H.265 (HVEC) Poor/choppy video playback - FAST Laptop

[MrCrazyJOEMAN]

Hi,

When playing h.265 videos either in 4k or even just full hd they lag like hell! I have played them with ease on my Samsung Galaxy Note 4, and on a few other laptops/pc just fine with no issues.

My laptop should have no problem playing these. All drivers up to date, Fresh windows 10 install, No power saving enabled in bios or anywhere else.

Also have tried multiple video players (5kplayer, VLC, Divx) Codec seems fine, just performance is suffering somewhere.

Specs:
16gb Ram
i7 5500u @2.40
Intergrated intel graphics/ Switchable to dedicated Nvidia Card.
512gb SSD

If anybody could find a reason why and/or a way around this that would be amazing!

Thanks,

Joe

[sneaker]

Try MPC-HC 64 bit. Check with coretemp or cpu-z that your cpu is not throttling down due to heat or wrong energy saving settings. At least FullHD should work. 4k may be impossible for your laptop depending on the complexity (fps, bitrate, bitdepth) of the file.

[MrCrazyJOEMAN]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I just tried using that as you said, I must say it loads the footage better than any other player has so far.

I have downloaded it but I'm not sure what to look at on cpu-z.

Footage seems to run slightly better but still not fully smooth if i enable D3D fullscreen on MPC-HC.

It may be also the fact that i am running 60fps footage.

4k Files run perfectly in h.264, I am suprised at how much more power must be required if that is the case especially where i can run the footage perfectly on something as low powered as a Note 4.

The other main laptop i looked through the footage on hada 6200u Processor and played them perfectly.

Thanks again
Joe

[sneaker]

I have downloaded it but I'm not sure what to look at on cpu-z.

Look at "Core Speed" during playback. It should reach at least 2400 MHz, better yet 2900 MHz due to Turbo Boost.

Footage seems to run slightly better but still not fully smooth if i enable D3D fullscreen on MPC-HC.

Also try different renderer, e.g. "Enhanced Video Renderer" (the one without "(custom presenter)").

The other main laptop i looked through the footage on hada 6200u Processor and played them perfectly.

6200u is Skylake. It has fixed-function decoder for 8 bit HEVC. 5500u is Broadwell, unfortunately. (But 4K is often 10 bit so even Skylake kinda sucks. Need Kaby Lake or Nvidia Pascal for good 4K laptop.)

[MrCrazyJOEMAN]

Look at "Core Speed" during playback. It should reach at least 2400 MHz, better yet 2900 MHz due to Turbo Boost.

So Core Speed is showing around 2395 MHz so that seems normal, however it's not going up past that to 2900 MHz

Also try different renderer, e.g. "Enhanced Video Renderer" (the one without "(custom presenter)").

Had a go at that suggestion and it didn't seem to make any difference.

6200u is Skylake. It has fixed-function decoder for 8 bit HEVC. 5500u is Broadwell, unfortunately. (But 4K is often 10 bit so even Skylake kinda sucks. Need Kaby Lake or Nvidia Pascal for good 4K laptop.)

Ahh I see, that makes sense. So being a newer gen Processor it can focus more on h265 than my 5th gen can essentially I guess.

If there is no way to force it up to 2900 MHz i may be at a loss then.

Thanks
Joe

[klcp]

Disable hardware acceleration in the decoder. Your processor can only do hybrid acceleration, which usually performs worse than pure software decoding.

[MrCrazyJOEMAN]

Disable hardware acceleration in the decoder. Your processor can only do hybrid acceleration, which usually performs worse than pure software decoding.

Hi, I can't find where to disable hardware encoding. Could you point me in the right direction please?

[sneaker]

In MPC-HC during playback click "Play"->"Filters"->"LAV Video [...]". There set hardware decoding to "None". But I think it is already the default anyways.

[MrCrazyJOEMAN]

Thanks for the reply, I tried the settings and still not much joy... When i enable NVIDIA CUVID as the hardware decoder the video plays silky smooth for about 3 seconds then i hear the fans kick in on my laptop and it starts to play choppy again.

[klcp]

Windows Control Panel > Power Settings > select High Performance mode

It is possible that it is overheating causing thermal throttling, meaning the CPU and/or GPU runs at slower speed to reduce heat production.