. I did get a keybinding editor for it, to make it so pressing back stops the video, but knowing all the functions is something that takes more knowledge of it than I have. I’ll probably get it configured eventually, but it’s annoying to start with.
The Jellyfin UI on the other hand is great. I love the detail on each film, all the cast and blurb and all that. It’s just the player is Exoplayer, and every limitation in that is now Jellyfin’s limit too. There does seem to be an option to swap it, but what with? I’m not sure what Kodi uses internally. Maybe it’s their own thing.
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My method to get around this is setting up a specific user account for my TV. In the user options you can disable transcoding
Yes! That’s my main issue with Jellyfin. So annoying.