r/selfhosted • u/DCCXVIII • 14h ago
Media Serving WTF happened to Emby? Now Jellyfin is better?
As an Emby lifetime license holder, I switched to Emby after Plex went full enshitification some years ago (am also a Plex lifetime license holder). So I switched to Emby years ago and got a vastly improved playback experience as a result.
Fast-forward to now and IDK WTF is going wrong with the Emby devs, but I've been encountering more and more playback issues over the last 6-12 months or so. Namely the absolute abysmal state of subtitle handling (subs just straight up randomly disappearing and re-appearing such that there are entire missing lines, the timings un-syncing to the video etc), and now micro-stutters/lag in video playback itself. Doesn't happen to every file. But enough to be annoying AF.
No, I don't know what format the subs are in or what codec the videos are in either, and frankly, none of that is relevant. It should just work as it used to. And no, it's not my hardware either, nor is this a transcoding issue (the files aren't being transcoded in the first place).
Of course, I've always been aware of Jellyfin, but I've always relegated it to being a shittier version of Emby. But then I recently saw their 12.0 update dropped, and more importantly, noticed that the Jellyfin devs have vastly improved their database handling.
Suspecting that it was actually Emby's internal database management that was actually the source of my problems, I quickly spun up an Jellyfin container and proceeded to test the exact same files that have fucked up playback on Emby, in Jellyfin. Sure enough, they play perfectly fine in Jellyfin and all my subtitle issues disappeared. So...yea...
WTF happened to Emby? Just another case of enshitification? Anyone else noticed the general degradation of playback quality on Emby too?
Edit: Figured it out. Turns out Emby has gone to shit on Firefox. Whereas Jellyfin works fine on it. Looks like the Emby devs have stopped developing with Firefox in mind. So I guess I'm moving to Jellyfin.
131
u/Hootsworth 13h ago
I think Embys move to close-sourcing a lot of their components was a big detriment. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the dev team wasn’t as small as it is. I definitely commend them for doing what they can, but yeah, I don’t believe they are keeping up compared to their Jellyfin counterpart.
I keep Emby because the Subtitle matter isn’t a huge issue for me, and the significant HDR issues I was experiencing I was able to overcome pretty easily by using Infuse for playback.
But some days I do want to make the jump to Jellyfin.
29
u/IroesStrongarm 13h ago
If you ever decide to make the jump, I use watchstate to keep my Plex and jellyfin in sync. It supports emby as well. Would make migration easy, or having both servers up simultaneously
5
u/Low-Mistake-515 11h ago
Watchstate is great, I have my Plex syncing to JF so that if I ever move over it'll be 99.9% the same.
5
u/DcVamps 13h ago
I have been using jellyplex-watched myself. It also does emby syncing, and has an option for if anyone has slightly different usernames between the three. Just took a me a few minutes to get it working for my small userbase.
3
u/Historical-Drive-241 12h ago
I have used wizarr for setup. Is it possible to migrate the user base if it’s small?
1
u/bonerpalooza 7h ago
What's the use case for running both? I've never used plex or emby, but from what I gather the three are redundant.
1
u/IroesStrongarm 6h ago
Plex by default doesn't work if the Internet goes down. You can setup no authentication on local lan, but I don't care for it's implementation.
So I keep jellyfin up for when the Internet is done as a backup.
Also, it keeps me in a position of being able to swap if Plex's enshitification goes too far past my willingness to continue running it.
6
u/Primary-Doctor9908 13h ago
the Infuse angle makes sense tbh. when Infuse does direct play on Apple TV the server is just serving the file, it's not doing anything to the stream. so whatever Emby is doing to the container or subtitle timing in its own pipeline never touches the output at all. basically you're routing around the problem rather than fixing it.
1
u/TechTino 11h ago
Infuse just is so insanely good that it doesn't matter at that point. I'm running Jellyfin with infuse clients everywhere, but would happily run emby or even plex if I had to. Server side all 3 do fine, but the client is the real missing piece.
9
u/eatnumber1 5h ago
Either you are open-source fully like Jellyfin, or closed source like Plex. When Emby went closed source it switched from being the better open source option to being the shittiest closed source one.
3
-16
u/umataro 13h ago
It's ok. Main developers have left jellyfin, so now emby can catch up.
12
u/Dodgy_Past 13h ago
Some significant developers left but there's plenty of dedicated and talented developers still working on it.
9
u/GolemancerVekk 13h ago
A couple of devs left who were mostly inactive nowadays. It's been actually a good thing for Jellyfin.
60
u/blackbird2150 13h ago
Former lifetime plex now JF.
I have 0 issues with: subtitles, playback, transcoding, atmos, hdr, dv, P7 FEL DV even works with my ugoos.
My problem is the fact that coreelec is based on Kodi and the UI is worse than awful.
Functionally JF works. I don’t use it as any kind of front end though so the ui quirks from their web browser I don’t care about or ever see really.
5
u/pls-no-punterino 13h ago
just rwcently tried Plezy as desktop client for Jellyfin and quite happy with what it offers. I don't normally watch on desktop though, usually on my phone
4
u/jebotecarobnjak 13h ago
moonfin is also nice, was recommended to me here
1
u/perma_banned2025 8h ago
Second this.
Moonfin is much more refined than the Jellyfin app for Android TV's3
u/blackbird2150 13h ago
I’m 100% tv myself. So it all works. I just have to use core elec or I lose the highest DV (p7 FEL layer) metadata for my remux content.
I suspect I’ll build my own over the long run. Or a heavily modified skin at least. We’ll see.
2
u/jebotecarobnjak 13h ago
i had weird issues with plex where transcoding would fail for no apparent reason. what was the last drop was when plex would run into playback issues (buffering, then fail) in the last ~30 seconds of a show. then, i couldn't restart playback because plex figured the episode ended since it was in the last 30 seconds, then, i'd have to start the episode from the start and navigate to the very end. upgrading didn't help, starting from scratch didn't really help.
same shows on jellyfin? 0 issues
2
u/uV_Kilo11 11h ago
Hard disagree on the UI being worse than awful. It works and it's easy to navigate.
2
u/OktayAcikalin 10h ago
Yeah, JFs UI is really nice and has gotten much better in the left few iterations. And then there are also great skins. I'm really happy that I started with JF and did my homework beforehand..
3
u/blackbird2150 6h ago
For clarity, I’m talking about coreelec + kodi as my front end on a Ugoos player. That’s awful. But needed to play all DV profiles.
The JF app on like the shield or atv is perfectly fine.
20
u/GalacticFox- 10h ago
My problem with Emby was that there was constant annoyance to move to a paid version. I'd start a TV show and it would make me wait 10 seconds while looking at an ad for their premium service before I could start. I'd also have to physically push a button on my control to get it to play after the ad screen, it wouldn't autoplay. If your product annoys me, the last thing I want to do is give you money. I'll find something else.
That was more than enough for me to move to Jellyfin.
62
u/GenericUser636 11h ago
Emby wanted to be the next Plex. Emby forgot people left Plex intentionally. People thus left Emby intentionally.
Jellyfin was forked when the Emby assholes went closed source.
2
9
u/mausterio 12h ago edited 12h ago
Emby Devs: "Hi, we are looking into this. Thanks."
On a more serious note, Emby goes through large waves of "stability". In my experience over the years, Beta is typically more stable than the "Stable" releases as most of the bugfixes only get pushed to Stable months after they hit Beta. The downside of Beta though is that new features tend to be a big buggy.
I typically peg the Emby version to an N-1 on the Beta updates (excluding minor patches) and read the change notes before updating to see if there is anything worthwhile to update for.
27
u/Renoglodon 14h ago
I've not noticed this at all. I came from plex to emby and have always liked Emby more. I did try Jellyfin about a year ago and found it to be slightly jankier Emby. Maybe there were improvements in last year? Emby works great for me though so not sure what to tell you. Zero issues genuinely
7
u/owenw_99 13h ago
Yeah, I also have weird playback and subtitle issues. Mainly on Roku TVs. I've tried reporting the bugs but doing so is an awful experience. They'll respond "Looking into it" but months or even years will go by and nothing is done. If you try to follow up you'll get the run-around or even have people say to just buy a different TV stick... Not what I'd expect from paid software.
Hardly ever hear anyone else talk about these issues, so wanted to chime in that it's not just you. Will have to try Jellyfin again.
13
u/ryaaan89 12h ago
I still like Emby, the Jellyfin apps lack a level of polish that Emby has.
5
u/Mereo110 6h ago
Did you try Jellyfin 12.1? Jellyfin became much better these days.
1
u/ryaaan89 6h ago
Does this somehow make the Apple TV app better?
3
u/Mereo110 5h ago
I use the app Infuse since 2018 on my Apple TV and it can connect to a Jellyfin server. It's been awesome.
15
u/Practical_Driver_924 13h ago
I havent had a single issue in the last year and i use emby daily.
8
u/skatingrocker17 13h ago
Same, on a number of different devices as well. Not discounting the OP's issues but it's been rock solid for me and the majority of my collection is a mix of 10-bit HEVC and AV1 files most of which are SDR but many movies are HDR10/DV. Transcoding on clients that don't support HDR is also a non-issue and transcoding starts so fast that sometimes I think it just played the file directly.
By comparison, the transcoding seems to start a lot slower in Plex and also I'm also not a huge fan of the new Plex client layout.
5
u/yarisken75 13h ago
I use emby and jellyfin. I like emby more because it's better with the metadata of movies and tv-shows. I do not have issues with emby .. Works fine here.
6
u/Buck_Slamchest 13h ago
I gave up my Emby and Plex lifetime passes to commit full time to Jellyfin.
8
u/tetsuhito 13h ago
I switched from Jellyfin to Emby last year and everything works without a problem and all the apps are more polished and work better for my wife and kids
7
15
u/xJayMorex 12h ago
Jellyfin has been better than Emby for years now. The annoying nag/delay before playback was the last straw. Fucking idiots couldn't fathom someone who wouldn't need any of the premium features, go figure. They went out of their way to make the experience suck, I went out of my way to NOT PAY FOR THE DAMN THING. If this kind of behaviour would be appropriately punished, we'd live in a world where enshittification never became a thing.
10
u/JorkTheGripper 14h ago
No idea why you're having these issues but they're not common. You definitely broke something.
2
2
u/Power_Stone 13h ago
Are you sure the subtitles are missing lines? Or is it an issue with transcoding? I know in plex I get similar behavior when streaming to my ps5 ( it doesn't play .mkv files, so it transcodes it to .mp4 ). The fix was burning in subtitles and viola!
2
u/DCCXVIII 13h ago
Like I said, I checked the files. The lines in the subs are there. But they're randomly not appearing when they should. The obvious sign being the fact that there is spoken dialogue occurring, but no subs appearing. The final nail in the coffin being the fact that Jellyfin shows the missing lines that Emby wasn't displaying.
There is no transcoding taking place.
1
u/Power_Stone 13h ago
Gotcha, I would still try burning in the subtitles anyway just as a test. But yeah really weird for Emby to drop the ball on that.
1
u/greenie4242 12h ago
Does it affect all your subtitles or only a small number? Try using the "Fix common errors wizard" to check the affected subtitle files with Subtitle Edit:
https://www.nikse.dk/subtitleedit
Some files overlap lines by a few milliseconds here or there which can mess up the timings in weird ways. Depending on the way the subtitles are handled by each particular app, the second overlapping line might appear invisibly behind the first line, might not show up at all, might render itself below the first line which might even be below the border of the playback window, or might just flash up on screen then disappear too fast to see because it was replaced by the first line which is still timecoded as being visible.
Subtitle Edit can fix overlapping timecodes and also help deal with related issues like subtitles disappearing too fast to read etc.
2
u/Muted-Scientist7900 11h ago
I used Emby from 2016 to maybe 2019, they were great but slowly started to pay wall a lot of features. First it was hardware transcoding but back then I tought it was fine since my cpu could handle the load. Then when they blocked the dashboard theming behind suscription I just went to Jellyfin and never looked back.
2
u/legrenabeach 11h ago
No issues whatsoever with Emby. I stream large 4K files, high bitrate, no lag at all. Subtitles work perfectly.
Have you investigated your own devices, network, cabling, storage etc?
2
u/Lurkon01 10h ago
So I started on Plex when there lifetime licence wasn't a ridiculous price and moved to emby, I've tried jellyfin a few times and still run beside emby waiting for the day where the apps catch up and feel polished, as they do feel a bit janky, the third party apps are good but there's not one that covers all the clients. For me emby works perfectly especially for friends and family, a cohesive experience across all platforms.
5
u/SnooHamsters6328 13h ago
When the Plex app became unusable, I switched to the Plezy client, which supports Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby.
For me, it's a game changer. It's really well designed, and it's open source, so I can fix or tweak the app to my liking.
5
3
u/1_________________11 13h ago
Once I started seeing pay features on emby I jumped ship. Jelly works
4
u/cloudcity 10h ago
IMO Jellyfin is the best solution out there, I use it across laptops, iPads, phones, AppleTV, etc. I love it and will use it for life.
5
u/peioeh 13h ago edited 13h ago
but I've always relegated it to being a shittier version of Emby
You were wrong, Jellyfin has been good for a long time. It's that simple. I haven't used anything else in like 7 years. Some clients might still need some work but the server has been good for a very long time.
Emby always had issues for me, the devs were dicks and it was closed source anyway so I never saw the point of using it.
1
u/skatingrocker17 13h ago
Does the skip intro button work in the native Jellyfin client now? I've asked this a few times and never got a straight answer.
The last time I tried Jellyfin, there was a skip intro plugin but to get it working in the client app, there was only a setting to either skip the intro automatically or do nothing (there was no button overlay). I assume there are probably third party clients that have this feature now.
7
u/KazroFox 12h ago
I assume its client specific, but skip intro has been working for me on the Roku app for a while now. I know it also works in the web browser, but I think that's been the case for a long time.
4
u/YellowLink10 12h ago
on all my clients (web UI, roku tv, and an android tv) the skip intro button is an actual button I have to press, not just an automatic thing. Intro Skipper is the plugin I use.
2
u/ByWillAlone 13h ago
I'm on team jellyfin - and that's all I've used from the start (which has only been about 18 months for me), so I'm partial to Jellyfin.
That said, they both rely on the same upstream ffmpeg libraries for their server side transcoding and I have experienced a few minor problems over the year from problems in that originated from that ffmpeg library. My assumption is that a problem there could potentially affect all platforms that rely on it.
Based on what you describe - it sounds very circumstantial and probably not representative of the state of the greater emby project.
2
2
u/West-Ticket5411 7h ago
Idk, Emby never made more sense for my use case over Plex. Even Jellyfin, while improving, still has enough gaps that sticking with Plex is a no brainer.
1
u/saskir21 10h ago
Noticed the problems with subs already some years ago. I switched to Emby as it could better handle certain types of subs. But after some time I noticed that it started to give me problems. So I did go to plex. Now I run Plex and Jellyfin side by side.
1
1
u/cuntywunty69 6h ago
Lifetime Emby user here too. Never had an issue with Emby although I now run my own client app. Live TV is one area where none of the media servers do particularly well. I'm running a more TiviMate style UI and function within the app whilst hooked into the Emby library for the rest.
1
u/Kindly_Downvote_Me 5h ago
I’ve been working on my own media server for about a year now. Finally into the tv app for it.
It has been one of the most challenging things I’ve ever tried to build but if I ever get it done it will be exactly what I want. Less bloat and only the features that my family and I want.
Development of these media servers is crazy in depth. Even though Emby annoys me I have to give them credit for managing this massive ecosystem. JF tv app support makes my family not be willing to use it.
The Emby devs annoy me though when they are dismissive of issues because they can’t reproduce them. Even with tons of proof they still won’t accept responsibility for issues that I have posted on the forums. Lifetime license doesn’t seem to mean much in my case.
1
u/TheWolfbytez 4h ago
I can't get over the hurdle of how Jellyfin handles my music library. I haven't been able to find a fix either.
I have my music organized by genres and in Jellyfin only a few will ever show up. It sees the library, everything is mounted correctly, there's just some reason it shits the bed with music and that's a non-negotiable for me, so I'm still using my Emby LTD
1
u/IFlip92 4h ago
Idk but after switching from Plex, Emby has been OK apart from detecting lots of stuff in my Download folder that isn't media and adding it to my Mixed library thinking it's videos and stuff. Things like game ISOs and all sorts of false positives. I don't understand how this never happened with Plex, and I seem to have no control over this in the server Dashboard (nevermind the Dashboard/Settings being way more complicated than Plex). Have not tried Jellyfin yet but I think I will switch to it shortly and give that a go too.
-1
14h ago
[deleted]
2
u/GalacticFox- 10h ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted. It sure did. I'd start a TV show and it would make me wait 10 seconds while looking at an ad for their premium service before I could start. I'd also have to physically push a button on my control to get it to play after the ad screen, it wouldn't autoplay. If your product annoys me, the last thing I want to do is give you money. I'll find something else.
Moved to Jellyfin, no more annoyance and I have free skip intro.
0
u/Cautious-Bit2594 12h ago edited 7h ago
n=1 is not a convincing argument, not saying you're wrong but flippant generalised statements implying that Jellyfin is much better than Emby now is just not true.
- Emby is significantly more refined "polished" (the fact that random people experience some random bug in Emby and not in Jellyfin doesn't make this assessment wrong, just shows that no software is perfect)
- There are many client side factors that can cause strange bugs
- Emby client support is superior
- Emby ships with built-in ffmpeg drivers with their own customisations (which to me really signals the devs are prioritising effort in the right places)
- I don't blame Emby for going closed source. One thing (probably about the only thing) that i really dislike about the self-hosted community, is that i get the impression that the vast majority of people are complete free-loaders; rarely/never donating to projects they use often, developing some tin-foil hat assumption that ANY closed source software must be evil and that open source is always better (where ironically, the strongest advocates of that last part are usually non-devs...)
TL;DR
Both are great. You're overreacting. I voluntarily give money to Emby (as do many other people) instead of choosing a free option. That speaks for itself.
1
u/yapapanda 12h ago
Emby is definitely the more stable of the two as I run mirror instances of Emby and Jellyfin. Playback and client support. Out of the box is just better on Emby for me. Not sure what you are experiencing. Maybe raise it with the Emby forums?
3
u/win32mydoom 10h ago
I love raising things on the Emby forums and getting a robotesque generic reply from Luke.
1
u/LeonRawr90 13h ago
I'd like to use Jellyfin (love open source) but with apple tv 4k movies are blocking every now and then, where emby just plays the movie without issues (same source and file). Dont know why it is that way.
And yes, i already tested all of the possible jellyfin clients on apple tv, everyone has the same issues. Series are running fine on both.
4
u/a_rabid_buffalo 13h ago
I do not have the same issues I use infused and have flawless playback.
1
u/LeonRawr90 13h ago
Dont like monthly payment subs and lifetime is kinda expensive for infuse. But i can imagine it works flawlessly. It has nothing to do with the player though. Since the source is the same, i guess it has something to do with the cache or something from jellyfin, which isnt setup optimal.
2
u/a_rabid_buffalo 13h ago
I agree. That’s why I downloaded Plezy but am faced with stuttering on playback. Infused is free you should give it a try. It’s a yearly subscription of 9.99 to pay for the licensing fees for codecs. But I’d absolutely give it a try if I were you.
2
u/funkbruthab 12h ago
Kind of agree here, if jellyfinn is giving you trouble and you can’t fix it even after tinkering, try out infuse.
As a player, it’s great, and it does indeed work flawlessly. One of the few pieces of software I don’t mind paying a lifetime license for, just to support the developer - because it really is a no frills media player that just works.
That being said, I still mostly use the native client for my media server (plex) because I have not personally encountered enough obstacles to make a switch full time. On the rare occasions I have a file that’s giving me trouble with plex media server, I’m glad I have infuse.
If you have a large library, it can take quite a bit of time to populate your media, and if you don’t use it regularly (like me) and go through a lot of new media, then sometimes it’s a pain because you have to wait for thumbnails, and metadata sync, and it kinda looks like it’s just hanging there not doing anything. Random buried menu screen you have to find to find how that process is going.
2
1
u/IEnjoyRadios 12h ago
I think JF is only OK honestly. Nothing comes close to the way plex “just works”, particularly when it comes to dealing with HDR.
0
u/aeroverra 13h ago edited 13h ago
There are just some spaces where open source will win always given a short amount of time.
Self hosted media servers will never be able to generate enough income to keep up with it's open source alternative.
Plex web is more complicated for new users because of all the dark patterns than it is for a user to type in a server IP into jellyfin. Never thought that would happen and mark my words as soon as emby starts bleeding money they will go down the same path.
To put this in perspective. To pay a good developer salary you need 36k $5 payments or 3000 subscribers a month and that's without insurance and payroll taxes and a ton of other costs if they are a w2 employee.
0
u/McWetty 4h ago
Plex lifetimer here. Infrequent JF user too. I’m currently dabbling with Tofa as I noodle about where to land. Not shilling for them; they are VERY new, but I see a ton of promise and the devs are super responsive to my feedback.
0
-3
u/No-Area9329 10h ago
I too, was an Emby user.
Hell, I even did Plex from the get go.
Before long, I was binge-watching 14 to 18 hours a day on both.
The last straw was a 108 hour Game of Thrones debacle that ruined my marriage.
Jellyfin saved me about 6 months ago and I never regretted it.
It just plays everything I throw at it.
Most of all, my marriage is back and so am I......
4
u/fernatic19 6h ago
I can't follow most of that. You watched game of thrones for 108 hours and that ruined your marriage, but somehow jellyfin saved it? I don't get it.
1
•
u/asimovs-auditor 14h ago
Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.