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Jellyfin's strategy for streaming blu-ray disc folders is to use ffmpeg to concatenate (and usually transcode) them to disc, then stream the result. It doesn't

Jellyfin's strategy for streaming blu-ray disc folders is to use ffmpeg to concatenate (and usually transcode) them to disc, then stream the result. It doesn't work very well - frequently, the concatenation process is sitting there running long after the client has disconnected. And the devs seem to break it entirely every second release or so, just failing to recognize the BDMV as a playable movie at all.

phildenhoff 2y ago
Please don’t take this as criticism of your setup, but why are you trying to stream Blu-ray Disc folders at all? Why not transcode the files?
- Borealid 2y ago
  Firsly, I have multiple tens of terabytes of movies (painful to duplicate), and I watch them with their original menus in Kodi. Secondly, a BDMV can't be turned into a single correct linear representation - for example, the Star Trek TOS discs have the ability to toggle back and forth between original and CG-remastered graphics seamlessly. As another example, I have stereoscopic 3D blu-rays; should the transcode be the left eye view, or side-by-side 3D with an ultrawide file? Finally, transcoding necessarily sacrifices quality. Remuxing wouldn't, but Jellyfin usually refuses to stream remuxed containers and insists on transcoding to attach subtitles (their javascript web player and even app don't seem to handle the subs correctly?). To sum up, turning a disc folder into a single file requires losing content.
  - nativeit 2y ago
    This is an interesting take, thanks for describing it. I think most people, myself included, would find your setup a little odd, but I completely understand why you're doing it. It would make many (most?) home media servers a little hobbled, especially if you wanted to stream content to mobile devices outside of the home, but it sounds as if this is more of a replacement for the old pile of set-top boxes for you, rather than a general service to all your devices, is that a fair interpretation?
    - Borealid 2y ago
      Yes, what I've got is like a streaming service, but at much higher quality and with a selection that doesn't rotate out as rights lapse. The stuff that Jellyfin would provide - being able to watch from a device using just a web browser and no client install - is nice-to-have, not need-to-have.
  - robhlt 2y ago
    The "Jellyfin for Kodi" plugin (not Jellycon!) supports a "native path" streaming mode that just directly passes the raw video file to Kodi, avoiding Jellyfin's transcoding entirely. I've never used it with BDMV's, but it does work with other formats Jellyfin can't transcode properly like Dolby Vision. Also, if you do ever want to remux those discs, mkv does support both those features now (player support is lacking though). You'll want to look for "3D MVC" support, and including 2 video tracks in one mkv is no problem.
    - Borealid 2y ago
      The reason I'd use Jellyfin is to stream things to a non-Kodi client (a web browser). If I have a Kodi client, I would just read the files as-is. I don't believe that mkv supports bd-j menus. Happy to be proven wrong on that if you have some further reading I could do.
protimewaster 2y ago
I'm glad they're at least trying to support disc folders, though. Plex just doesn't.
- nativeit 2y ago
  I believe the big selling-point for Plex is that it can stream content to every single device you own no matter where you are, which requires on-the-fly transcoding. It's my understanding that the performance requirements for realtime transcoding necessitates something like an MKV or MP4 file, although I'm happy to be proven wrong by someone with more direct knowledge of the process.
  - Borealid 2y ago
    The blu-rays contains m2ts files, which have the same video data in them as an mp4 container would (h264, usually, vc-1 sometimes). Remuxing them can be done a NUC-class CPU. Transcoding them requires hardware support to do in real time with today's hardware, but the hardware support is quite light - an AMD iGPU can chew through a 4K BDMV no problem, so long as the codecs on both the input and output side are supported for acceleration. Jellyfin tries to prefer Intel Quicksync for some reason but it works with other GPU accel too. The problem isn't the performance envelope, it's how poorly the code is implemented on the Jellyfin side: it's not reliable at starting and managing the concat process, and it forces a transcode to embed subtitles for no logical reason I can see.
ramon156 2y ago
I know this isn't a solution for everyone, but I just stopped downloading blu-ray altogether. I don't need a bit more quality for 3x the storage size and way more gpu churning.

phildenhoff 2y ago

Please don’t take this as criticism of your setup, but why are you trying to stream Blu-ray Disc folders at all? Why not transcode the files?

Borealid 2y ago
Firsly, I have multiple tens of terabytes of movies (painful to duplicate), and I watch them with their original menus in Kodi. Secondly, a BDMV can't be turned into a single correct linear representation - for example, the Star Trek TOS discs have the ability to toggle back and forth between original and CG-remastered graphics seamlessly. As another example, I have stereoscopic 3D blu-rays; should the transcode be the left eye view, or side-by-side 3D with an ultrawide file? Finally, transcoding necessarily sacrifices quality. Remuxing wouldn't, but Jellyfin usually refuses to stream remuxed containers and insists on transcoding to attach subtitles (their javascript web player and even app don't seem to handle the subs correctly?). To sum up, turning a disc folder into a single file requires losing content.
- nativeit 2y ago
  This is an interesting take, thanks for describing it. I think most people, myself included, would find your setup a little odd, but I completely understand why you're doing it. It would make many (most?) home media servers a little hobbled, especially if you wanted to stream content to mobile devices outside of the home, but it sounds as if this is more of a replacement for the old pile of set-top boxes for you, rather than a general service to all your devices, is that a fair interpretation?
  - Borealid 2y ago
    Yes, what I've got is like a streaming service, but at much higher quality and with a selection that doesn't rotate out as rights lapse. The stuff that Jellyfin would provide - being able to watch from a device using just a web browser and no client install - is nice-to-have, not need-to-have.
- robhlt 2y ago
  The "Jellyfin for Kodi" plugin (not Jellycon!) supports a "native path" streaming mode that just directly passes the raw video file to Kodi, avoiding Jellyfin's transcoding entirely. I've never used it with BDMV's, but it does work with other formats Jellyfin can't transcode properly like Dolby Vision. Also, if you do ever want to remux those discs, mkv does support both those features now (player support is lacking though). You'll want to look for "3D MVC" support, and including 2 video tracks in one mkv is no problem.
  - Borealid 2y ago
    The reason I'd use Jellyfin is to stream things to a non-Kodi client (a web browser). If I have a Kodi client, I would just read the files as-is. I don't believe that mkv supports bd-j menus. Happy to be proven wrong on that if you have some further reading I could do.

protimewaster 2y ago

I'm glad they're at least trying to support disc folders, though. Plex just doesn't.

nativeit 2y ago
I believe the big selling-point for Plex is that it can stream content to every single device you own no matter where you are, which requires on-the-fly transcoding. It's my understanding that the performance requirements for realtime transcoding necessitates something like an MKV or MP4 file, although I'm happy to be proven wrong by someone with more direct knowledge of the process.
- Borealid 2y ago
  The blu-rays contains m2ts files, which have the same video data in them as an mp4 container would (h264, usually, vc-1 sometimes). Remuxing them can be done a NUC-class CPU. Transcoding them requires hardware support to do in real time with today's hardware, but the hardware support is quite light - an AMD iGPU can chew through a 4K BDMV no problem, so long as the codecs on both the input and output side are supported for acceleration. Jellyfin tries to prefer Intel Quicksync for some reason but it works with other GPU accel too. The problem isn't the performance envelope, it's how poorly the code is implemented on the Jellyfin side: it's not reliable at starting and managing the concat process, and it forces a transcode to embed subtitles for no logical reason I can see.

ramon156 2y ago

I know this isn't a solution for everyone, but I just stopped downloading blu-ray altogether. I don't need a bit more quality for 3x the storage size and way more gpu churning.