Problems with playing 4k x265 files

[Teague]

Hello,

When I play a mkv x265 file on VLC, it stutters, freezes and sometimes crashes. It won't work
It also uses a lot CPU.
When I play it with windows media player or movies and series, it works just fine, it uses like nothing of my CPU ( 7/8% ) or memory, but with some files it won't play sound, only video. Is there maybe a solution for?
I also downloaded an other media player Potplayer, it works fine, but it uses all my memory and CPU.

Info about my machine:
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
CPU: i5-7600 3.5 Ghz
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3000MHz DDR4
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB)
HD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB

Questions are, why doesn't VLC player works with 4k files and all the other programs do, 2nd why does VLC and Podplayer uses so much cpu and memory when windows media player and movies and series doesn't do that, 3rd Why does some files doesn't play sound on windows media player.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,

Teague

[sneaker]

The HEVC software decoder in VLC is slow. Other players either use a faster software decoder or use the hardware decoding of your Nvidia or Kaby Lake GPU.

I don't know if VLC supports HEVC hardware decoding. Their site doesn't mention it. Try activating hardware decoding like explained in the site I linked. If it doesn't work try a nightly version of VLC 3.0.

MPC-HC 64 has good software and hardware decoding for HEVC, I can recommend it. While playing go "Play"->"Filters"->"LAV Video Decoder" and set hardware decoder to "DXVA2 (copy-back)" and make sure the "HEVC" and "HD" + "UHD (4K)" checkboxes on the right are ticked. Then restart the player. I assume PotPlayer must have a similar option but I'm not very familiar with that player.

[Teague]

Hey Sneaker,

I posted also on vlc forum and got kinda the same answer as u gave me.

"Try VLC 3.0.0 nightly build.

And set it to use DXVA:
Tools -> Preferences -> Video
Output = Automatic

Tools -> Preferences -> Input/Codecs
Hardware accelerated decoding = DXVA 2.0

Then save, exit and restart VLC."

It solved my problems. Thanks Sneaker

[Teague]

Hello,

After my reinstall of windows 10,
I have the same problem again, 4k movies uses a lot of CPU
VLC 90+%, PotPlayer 55%.

Setted both players on DXVA , but that doesn't work now anymore somehow
It's a MP4 file now

What can I do now?

Regards,

Teague

[sophisticles]

When you reinstalled Windows 10 (why did you have to reinstall anyway?) did you reinstall the Nvidia drivers?

[Teague]

I had software problems.
Yes, I did reinstall the nvidia drivers

It's like the mediaplayers aren't finding my GPU

[timath321]

Hey guys!!!just found a solution here and i wanted to share it with you!!! like you i wanted to play some 4k movie on my pc but with the x265 codec i was unable to play it properly even with with 6700k and gtx1070 setup. ive tried vlc, 5kplayer, searched codec.... but nothing worked fine so after a deep research i found a super software named: dvdfab player 3. and it all solved my problems and i can play my movie from an external hhd(seagate backup plus) so that's it hope it will help you. peace and happy new year !!

[Ollie947732B]

Hello,

When I play a mkv x265 file on VLC, it stutters, freezes and sometimes crashes. It won't work
It also uses a lot CPU.
When I play it with windows media player or movies and series, it works just fine, it uses like nothing of my CPU ( 7/8% ) or memory, but with some files it won't play sound, only video. Is there maybe a solution for?
I also downloaded an other media player Potplayer, it works fine, but it uses all my memory and CPU.

Info about my machine:
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
CPU: i5-7600 3.5 Ghz
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3000MHz DDR4
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB)
HD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB

Questions are, why doesn't VLC player works with 4k files and all the other programs do, 2nd why does VLC and Podplayer uses so much cpu and memory when windows media player and movies and series doesn't do that, 3rd Why does some files doesn't play sound on windows media player.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,

Teague

You may need 2 minutes to read the below explanation if you wanna really know deeper about your 4K x265 video playback.

1. 4K x265, compared with 4K x264, will be at least 50% smaller in file size. But the higher compression efficiency comes at a big price: increased computational complexity. That needs up to 10X more compute power than H264 4K video playback.

2. Due to x265 high-demanding in compute power, you can't successfully play 4K x265 video unless you enable GPU hardware acceleration on your computer.
As I can see, your computer i5-7600 3.5 Ghz supports Intel Quick Sync Video hardware acceleration tech. Congrats!

3. Now we should talk about 4K 2160p high resolution. 4K is around 4 times greater than 1080p in pixels. So you can imagine 4K is also much more demanding than 1080p in your computer configurations (like RAM, GPU level, GPU memory, etc.). But what you may not know is that the playback of 4K video in H265 codec is more complicated, which is closely related with more hardware configurations of your computer, not just the video player software.

You can check this page. I find it explains in details.
https://www.macxdvd.com/mac-dvd-video-converter-how-to/4k-hevc-processing-convert-play...ccelerated.htm

If your computer doesn't meet those strict requirements, you'd better change to another computer to playback your 4K x265 video.