Anyone here using JellyFin Media Server?

[Reverend Jim]

I've seen multiple write-ups and videos on how super-easy it is to install and configure JellyFin Media Server. My experience has been the opposite. It has a lot of really nice features, one of which is the automatic fetching of meta data. It's so nice, in fact, that I thought I'd use the same web interface for remote computers on the laptop that is hosting the videos.

That's where I start having problems. Selecting a video on a client computer results in immediate playback. Selecting any video on the host computer simply gives "Playback Error - This client isn't compatible with the media and the server isn't sending a compatible media format." Googling this error results in many posts with discussions such as the following:

I got the same issue with 10.7.7 (from focal PPA) on Linux in an LXC-Container, but i think I nailed it down:

i forwarded the device-files of my nvidia p400 to the lxc-container, which is running on proxmox7, nvidia-smi runs on the host as well as on the container, so basic access to the gpu is possible, but jellyfin throws me the error noted in the title of this issue on playback attempts. It seems, that the cuda-cores did not get activated automatically. Also the /dev/nvidia-uvm does not exist on boot (inside the lxc instance).

I contend that if you need to understand the technology at that level of detail in order to troubleshoot and use JellyFin then you are not allowed to tout how "super easy" it is to use.

So is anyone out there using JellyFin, and have you had similar problems?

[rproffitt]

I agree. Easy to use is confused with "it just works." Guns are easy to use too!

[Reverend Jim]

It gets better. Now I'm being told that if this is too "difficult" for me I should just go back to watching DVDs and I should stop asking for a "one button click does everything" solution. I've also been told (after pointing out my decades of experience as a developer in order to illustrate that I was not some ignorant noob) that I should just stick to COBOL programming.

People usually resort to

1. Mis-stating the question, the ridiculing it
2. Ad hominem attacks

when they don't actually have a reasonable response. I had to re-point out that the interface behaves two completely different ways on two different computers running the same OS and the same browser. On the remote computer the videos play as expected. On the host computer they don't play at all. I would have expected that the problem would have been on the client computer, not the server.

[rproffitt]

From memory I've seen this when the "over the network" play transcodes on the fly but local playback leans on the local audio video decoders.
BUT if you are using same OS+browser on both I'd expect consistency.

A few weeks back I setup the Lenny autoanswer machine. Good thing I knew a little about Linux services. That project isn't ready for the 99% of us. Yes, it's sort of out there on the fringe but hey, it's out there. I can't find a way to report a bug without what happened to you. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrfhsxxmdE ?

[Reverend Jim]

I disabled all transcoding (can only do on a per user, but I'm the only user) but I still get the error.

[rproffitt]

I think we need transcoding for playing in a browser. Unlike VLC Player, browsers can't decode most videos. So is this all videos that fail to play?

[Reverend Jim]

I find that odd because I can play any mp4 video in my browser by just dragging/dropping. So far I have not found a video I can play through the JellyFin web interface on my host computer.