The VideoLAN Forums

Hello, I have a new Samsung NX500 digital camera which takes 1080p (60fps) and 4K video (24/30fps) in HEVC format. Neither of these resolutions are playing in the latest VLC player on my desktop. I have a well spec'd machine (i7, 32gb DDR3, GTX 970, Hybrid HDD, windows 10 pro) yet the video plays choppy and flickers to gray as seen in the youtube video below.

Any ideas on this? I read that the latest VLC versions have supported HEVC.

https://youtu.be/SD-CM54u_mw

Thanks for all the work done to maintain VLC player, Ive been using it and recommending it for more than a decade but never joined the forum until today.

Even with high spec'd systems, you should not be able to decode HEVC without hardware acceleration. Especially not 4K.

Even with high spec'd systems, you should not be able to decode HEVC without hardware acceleration. Especially not 4K.

Just to be clear, what do you mean by hardware acceleration? Are we talking GPU assisted? Is this a limitation of VLC or a hardware component on my system?

Am I reading correctly that if I "downgraded" from a GTX970 to a GTX960, I would have hardware support for decoding H.265? If i had that, would VLC player be able to take advantage of hardware decoding?

Is the Gtx 960 the only card on the market right now that will provider smooth playback of 1080p H.265 video?

No. But nobody can warranty that buying hardware will solve your problem. Personally, I'd be reluctant to recommend buying anything because I can't take responsibility if it does not satisfy you.

No. But nobody can warranty that buying hardware will solve your problem. Personally, I'd be reluctant to recommend buying anything because I can't take responsibility if it does not satisfy you.

I am not looking for a warranty and I wouldn't blame someone on a forum trying to help for that. H.265 isn't new anymore and at this point with 4K happening so quick it is a common sense compression standard to support quickly. It appears that VLC and windows 10 have done their part, although I do find it frustrating that with an i7 only 60% of the cpu is being used to play video yet it cannot keep up and question if that is software efficiency. It sounds like intel/amd and nvidia are the slackers here.

I would be interested in hearing if anyone else is able to play 1080p or 4K H.265 from a samsung NX1 or NX500 smoothly and what their hardware specs are. I would also be interested to know if VLC player would support hardware decoding via a GTX 960 since it has the capabilities to support H.265.

From NVIDIA, GTX950 and GTX960 support HEVC; other vendors also support it but I don't know the references. VLC supports HEVC hardare decoding from version 3.0 only.

It will take some time and investments before libavcodec H.265 decoder reaches optimal multi-core performance on Core-i7.

H.265/HEVC is a video codec with high quality, not sure if all device can support it with fluent playback. Transcode H.265 to H.264 MP4, and it is a more common video type for almost all portable device.