My phone and computer can both play the files fine, but using the official apps or webclient gives me an error. I’m assuming it’s a transcoding error, but there shouldn’t be one. The files (left untreated) work and even if they were transcoded, it should be fine. What am I missing here?
On a side note, how do I make files load 100% of the time?
Edit: I feel stupid, but I solved this. It turned out to be two separate issues. The unreliability was due to conflict in my Tailscale setup. Next, I reread the transcoding guide, and realized that I misread the HWA encoding and decoding charts when I was setting up my server; this was also a simple fix, just unchecking a single box.
Web browsers and app require media to be transcoded in a format like AVC (H.264). Formats like HEVC does not play within browsers, as far as I know. You need to. turn on transcoding if you want to make files load 100% of the time.
I set up transcoding according to the guide and enabled hardware acceleration, per user recommendation
This should not be happening, then. How have you set up Jellyfin? Is it in a docker container? If yes, how have you passed through your GPU? Have you tried turning off Hardware Acceleration? In which format is your media stored?
No, it’s a Windows install on the server and the client. Hardware-wise, the server is overkill. My libraries are in several codecs and formats, and everything seemed to work indiscriminately until recently but I didn’t make any admin changes.
Shorter version: playing a video in your browser or in an app that uses webview is different than playing it in your phone media player.
Doesn’t the Jellyfin app let you play in an external app? If so just make it play in VLC, it plays anything.
Probably a transcoding issue. Browser codec support varies wildly, especially when things like HDR come into play.
If you get this error, check the logs. I found out that my hardware didn’t support as many codecs as I thought it did and needed to turn a few codecs off. Software transcoding works for practically every file format, hardware transcoding requires selecting only the codecs your hardware supports.
You can find out what codecs are supported by your hardware in tables like these: Intel Nvidia AMD
I solved it, I’m an idiot. But thank you, Jellyfin’s official guide saved me.
Restart Jellyfin and verify that the media is accessible
Check your ffmpeg logs that should help find the cause
