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?
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It depends on the source subtitle. But there is an option in Jellyfin to periodically extract embedded subs from movie files in to separate files, which might work better. I think with the latest update, that will no longer be necessary since they’ve done a lot of improvements around subs.
Subtitles work always for my mother tongue (german) and english. Maybe it’s your source files?
Could you go into more detail on some of your specific issues with remote use?
Also, how are your subtitles provided? Are they encoded into the video files themselves, are they separate .srt files, or are they being parsed from somewhere.
Generally, I’ve found that if you can get it running in VLC, you should have no issues in Jellyfin either unless the issue is with how you’ve configured it.
Also, how are your subtitles provided? Are they encoded into the video files themselves, are they separate .srt files, or are they being parsed from somewhere.
All of it. I have movies with srt files, encoded in the videos, ASS files, basically all of it, none of it works reliably
They actually just put out an update related to subtitles (for the android TV app)
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin-androidtv/releases
I will admit that subtitles have bothered me before as well, so I’m hoping this fixes things
Can’t wait for the 0.18 client to be here, should (and better will) fix a lot
It fixes PGS and SRT subtitles. For stuff with ASS format subtitles, they’ll still need to be burned in for now.
A couple community contributors wanted to look into adding LibASS support to the client but it’s non-trivial since LibASS is written in C and the AndroidTV client is in Java/Kotlin, so it’ll need to use either JNI or a transpiler to make it work.
Well either this fixes it or I’ll have to switch to a different client. If that won’t fix it, I’ll have to drop jellyfin altogether because at this point Jellyfin is little more than a web viewer on my computer (the only place where subtitles work semi reliable) and for that I can just use VLC anyway.
Man subtitles is one of the reasons I started using jellyfin as I always had problems with them and Plex.
Apparently the 0.18 client fixes loads of subtitle issues?
I use Jellyfin on Chromecast, and I hear you about subtitles: if I pause the movie, or sometimes just randomly, subtitles starts time-drifting and randomly shows flashes of texts in other languages
As per other user replies: the 0.18 client should fix most of that. Yay!!
Is this client used also on Chromecast?
I’ve been using Jellyfin for over 2 years. My main clients are a Raspberry 4 and a Raspberry 5 using Kodi + the Jellyfin plugin. This combo has been flawless.
I also have an older Chromecast and I experience there similar problems with subtitles.
Yeah I don’t have a raspberry computer to connect to my TV, but if thats the only way it will work…
Do these raspberries have remote controls?
Chances are very high that Kodi will detect your own TV’s remote and you can use that! https://kodi.wiki/view/CEC
If that doesn’t work, there are many cheap options.I also use the official JellyFin client on my android phone with MPV as player and that also works perfectly fine. And the Jellyfin Media Player on my laptop is also flawless.
In my experience, the older Chromecasts are probably the only clients with problems.
If I had to buy a client device, I’d probably go with a Minix U22X-J (Max) or Ugoos AM6+ https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/amlogic-ng-and-dolby-vision/24738
Apparently 0.18 client fixes a boat load of these issues, but I’ll look into your clients.
Kodi is what you run on your raspberries?
Ah, yes! Do NOT touch jellyfin while watching something with subtitles. You’ll have to start watching at time index 0 again, or it will simply not work.
With subtitles working this badly, is it perhaps possible that the devs focus a bit on this? Subtitles is literally step 3, after step 1 basic video, step 2 basic audio…
Subtitles work so well on mine I get annoyed I have to turn them off with each play typically. Of all the problems I have with Jellyfin, playing subtitles is not one.
Latest version crashes for me constantly (db on NFSv4) and audio out of sync. Those are my two biggest problems lately.
The 0.18 version of the AndroidTV client fixes the subtitle loading issue, and it offers trickplay (scrubbing with images) as an experimental feature you can turn on, assuming you’ve generated the trickplay images server-side.
If you add yourself to the Play Store beta for the app it should update to 0.18 right away, otherwise the rollout for it is in progress.
Any other issues? I hang out with the Jellyfin devs in their chatrooms, could relay issues to them.
Oh holy crap, you have no idea how happy I am to hear this.
I already signed up for beta access, haven’t gotten it yet, but hopefully tomorrow.
So yeah, trickplay doesn’t work at all either on browser or google-tv versions. Would be amazing if that worked!
Other issues? What drives me (and my wife!!) absolutely crazy is that jellyfin is absolutely “stupid” when it comes to remembering what we watched. Basically, it just makes up random nonsense. I’m in a show right now that has 6 seasons, watching S5E5. If we continue watching, S5E6 follows. Great! What do I see on the dashboard? S5E11. For a long time while in S4, it would always show random S6 episodes. We currently track our episode on a piece of paper I kid you not. It always says I already saw all episodes of a new season even though I never have. I never understand this, I’m a developer myself and THIS part cannot be that hard to get reasonably right, but apparently it is Just track in the DB which file has been shown, and until what timestamp, how hard can that be? I mean, there are MUCH more complicated things, like trickplay
Other issues… Selecting the correct language for both audio and subtitles! So for some reason, jellyfin always manages to select the exact wrong on both, even though in config I have english, english, english. Would be very nice if it were fixed.
Other issues… So hardware decoding worked at last install. I was on Ubuntu 24.04, used an installed version with .DEB. I upgraded to 24.10 which for some reason was not supported (only LTS is supported) so I needed to switch to docker out of necessity. Did that, and now hardware support doesn’t work anymore. It’s not a huge issue as my home server is a beast, but since I have a good video card, it would have been nice that it would. I checked logs, and I cannot find any actual reason why it failed, logs just say that it does. It would be nice, perhaps, if there is some test feature that can debug the hardware decoding and show in log what part exactly is failing.
Other… Loads of times, if I have a dvd or blueray rip, it’ll work fine in VLC, but absoultey not in jellyfin. Haven’t found a fix for that yet.
Other… Auto subtitle download doesn’t ever seem to work as far as I can see. I have a paid opensubtitle subscription, yet all movies and shows that are missing subtitles will only ever have it if I manually add them.
Other… On google tv client I cannot search by category! I can on the web client and on my mobile phone, but not on google-tv. This means I have to use my mobile phone to kind of go through the movies of a category, then find it on the TV which is weird and annoying. Would be a VERY nice one to have fixed.
I hope the devs will focus first on the basics. I don’t even care about fancies like dolby surround or anything like that as I don’t have the hardware for that (yet), I just want to watch video and be able to easily fix things where needed. Even trick play (while super nice if it would work!) is a luxury as far as I’m concerned, just make sure the basics work. Things like easy subtitle timing adjustment on google-tv would be much, much higher on my personal list.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to yell at the devs, I know its an open source project and I would even happily donate to help out. I’m not arrrrrring because of money, I just really hate how all good movies and shows have disappeared from Netflix and the such. I’d pay 3-4 times the monthly subscription if it would mean I could see EVERYTHING, but nooooo, they just had to carve everything up again to try and maximize profit and have the ability to screw over the end user. I have invested significantly in my current setup to just be able to what what I want, when I want. Netflix didn’t want my money, so jellyfin shall have it.
Awesome work, Jellyfin devs!
Regarding subtitle downloads, I recommend using Bazarr to handle that. It will automatically sync the downloaded subtitles to the audio if you configure it to. Uses a bit more CPU when it does but I’m sure your server can handle it.
I have no issues with Jellyfin. Works well, subtitles are no problem. Hardware decode has never been an issue.
But Ubuntu has always sucked. Debian and docker for jellyfin has been pretty solid…
You could try to use Kodi as the client / player / media center, with the jellyfin addon (and kodi-sync-something plugin on the jellyfin server side). It works great for me, plays pretty much everything, subtitles are very rarely a problem. Not everyone likes the Kodi UI, but I love it. There’s many skins available, and you can really customize it if you spend some time with it. I run Kodi on my nvidia shield connected to my TV, but in the past I have also ran it on a raspberry pi 3 with very few problems.
I play in the browser, and subtitles load just fine for me, though for some reason there’s another copy of the subtitles shifted down, and to the left. And they don’t turn off when I click the button.
But I just ignore that since it doesn’t inhibit my enjoyment, and I’m okay with rough edges on a FOSS project. If Jellyfin doesn’t meet your required WAF, I’d weigh the cost of these rough edges against the cost of Netflix or another more polished media player product.
I have found Jellyfin to be pretty solid. However, I’m also not using subtitles
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You can always make a feature request. Just try not to be so spiteful about it.
Is there a reliable alternative, perhaps, that actually just works?
To my knowledge, JellyFin is the reliable alternative (relatively speaking).
random unrequested armchair analysis of why home movie streaming is the way it is
While we all understand that volunteer labor on a free product isn’t going to be as feature complete as soon as paid labor on a paid product, JellyFin stands out as painful in the open source tool chain.
JellyFin is in a weird situation of adoption while relatively young, because the MPAA are doing excessive rent-seeking, causing folks to flee from the enshitifying streaming services.
It’s not good, all around. We’re really early to the part where the open source bit keeps improving while the paid thing enshitifies, because the folks who own the MPAA are raging sociopaths.
In a well regulated free market, the open source thing would have had a couple more decades to mature before non-FOSS-zealots started switching.
Also, JellyFin and tools upstream of it have an uphill battle against the MPAA and RIAA who don’t want us to own any media.
I’m not sure that explains anything, really.
As a very technical person (I cut my teeth doing fortran on a Sperry-Rand Univac system using punched cards several decades ago), Jellyfin is confounding even to me.
I’ve tried it with a perfect setup - clean new machine, nothing else on it at all, a small library, and clients on clean Windows, Android, and iOS (because I wanted to make it work). And I still had major problems, so much so that I gave up and went back to using VLC with shares, and built a small machine directly connected to my TV. Both of those work without a hitch. So “if it works with VLC” argument is wrong.
I appreciate everything the devs are trying to do, but it seems they let themselves get pulled around, instead of focusing on just make it work, first.
If it doesn’t work right with all test devices being clean/freshly reset then something is very wrong.
Apparently the 0.18 client should fix a lot, and should be available on google-tv any day now, can’t wait!
I feel there are a lot of basic usage issues (tracking which movie/episode has been seen!) that should be fixed first before moving on to fancy issues…
Notably absent from your setup is Linux. Did you try that for your server?
I use docker container on Linux and Roku app. Works very well. Except when db file is on NFSv4, then the server crashes periodically.
The Apple TV app needs an overhaul, and the SenPlayer app on Apple TV has audio/video synching issues.
