[Solved] VLC H.265 HEVC 4K Playback Problems - 5KPlayer

Common VLC H.265/HEVC Playback Issues:

Problem 1:

Playing H.265 encoded videos on VLC Player 2.2.1 and get the errors like [Codec not supported: VLC could not decode the format "hevc" (MPEG-H Part2/HEVC (H.265))"]

Solution 1: Try the latest version 3.0.0 VLC for H265 HEVC playback. Although the nightly version of VLC highlights in Blu-ray playback, VLC HEVC and other codecs decoding abilities have been substantially enhanced on average. Tough H.265 VLC codec pack is not recommended, that's your choice to make to help solve VLC not playing GoPro HEVC 4K videos and other playback issues.

Solution 2: Turn to 5KPlayer – best replacement of VLC for H.265 playback. H265 HEVC exclusive 5KPlayer freeware with in-built H.265/H.264 codecs plays HEVC videos in whatever format – MKV/AVI/MP4 without burden. It has wide format support as well as strong rendering power.

Problem 2:

Playing h265/HEVC in VLC, you get choppy playbacks and endless hiccups and glitches which are largely resulted from the software decoding difficulties and lack of hardware support. This is not technically the problem of VLC; it's the problem of overall software decoding. Software decoding files compressed in H.265 will generally cause video-audio delay or even framedrop. The UVD decoding engine of AMD has boosted the capability of many CPUs for software decoding H.264, but it cannot catch up with H.265 decoding, and it takes effort to spread codec support to countless operating systems.

Solution 1: You can purchase an intel-i7-core processor for pure software decoding of H.265/HEVC, or get a great GPU for hardware acceleration to help decoding H.265. Otherwise, you may have to bow to the hardware reality.

Solution 2: Convert H.265 to H.264 ordinary compression format with proper converter software. Common computers now can handle H.264 decoding with average intel i5 Processer pretty well. So, why not bend the higher bar for H.265 ubiquity a little bit.