Just recently I wrote about How to install Jellyfin on a RaspberryPi. It all started promising until – after adding a couple of movies – the Library Scan suddenly hung. Unfortunately I didn’t dig too deep into all kinds of logs (which I certainly forgot but which might have given a hint).
TL;DR: some movie files couldn’t be parsed! Even though I was able to play them in Windows. I don’t know if they were corrupt or incompatible.
Solution:
Step 1, find the affected file(s):
I placed .ignore files in all movie directories so that they were excluded from the library scan (see online docs). One after the other, I removed an .ignore file, restarted the Library scan and noted each “corrupt” file (well and in that case placed the .ignore file again and restarted jellyfin by sudo service jellyfin restart).
Step 2, recode using Handbreak:
Finally simply recoding using HandBrake: Open Source Video Transcoder was the easiest solution. I used the following options after opening the according MKV-file:
- Preset: Fast 1080p30
- Tab Overview: Format > MKV
- Tab Video: Image frequency: Same as Source
- Tab Video: Quality: 22
- Tab Audio: add all traces
- Tab Subtitle: add all traces
- recode