Hey all, I’ve been a user of Kodi for several years and an owner of two Vero Vs for some time now as well. I love the platform, and especially love the hardware product.
Short version:
Media playback using the Jellyfin addon takes much longer to start (5-8 seconds) than using an NFS share (<1 second) for the same media. Testing the Jellyfin plugin in a native Linux Kodi installation yields near instantaneous playback, so it appears to be specific to the Vero V. Might something be misconfigured, or is this expected behavior?
Long version:
When I first purchased the Vero Vs, I configured them to use a centralized MySQL DB for metadata sharing as many have done before. This setup has actually worked fine for me, but I’ve been using Jellyfin more and more for remote streaming, so I decided to try out using the Jellyfin addon for Kodi. So far, everything works well and I have no real complaints, save one:
When I start playback on essentially any media (from lossy stereo audio to high bitrate 4k video with lossless surround audio tracks), there is a (somewhat) significant delay in playback start that seems to scale with the bitrate of the underlying media. Now this is to be expected to some degree, but as an experiment I installed Kodi on my Linux workstation and configured it to have an identical setup from a media-source perspective. When I start playback of a high bitrate media file on my PC, the “buffering time” is extremely short (think 1 second or less). However, on the Vero V, it can be as much as 5-8 seconds. Previously, when using an NFS share as the media source, playback started almost instantaneously for all media on the Vero V, regardless of bitrate. I should also mention that both devices (the Vero V and my workstation) are connected to the LAN on gigabit ports via Cat6, and I don’t believe network throughput to be the issue.
My workstation is admittedly much more powerful than the Vero V, but I’m still surprised by the significant difference in playback speed, especially given that starting playback of the same files via an NFS share is so much quicker. Does anyone have any thoughts or tips about what might be wrong with the setup, or is this kind of delay expected?
When you use the Jellyfin for Kodi addon you can setup path subtitution so you just use NFS, that’s what I do atleast so I can still play full BD rips.
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Can you provide some details as to how to achieve this? I am facing a similar issue where any playback from Jellyfin server takes a bit of time to start playing (spinning circle for a few seconds)…
Within the options of ‘Jellyfin for Kodi’ you have an option for path substitution, you can some more info here: Reimplement native mode to function client side by mcarlton00 · Pull Request #938 · jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi · GitHub
Something like /ds1-video on the server, which you can replace with smb://diskstation01/video
Or if you also got a /ds1-series and a /ds1-music, you can replace /ds1- with smb://diskstation01/
So in my case I have on the server side:
/ds1-video
/ds1-series
/ds1-music
/ds2-video
/ds2-series
/ds2-music
On the client side I have autofs everything mounted to:
/mnt/ds1-video
/mnt/ds2-video
…
My path substitution within the addon is:
/ds1 —> /mnt/ds1
/ds2 —> /mnt/ds2
And on CE I use the following, since I don’t have autofs there 
:
/ds1- —> nfs://192.168.0.10/volume1/
/ds2- —> nfs://192.168.0.11/volume1/
@Theetjuh Based on the information provided on this page, it looks like Native mode is no longer supported (which is what you’re describing, from what I understand). Specifically this:
Do not use Native mode! Use Addon-mode instead.
Jellyfin 10.10 no longer provides the shared network folder via the API, and as such native mode does not get the required information to function.
Additionally, Native mode isn’t ideal as the two-way syncing of play status doesn’t work (at least not as well). Ideally, we need to get to the bottom of why it takes OSMC longer to start playback vs. a native Kodi install on another OS.
If anyone can help troubleshoot this, I’d be more than happy to provide logs and what not!
You are right, it is part of the addon now, instead of the server … go read my posted link 
Or check the release notes: Release Release 1.0.6 · jellyfin/jellyfin-kodi · GitHub
It starts for me instantly, so from my eyes it isn’t related to OSMC or Kodi then, but related to the protocol used otherwise, which I think is http(s).
It’s not Kodi’s path substitution I was mentioning though
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Do you enable or switch to “native mode” in addon settings?
That switch shouldn’t do anything anymore, at least if you have a new Jellyfin server then version 10.10.x 
Since I have migrated from a previous version, mine is still set at native.
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Implemented the path substitution today as per your suggestions. Wanted to share findings/thoughts.
Tried both native mode and addon mode under JF addon > settings > sync > native/addon mode toggle followed by local lib reset.
Native mode: playback starts pretty much instantaneously. No spinning circle.
Addon mode: same spinning circle and then playback begins after like 4-5 seconds.
So it seems that toggle under the settings does do something to cause the unnecessary “seeking” or wait. I called it unnecessary because with everything else staying exactly the same, just switching to native mode eliminates that spinning circle / wait.
Note: Also, after library reset and kodi restart, the popup to pick native/addon mode comes up suggesting to choose addon-mode as native mode supposedly messes up with direct play. I chose native-mode and checked in JF - seems to be doing direct play just fine.
Does native mode even work without setting the path substitution first?
Prior to knowing about path substitutions and implementing them correctly I tried switching between addon/native in an effort to fix the initial delay in the playback-start. Didn’t test it extensively but was able to play files in both cases.