Leave Kodi behind in 2010 and switch over to Jellyfin for better results.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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That's the correct answer.
All that kodi hassle killed my brain. Nowadays I have a jellyfin server and a wifi6 router streams everything to a roku device I bought for 11€. Never saw some buffering again.
FWIW I have jellyfin as well already, it’s also on the machine serving the nfs shares. I would expect streaming over lan to always be a lighter load then sending a transcoding request through the internet and back to the machine four feet away, but I could be wrong. I am always curious though what people are using as jellyfin clients for their TVs. How are you actually getting jellyfin into your living room? I had hoped to use a dedicated pi4, and I’ve already gone down the route of trying to boot to a light desktop with an auto loading chrome kiosk window to my jellyfin server, but those results were less than ideal too.
Traffic for a local Jellyfin server should definitely not be going over the internet. Also any reasonably modern client should be able to direct play most media without transcoding.
As for my own Jellyfin setup, one TV has an Nvidia shield plugged in and is using the standard Android TV client. The other is a Samsung smart TV onto which I have side-loaded the Jellyfin Tizen app.
You know once I expose a service to the internet and get a nice easy to remember url I practically forget that I can still access locally. I should check that out.
There are a few options there.
As someone else mentioned if you're using IPv6 then it doesn't matter, you're already routing internally even if you're using the public DNS name, no extra work required.
All the rest are for IPv4.
If you're not behind CGNAT some routers/gateways are also smart enough with their routing to recognise when they need to route back to their own external IP and will loop back locally instead of making any hops out to the internet. Again, if this is the case for you then no additional work is required other than perhaps running a traceroute to confirm.
Another option is to add a local DNS entry for the name you're using to resolve to a local IP address instead of your public address. The complexity (or even possibility) of this is going to vary considerably with your setup. If you're running your own local DNS e.g. pihole or similar then it's trivial. This is how mine is set up.
If all your clients are going to be on PCs (or devices you have more than the typical manufacturer allowed modicum of control over) then you can do something kind of like the previous, just with all your local hosts files.
If none of the above are options, then you'll unfortunately have to fall back on using a local name/address, which means a slightly different client setup for devices you use exclusively in your home versus ones you might use elsewhere.
Using the local address for the jellyfin instance solved things. I have no idea why whatever jellyfin is doing via jellycon is somehow more performant than just streaming via smb or nfs in vanilla kodi but 🤷♂️. Good pull.
Why would your Jellyfin traffic need to go over the Internet if it's on your local network? You should be able to install the Jellyfin app on your smart TV/Roku/etc or use the web client from a computer, point it at the Jellyfin local IP address, and view it over your LAN.
I'm not sure about how this works in kodi but in jellyfin the client might request a different resolution which causes the server to try and reencode the provided file on the fly. In my case my server isn't fast enough for this which leads to constant buffering
Have you tried reading to your kid instead
Well maybe don't post about how your kid crys when they can't watch TV. And maybe you should have solicited advice from your pediatrician.
Your poor kid
I'm going to assume you don't have kids.
Unless you've had kids you don't understand that it is practically impossible to complete even the most basic tasks unless your child is distracted.
Staying on top of household duties while managing a child is challenging enough, but then add on work, study, and every other responsibility.
I've never met a single parent who shares your opinion.
I do have a young child, and where does op state they are a single parent. Yes throwing screens in front of kids is the easiest way for you to ignore them and do what you have to do, but it's not recommended and it's bad for their development.
I have a similar setup but my nfs server is not a mini pc.
You could try diagnosing if it's the network or if your mini pc is too busy (maybe out of disk i/o?).
If that's too hard, temporarly stop all other programs on the mini pc. Does it help?
Does streaming something from the internet to kodi work without freezes? If it's ok, then network is likely not the issue
Last but not least, does playing the same video from an USB stick work smoothly? If not, maybe the quality is too high or the video is x265
Change the baby for a dog. You're welcome.
Instructions unclear. Baby is now a werewolf and howls loudly when Kodi is buffering.
My bad, I apologize. Put it in the freezer for now and I'll shout out when I have clear instructions in a codeberg repo.
Do you experience buffering if you watch on a pc / laptop on VLC via network? This will tell you if it’s network speed related or hardware power related. I would assume the pi is not quite powerful enough. I am using a device called a Vero 4k+ and it works wonderfully. But my network setup sounds similar to yours, I just have an smb share on my pc and I added it as a source in kodi.
I don’t, super helpful. So I’m guessing this is a pi bottleneck. Just ordered the Vera V so we’ll see! Fingers crossed for happy toddler.
Any luck with the vero?
Otw but after replacing the flat Ethernet cable (no change), and while waiting for the vero I switched to connecting to jellyfin / jellycon via its local address instead of its external one (🤦♂️) and zero buffering silky smooth everything. I don’t understand why but holding my breath for now while I wait for the vero when I can retire this unit at least to the office tv where it doesn’t have the responsibility of always performing for the family.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CGNAT | Carrier-Grade NAT |
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web |
| HTTPS | HTTP over SSL |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NAT | Network Address Translation |
| NFS | Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency |
| NUC | Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers |
| RPi | Raspberry Pi brand of SBC |
| SBC | Single-Board Computer |
| SMB | Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption |
9 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
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