What is your most preferable format if you would like to watch a high-definition video? 4K could be the format you may refer to. Without any doubts, 4K videos can be able to present the best quality both in audio and picture effect. While, even though you may tend to buy the physical 4K video discs for further viewing, now due to the support of Internet, you can also obtain the 4K content by downloading from the Internet. Once the 4K content has been downloaded from the Internet, you can open and play it on your VLC Media Player. But some problems may occur during the playback. In today’s article, we will talk more about 4K video and the detailed steps on how to convert 4k video to 1080P so as to perfectly play on VLC Media Player.
VLC Media Player, an open-source multimedia solution, is developed by the VideoLAN project. As a well-known, non-profit program, this free 4K player for Mac is hugely popular. It gives you the ability to play media from your computer or a disk or to stream it from the Web. We connect VLC media player with HEVC codec the moment VLC officially claims it supports HEVC/H265 encoder X265 natively. That seems to tell you VLC can play your HEVC/H265 4K 8K files on Windows and macOS. Yet, please note that it doesn't cover all the HEVC/H265 files.
Part 1: Why to Convert 4K to 1080P to Play on VLC
4K, with a new generation of Hollywood blockbuster resolution standards, it is different from the so-called high-definition TV (1920×1080 resolution) we watched at home, and it is different from the large screen of 2K resolution (2048×1080 resolution) of traditional digital cinema, but has a super-resolution of 4096×2160 resolution which contains a fine picture. The traditional HDTV is a 2.07-megapixel image, while the traditional digital cinema sees a 2.21-megapixel image. In a 4096×2160 resolution theater, you can see a high-definition picture of 8.85 megapixels.
If you have obtained the 4K digital content, and can you play 4K videos on your VLC Media Player smoothly? Based on the official VLC technical support, VLC can be compatible with 4K videos as well as other more common formats, like MP4, AVI, FLV and so on. However, the question is you may encounter some annoying issues during the playback so that you have to turn aside from 4K video to 1080P for a better viewing experience. Generally speaking, the reasons can be concluded via the following aspects.
Since 4K resolution is ultra high definition resolution, in order to present the smooth viewing effects, there are high requirements for the media players. Therefore, in many cases, while playing the 4K videos on VLC Media Player, some computer’s CPU has been occupied more than 60%, which directly affects the running speed of the computer and media player. As a result, the 4K playback will encounter stuttering issues and many playback lags will appear.
By the way, if your computer has not been equipped with the advanced audio codecs compatible with 4K content, then you would possibly encounter audio problems on your VLC Media Player. Maybe, you can see the pictures, however, VLC Media Player does not show audio. In comparison, 1080P will much be easier to be coded and supported during the playback.
By referring to the above two aspects, it is quite necessary to convert the 4K to 1080P to be played smoothly on VLC Media Player. But just have faith in 1080P, even though its high definition is not so high as 4K, it can be quiet clear and superior in both audio and picture effects.
Part 2: How to Convert 4K to 1080P on VLC
Fortunately, VLC Media Player can be used as a converter to convert 4K to 1080P. The steps can be showed below.
Step 1. Download and install VLC on your computer and you had better update VLC to be the latest version.
Step 2. Open VLC Media Player and choose “Convert/Save” option from the drop down menu of “Media”.
Step 3. Load the 4K video to the player. Once you opened the “Open Media” panel, then you can click the “Add” button to load the 4K video. Then click “Convert” icon at the bottom.
Step 4. Select a name for the converted video and select the video format. Set other parameters, including the destination route and the profile name as well as the final video format 1080P.
Step 5. Advanced settings. Furthermore, you can click the profile option with tool icon, then you are allowed to edit the selected profile. Also, you can edit the video codec, audio codec, and subtitle, frame rate, resolution and bit rate etc.
Step 6. Start conversion. Once the parameters have all been set properly, then you can click “Start” button below to start converting 4K to 1080P.
Part 3: Other Ways to Convert 4K Video to 1080P
1. Leawo Video Converter
Instead of converting 4K to 1080P on VLC, you can also take a try on another powerful video converter, which is Leawo Video Converter. In comparison, with VLC Media Player, you will only be able to convert the video in a limited feature, and you will not set any further parameters except the basic video settings. However, if you prefer to set more parameters about the 4K and 1080P videos, you can use another video converter as the alternative. Leawo Video Converter is able to rip 4K to various video formats with 100% original quality and 6X higher speed. It could support 180+ video and audio formats conversion with accuracy and no quality loss. With Leawo Video Converter, you can personalize the output 1080P video including file merging, media editing, 3D movie creating, parameter adjusting, etc with the best output quality. For the detailed tutorial, you can refer to the following steps.
Step 1. Download Leawo Video Converter and install it on your computer.
Step 2. Load the 4K video. You can click on the “Add Video”icon to import the video or just drag the 4K video directly to the main menu. Once the 4K video has been imported, then you can see it immediately on the list.
Step 3. Select the output format. Enter the “Profile” menu panel to select the 1080P video as the output video format. You can click the “Edit” button beside the green “Convert” icon to enter the “Profile” panel.
Step 4. Set the 1080P Video parameters. You can just open the drop-down box to click “Edit” instead of “Change” in the main menu. It includes “Video Codec”, “Bite Rates”, “Resolution”, “Frame Rate” and “Aspect Ratio”. As well, you can also set the audio parameters accordingly.
Step 5. Start converting. Click the big green icon “Convert” on the main interface to start converting the 4K to 1080P. Before it starts, you need to confirm the “Save to” route. Then just click “Convert” to start. Finally, you just need to wait and the conversion process will be completed in several minutes.
Once you have converted the 4K video to 1080P, then you can drag the 1080P video to your VLC Media Player for another try. Without doubts, the 1080P video will be played more smoothly than 4K video without too much stuttering issues.
2. Clone2Go
Clone2Go is another video converter you can use in this case, but 4K is unfortunately not supported for conversion in the free version, hence you need to purchase a license before use. The encoding quality is usually good, and the interface is simple and at the same time too basic for very advanced users. In our tests, this video converter was slower to convert 4K to 1080p videos in comparison to Leawo Video Converter. This converter is also available for both Windows and Mac OS. Follow the steps below to begin converting your videos.
Step 1: Click the 'Add Video' button to import the video file(s) you are going to convert, in this case 4K video(s). Alternatively, you can click 'File -> Add Video Files...' to load the video file(s). Take note that you need a license to work with 4K videos.
Step 2: Choose output format. Extend the 'Profile' category to select an output format according to your specifications. In this case, the output format should be MP4 1080p, so select ”MP4' as the output format.
Step 3: After all the steps above, click the 'Options' button on the main interface. In the 'General' tab, you can specify the folder for the output file. To start conversion, click the 'Start Encode' button.
3. CloudConvert
If you prefer not to install any software to convert 4K to 1080p, you can make use of CloudConvert which is an online conversion tool. It supports many common video file types including 4K, MP4, MOV, M2T etc., but not as much as Leawo Video Converter. The free plan will give users 25 conversion minutes per day, which basically means you need to purchase more minutes from this service for 4K videos as those require more time to convert. To start, visit their website and follow the steps below.
Step 1: Click the “Select Files” button. This will open a window from where you can conveniently locate the 4K video file(s).
Step 2: Once you have uploaded your video, click the spanner icon to set your conversion options. This includes output format, transpose, audio codec and bitrate, subtitles and more options. When you have finished, click “Okay”.
Download 4k Vlc Media Player
Step 3: Once you have finished step 2, click “Start Conversion” which will begin uploading your video file(s). When it has finished it will convert automatically and you can click the green “Download” button to save the 1080p videos to your hard drive.
Part 4: Best Free Player to Play 4K and 1080P Movie - Leawo Blu-ray Player
No matter you are playing 4K or 1080P movies, you can also turn to Leawo Blu-ray Player for better viewing experience. As a 100% free and 6-in-1 media player software, Leawo Blu-ray Player is able to present accurate playback solutions in more than 180 types of video formats, like Blu-ray, DVD, CD, HD (4K), ISO file with AVI, MPEG, WMV, ASF, FLV, MKV/MKA, 1080P. You can also enjoy the quality-lossless image for even 4K video stereo audio enjoyment as well as all kinds of the other types due to the advanced image and audio processing technology.
You can also enjoy the all region free DVD decryption support within Leawo Blu-ray Player. What’s more, you can obtain more bonus features within the player, like custom skin, language, snap screenshots, virtual remote controller. Furthermore, if you prefer to have a customized viewing panel, Leawo Blu-ray Player will allow you to set more parameters related to audio, video as well as subtitles which could be done automatically.
Part 5: Conclusion
Even though you can obtain VLC Media Player 4K support, sometimes the video lagging problems may frequently happen during the playback. But if you can convert the 4K video to other format, like 1080P which is also a high definition video format, then the stuttering issues may disappear which can undoubtedly present a more excellent picture and audio enjoyment. If you don’t insist on playing the multimedia files on VLC Media Player, I will recommend you to use Leawo Blu-ray Player as the alternative, because it can strongly be able provide accurate and respectable viewing experience of both 4K video and 1080 video content without any quality losses. By the way, if you have the urgent need to convert 4K to 1080P, then don’t forget Leawo Video Converter which can easily help you to complete the conversion process. You can enjoy the new video content in 1080P smoothly on VLC Media Player.
VLC player is probably one of the most popular video player applications around the world now. The player has so many advanced video playback functions, and can handle all kinds of different video materials. However, if you have ever tried to play an HEVC, or H.265 video with VLC, you may have encountered the choppy playback problem. So many people started to wonder, can VLC play HEVC or H.265 videos anyways? So in today’s article, we will discuss this topic and try to find a way to play the HEVC or H.265 video in the best way.
What is HEVC/H.265?
Generally speaking, HEVC/H.265 inherits the codec of AVC/H.264. The creation of HEVC aims at offering wider color gamuts to UHD HDR deliverables. Choosing which particular codec partly depends on which particular hardware is used. In the last decade, CPUs has become more powerful, more affordable and more abundant, trading storage space from hard drives to compute with CPUs has been a trend. HEVC is the newest continuation for the trend, which is handled in trading storage to compute.
In the past few years, the digital intermediates including ProRes or DNxHR finally can be converted into H.264 for using in web or broadcast. While HEVC takes up less storage space compared to H.264, but it needs more power in CPU. That means more data can be delivered into our video like higher dynamic range, higher resolutions and wider color range without requiring more bandwidth in the infrastructure.
Part 1: Can VLC Play HEVC/H.265 Video
To put it in a simple way, yes, VLC can play HEVC or H.265 videos. As an all-inclusive video player application, VLC Player has the HEVC support built-in for both the Windows version and the Mac version. So theoretically, VLC should have no problem handling HEVC or H.265 video materials.
However, having the HEVC support is one thing, being able to successfully play it is another. A lot of VLC users have reported the problem of VLC being choppy when playing an HEVC or H.265 video. What’s more, there are reports saying that VLC cannot open HEVC or H.265 videos at all. So now let’s find out why can’t VLC play HEVC or H.265 videos successfully when the application claims to have the ability to do so.
Part 2: Why VLC Gets Choppy in the HEVC Playback
There are many reasons that could lead to the HEVC playback choppy problem, and most of them have something to do with either the computer configuration, or the VLC settings.
Although VLC has claimed its native support for HEVC/H.265 codec, however, it is well known that the H.265/HEVC playback is very processor extensive, even if your computer has meet the minimum standard to playback HEVC/H.265 video, you may still suffer video playback choppy or corruption issues because of the workload of your processor.
Another reason why VLC gets choppy is the VLC settings. There are all kinds of video playback settings in VLC in order to deal with different video playback tasks. Some settings can make one kind of video playback smooth and perform well, but make another totally unable to play. So when you play HEVC videos or H.265 videos, you might focus on this kind of settings in VLC. For an example, the hardware acceleration option is one of the most common factor that might cause the VLC getting choppy problem.
Now let’s take a look at how to solve the VLC getting choppy problem when playing an HEVC or H.265 video.
Part 3: How to Solve the VLC Choppy Playback of HEVC/H.265 Video
Before you try any other fixes, you should first close other active CPU consuming tasks in your system and try play that HEVC or H.265 video again. Because as mentioned above, HEVC videos are processor extensive, and other CPU consuming tasks might make your computer unable to process the HEVC video.
If that doesn’t work you can try disabling hardware acceleration in VLC. This feature only works with H.264 streams but not for H.265/HEVC streams. Sometimes, there will be VLC skipping issues when you are playing high-definition media streaming over a network. The good news is that you can solve this problem by disabling hardware acceleration of VLC on some computers.
Here is how to disable hardware acceleration in VLC. From the Preferences panel, click 'Simple' in the lower left-hand corner, then go to Input / Codecs. Click the 'Hardware-accelerated decoding' dropdown and choose another option, or Disable it entirely.
Or, you can firstly update your VLC to VLC 3.0.0 nightly build, which has a better HEVC processing ability, and then try set the Hardware accelerated decoding to DXVA 2.0 with the steps introduced above. That might also solve the problem.
Part 4: Another Free HEVC Player - Leawo Blu-ray Player
VLC Player has the native support for HEVC videos. However, as you have seen from above, the application is sometimes so complicated that it takes you a lot of time to solve a simple problem. So, a more suggested solution for the VLC getting the choppy problem is to use another HEVC player application, one that is simpler, and just as powerful as VLC Player. If you don’t know where to get one, then I would like to recommend Leawo Blu-ray Player for you to try.
Leawo Blu-ray Player is a professional media playing application that can play all kinds of HEVC or H.265 videos without a problem. What’s more, it has the ability to not only play video and audio in 180+ digital formats but also play them with the best original quality retained even for the 1080P and 4K HD videos. Also, Leawo Blu-ray Player is capable of handling all kinds of Blu-ray materials and DVD materials in form of optical disc, ISO image and structured folder. In addition, Leawo Blu-ray Player also has many unique features that make your video viewing experience more enjoyable.
Completely free 4K playback, useful power manager, custom skin / language / background options, and the ability to play Blu-ray across region, all of these functions and abilities are integrated in this media player completely for free. If you want to try the premium version, you can even have the option to digitalize your Blu-ray disc and rip the content to HD MKV digital videos. A super useful function for all of the high-quality movie lovers. So with Leawo Blu-ray Player, you will never have to worry about the HEVC video being choppy while being played.
Part 5: Try Converting HEVC/H.265 to another Format
As mentioned above, one of the major reason for some players to be choppy when playing an HEVC or H.265 video, is that the format is processor extensive. So if you can convert the HEVC or H.265 video to another format, you can get the problem out of the picture and enjoy your video smoothly. If you want to solve the playback being a choppy problem by converting the HEVC or H.265 video format, you can try use Leawo Video Converter to do the conversion.
Leawo Video Converter is an all-inclusive video converter that can convert most of the popular video formats between each other. The number of video formats that the program supports is up to 180, so it can basically convert all of the videos you can possibly encounter in your daily life, including all kinds of HEVC videos. What’s more, not only can Leawo Video Converter convert videos between different formats, it can also allow you to do further editing to the output video, and retain the video quality as the original. You can do trimming, cropping, changing effects, adding watermark, converting 2D to 3D, removing noise and more adjustments to your video so that it can have better performance while playing.
Converting an HEVC video from its original format to another format using Leawo Video Converter is not hard at all. All you need to do is to follow the guide shown below and you should be able to get it done easily.
Step 1: Download Leawo Video Converter and install it on your computer. When you launch the program, you will see six different function modules. Click “Video Converter” to enter the video converter function module. You can also click the “Convert” button above to do the same.
4k Video Stuttering In Vlc
Step 2: On the main interface, you can see an “Add Video” button at the upper left corner. Click on the button and locate your source video file to import it into the program. You can also directly drag and drop the file onto the main interface. If you have more video imported, you can click the “merge” button at the upper right corner to merge them into one.
4k Media Player Software
Step 3: When your file is imported, you need to set an output format for the conversion task. To change the output format, simply click on the “MP4 Video” next to the green “Convert” button, choose “Change”, and find your target format form the pop-out format selection window.
Step 4: When you are ready to start the conversion, click the green “Convert” button to call out the convert settings panel. On the panel, you need to designate an output directory, and then click the “Convert” icon to start the conversion.
Part 6: Conclusion
HEVC or H.265 videos can bring us a better video admiring experience with its advanced video compressing technology. However, the processor extensive video compressing standard also makes it easy to get choppy when you play the video with VLC video players. There are a lot of solutions for you to fix the VLC getting choppy problem. None of them is hard as long as you know the actual cause for your VLC’s problem.
Alternatively, you can use a VLC alternative player application like Leawo Blu-ray Player to play the HEVC video and get around all of the troubles with VLC’s settings. Converting the HEVC video to another format with video converter applications like Leawo Video Converter can also solve the problem easily. With these fixes provided today, I believe you can solve the VLC getting choppy problem and enjoy your HEVC videos comfortably on your PC.