Stuttering and breakup when playing HEVC/x265 Files

[Varjak]

I've happily used VLC for years now, even with a few HEVC/x265 files; but now I'm having trouble playing HEVC/x265 files. When they do play, they play in a somewhat jerky fashion and the picture often pixelates.

I'm using VLC 2.2.8 because it's the last version that works on Mac OS Snow Leopard. I'm using it on a Mac Mini mid-2010 with the upgraded 2.66 Core Duo processor and 8 GB of RAM connected to an HD TV. I know this is an obsolete set-up but I only use it to watch YouTube and to play VLC videos and it works most of the time for those uses. Is there anything I can do to get the HEVC videos to play smoothly? I turned off hardware acceleration because I read elsewhere that this might help and it seemed to make a small difference. Are there any other settings that I can change that might work?

Is there another player that might work?

These files do seem to work flawlessly using VLC on an Amazon Fire Stick 4K (first gen.). If I have to, I'll get another one of those to play these videos.

Thanks.

[Varjak]

Sorry to bump this, but it's been a month and I'm hoping someone can help me out. Thanks.

[unidan]

Hi,

If you disabled hardware acceleration, check CPU consumption. On my end, it looks like your hardware isn't enough to decode HEVC.

It might seem weird compared to Fire Stick 4K, but the fire stick has dedicated hardware for HEVC, which means that it costs almost nothing to decode on this platform.