Stuttering/choppy playback of high bitrate videos

[aussie43]

Hi,

When playing back my video files with high bitrate - higher than 10Mbps, some fast moving scenes, for example ballet dancers jumping, are not smooth.
This happens even on my own rips from my own blu rays. I use XMedia Recode to convert .ts files to AVC H264.

I have Windows 10 Home 64 bit, i5-6600 processor, 8GB of RAM, all drivers updated, and use VLC player, latest version. I tried other players.
No help at all, the same thing persists.

The only thing that fixes the problem is to convert the mkv h264 files down to lower bitrates. I found that 10Mbps gives me nice and smooth playback of the problematic scenes, and I can't see any difference in quality of the picture in general.

Before I start re-coding all my files - hundreds - I am trying to seek opinion one more time if there is another quicker fix.

[jagabo]

An i5-6600 should have no problem with bitrates in excess of 100 Mb/s. Are you using GPU hardware decoding for your playback? If so, make sure the encoder settings are compatible with the hardware (in general the x264 slow preset should be fine for almost all hardware decoders, avoid slower presets until you know what your hardware supports). For example, hardware encoder generally don't support 16 reference frames and 16 consecutive b-frames. Try disabling hardware decoding in VLC.

[johnmeyer]

You should also look at the Level setting in your encoder. The super-high levels require a LOT more CPU power during playback, and not all CPUs (or GPUs) can handle those levels, even at modest bitrates.

[aussie43]

@jagabo
I am playing movies encoded by other people, so I have no control over encoder settings.
My VLC player is set to Automatic for hardware decoding, and to Allow Speed Tricks and to All in the Skip the loop filter for H264 decoding setting.

@johnmeyer
as I said above, I play movies encoded by other people.
I checked the level setting of a few, and it is mostly 4, sometimes 4.1.
I understand that this is pretty standard for 1080p movies.

I have downloaded the CnX Media Player, and will be testing it soon to see if the fast scenes stutter when I play high bitrate files.
The player is claimed to be designed for UHD files, so high bitrate should not be a problem.
It is also supposed to be optimised for Intel processors, which is my case. I do not have a separate graphics card in my PC.

[jagabo]

I have downloaded the CnX Media Player... The player is claimed to be designed for UHD files... also supposed to be optimised for Intel processors, which is my case. I do not have a separate graphics card in my PC.

You don't think every other media player for Windows is the same?