So I’ve been trying to use Jellyfin for a long, LONG time now, and I’ve never really been able to use it remotely reliable.
I can go on for a long time about all the problems I’ve faced, lets just say that after years I can still not use it to watch something with the family because there is always something not working, I could start about hardware decoding having worked for a while and then suddenly without explanation no longer working, but lets start with subtitles…
I just want to have subtitles actually load without having to sacrifice a goat to whatever god is out there to have subtitles work. What is the problem that subtitles just 99% of the time don’t work?
Worse, sometimes they work while watching a show, and a jellyfin update comes by and, you guessed it, subtitles no longer work for that show, even though they work for some other movies, sometimes…
I am a software engineer, I do loads of devops, I can find my way around, but jellyfin is just… I dunno what to do anymore. Is there a reliable alternative, perhaps, that actually just works?
I’ve long given up on the dream that I could have something similar to netflix for all my movies and shows that aren’t on netflix, where I can scrub with images, for example, I just want to be able to watch a show with the family with subtitles without fiddling for 30 minutes to try and get it to work.
Current setup is google-tv with 0.17.9 client, and the latest docker server. Shows seem to have okay subtitles on web client, but on google-tv, every time I select a subtitle, I get a “subtitles loading” message, and then 10-20 seconds later a “failed to load subtitles” message.
Anyone?
Playback currently isn’t a big issue anymore. It was before when everything was WiFi. Then the biggest issues were subtitles, which now seems mostly resolved with 0.18 client.
Now the latest issue mostly is the client/server not automatically selecting the correct language, it always starts with the wrong language which is not critical but it is annoying.
Smaller issues are that for example 0.18 is supposed to have scrubbing with images but that doesn’t work at all on 0.18, and on the web client on my computer, I see a stack of like 8 images on too of eachother, so that really isn’t working well :)
On transcoding: I think most does transcoding as I arr have many many different formats; avi, mkv, mp4, sometimes raw dvd files, etc.
That reminds me: raw blueray files don’t play either, so I have to convert those first manually with handbrake. I take it I can only find info on direct play or transcoding in the logs, or can I find it elsewhere. I typically watch on TV which is far away from the computer, so I rarely check logs during playback
The need to transcode is based on the media formats supported by the tv. Only Sony and high end LGs have the right support to play blurays. Some tvs struggle to play files that have many different subtitle formats embedded in them as well which is also common for Blu-ray rips.
The subtitles will be the first file in the list of the media unless you select regular subtitle language in the menu under playback under the account symbol in the top right hand corner.