This has been a thing for years although it used to be sketchy blogs (and probably still is tbf in addition to this). Back in the days of rapid share, mega before Kim dotcom got busted, etc. some people just can’t figure out torrents or they live in a situation where torrents can’t be used (isp shaping, internet controlled by a 3rd party that blocks torrenting, etc) and usually http downloads are fine in those situations.

If you ever have to rely on this get jdownloader at least

so just the imperialism meatgrinder of stuff like the vietnam war and a time of racial segregation domestically and the immediate aftermath of its end (bc everyone totally respected the change and that’s why we aren’t still dealing with the impacts to this day with elder boomer maga shitheads that literally grew up with it). these were definitely great times and a wonderful country to want to return to and you’re definitely not holding up some whitewashed bullshit in your mind.

Like literally telling someone they can’t use a water fountain because they’re too black and violently invading a country for decades because they chose a system of government you disagree with seems pretty right wing authoritarian but maybe that’s just me. America has literally always been fascist, there’s just a few times in more recent history where ultra fascists like the Nazis gave us a villain to be like “well at least we aren’t that” as we send the cia into Latin America to overthrow a democratically elected government that once again doesn’t align with capitalism

Subtitles force transcoding a lot of the time depending on playback situation and media. A lot of compatibility issues there - downloaded movies often will have the PGS subs from a bluray, anime can often have ass/ssa, ibx subs, etc plus they all tend to be embedded in the media (and in anime’s case often with extra fonts and attachments).

all of these (basically anything but external srt) can interrupt direct playback depending on users Jellyfin client. Some have better sub support than others, android vs apple vs some esoteric client like webos all have their own niche weirdness. You need to search what the best option is for each users scenario. Like for my users that have apple devices checking this box in settings>playback allows direct streaming of a lot of content:

But for “the problem show” what do logs say? How is it encoded? Quick sync can’t transcode everything. The older your processor the less it can do and niche formats it definitely can’t do at all. Like unless you have a real new cpu (13th or 14th gen) it’s not doing av1 or vp9 content and that’s still getting offloaded to cpu for transcoding. And if it’s some ogg vorbis thing or whatever it won’t work. And do logs verify igpu is being utilized for transcoding/mapped correctly? It can be a bit of a pain in the ass (unless they improved the process, it’s been a while since I’ve had to do it)

What is the client situation?

The easiest fix is to find a client that can direct play all of your files and take transcoding out of the equation. Ugoos am6b+ as an example but if you don’t need Dolby vision there are cheaper options that are easier to configure with native jellyfin clients (instead of coreelec/kodi). Or if you need av1. But this needs to be done per user and costs money

Alternatively what is your hardware? Do you have intel quick sync video? If so do you have hardware transcoding setup? Like if you have Jellyfin setup in a docker are you passing through the igpu to the container? And if you’ve done that have you set up the hardware transcoding in Jellyfin? What gen cpu and what kind of files?

If you have the transcoding happening on the CPU and not the iGPU (assuming you don’t have a discrete gpu in a mini pc and frankly with quick sync you don’t need one unless your cpu is ancient, save the power usage) transcoding will crawl. But if you have quick sync video it should be fine with <4-5 users