Raspberry Pi is the most energy efficient and easy. Works perfectly if your clients can direct play the media. If transcoding is needed then you need a Celeron based NUC with QSV support (Intel Quick Sync). One of those can handle transcoding for a few clients unless we're talking 4k source files then it's like 1-2 clients max and no tone mapping. Next step up and we're talking something that can't really be called energy efficient.

[–] eek2121 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The pi5 couldn’t keep up for me. How do you avoid transcoding?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Make sure the clients can play the media without transcoding, there are lists of formats Jellyfin support natively but generally speaking H.264 in a .mp4 container is a safe bet and pretty common to find. If your files aren't in that format then you can quite easily remux them, and add some automation to it so it's done ahead of time. The Pi can remux files but it will be pretty slow so best is if you can have another computer do that part.

Oh yeah, if Jellyfin insist on transcoding it might be due to poor / shaky connection such that it wants to transcode to say 480p / 360p or something and then best is to try and turn it off completely in settings.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I believe Jeff Geerling talks a bit about this on his video on Jellyfin. If memory serves, he has some way of preparing his files that I guess you could describe as pre-transcoding.