Hey all. I’m pretty new to home labs and have been enjoying the learning process. That being said, please go easy on me here.
I have recently built a Truenas server. I initially built it just because I needed a more stable storage solution for video editing. That being said, I am the dad of a two year old and I am really unsatisfied with today’s programing for children (focused on developing short attention spans and trading stories for dopamine hits with bright colors). Anyway, I decided that since I already have the hardware, I started running Jellyfin and ripping movies to it so she can have access to it at our home as well as at my parents house through Tailscale and an Apple TV. With the server build, I had to keep the system small as it resides on a bookshelf (I have limited space). I also wanted my drives to be hot swappable. I built the NAS out of a Jonsbo N3. Whereas I love the case as it fits perfectly where I need it, it limits me to ITX boards. Unfortunately there just aren’t wonderful server options in ITX. The motherboard I went with is a Gigabyte B760I Aorus Pro and my processor is a 13500K with 64gb DDR5. I went this route as I was hoping to be able to use the on board GPU for encoding.
All of that being said, I’m having some issues. All of the files I am running on the server are .mkv files. I went this route for the quality bump. As these are the files I’m running, when I am streaming, I am having to encode them. I have enabled the Intel hardware encoding on Jellyfin, and when I am playing back standard definition DVDs, I have no issues. However, when I play back 4k HDR10 movies, I get pretty bad stuttering making the videos unwatchable. I am even getting the same issue with 1080p content. My assumption here is that my processor isnt keeping up with the transcoding. I am getting this issue over at my parents house, but I am also getting the issue even over my local network so I dont think the issue is with network speeds (besides, we are both running 1gb fiber connections).
My question here, is the on chip GPU really unable to keep up with the transcoding meaning that I’m going to have to get a GPU installed, or do you all think I have something set up incorrectly?
Again, I’m pretty new to this world, so be gentle. Thanks for the help.
For 4k HDR content specially? Yeah, I don’t think igpu will keep up. From what I remember tone mapping (hdr to sdr) is a total pain.
Donno Jellyfin support for gpus, or which gpus deal best with tonemapping specifically on Jellyfin so I can’t make a recommendation.
Edit: just read that you’re also getting the issue at home & with 1080p content. I’m curious if this is on all devices you tested on your lan or just specific tvs/devices. Some devices I’ve seen have uhh… unique failures. Ironically almost all of them were solved for me when I added a gpu to plex for transcoding (I think one or two hates subtitles unless I burn them in still); other devices (samsung) more or less required and hdmi cable from a laptop/pc/nvidiashield/anything except the built-in app.
It’s a bit weird. So my TVs have the issue. On my LG TV, I am given the option to step the Mbps down (reducing quality) and the issue is essentially eliminated (on home network). When I go to my parents, playing through the Apple TV, there is no such option on this version of the app therefore making all content unplayable due to the stutter. If I play through the app on my phone, I am able to max the Mbps out and have perfect playback. On the same phone, if I access Jellyfin through the browser, I have the same stuttering issues and have to step the Mbps down to get smooth playback. All that being said, when I monitor my CPU utilization server side, it never goes above 10% no matter which device I playback from.
I just realised something interesting. Just to see the difference, I went in and disabled hardware encoding on the Jellyfin side. After doing that, I get no changes in performance. Not that I know what exactly is going on here, but its almost like it isn’t hardware encoding at all. On the Truenas side, I have enabled the “hardware encoding for non-nvidia GPUs”. I’m not really sure what my issue is here. Is there some additional step I need to take in order to allow the iGPU on the chip to hardware encode?
I don’t know if it is automatically exposed in TrueNAS since I don’t use the app inside of it but others might have more experience. Can’t hurt to try, though. It’s in the transcode settings of Jellyfin.
Yeah, I have QSV added on the Jellyfin side and I looked up the supported codecs for the igpu. Still stutters. Other than that, I also enabled pass through non-nvidia GPUs on the Truenas side under the app options for Jellyfin.
All that being said, just to see if there was a difference, I disabled hardware transcoding on jellyfin just to see if it made a difference. None. Its like there is no hardware transcoding happening on the igpu at all. Is there something else I am missing here?
Can’t confirm there - I don’t use intel igpu or jellyfin on TrueNAS. I remember getting igpu working on proxmox was a pain - but I was also doing vGPU to split it between VMs… so
It could be possible that you’ll have to bite the bullet & get a gpu for transcoding; for hdr tonemaping I can almost guarantee that it’ll be necessary.
Yeah, I have absolutely no problem getting a GPU, I was just hoping to verify this as the issue as I’d just sort of hate going on an expensive goose chase when I didn’t have to.
Can you show a screenshot of how Jellyfin is setup?
Right hand menu → Dashboard → Playback → Transcoding
Specifically the top part related to hardware acceleration.
Also of interest is the app configuration on the TrueNAS side, specifically the “Devices” section.
Make sure you haven’t chosen to add the iGPU in the “Isolated GPU Devices” section under System/Advanced in TrueNAS, that’s not what you want in this case.
