Trouble playing 1080p HEVC format on VLC, MPC, Potplayer

codech.265high-definitionmatroskamedia player

I am having trouble playing HEVC 1080p file on my system. I don't have a really strong PC, but I will give the facts:

  • Ram: 2GB
  • OS: Win 7 ultimate
  • processor: Pentium(R) Dual-Core T4500 @2.3Ghz
  • Graphic Chipset: Intel GMA4500M

I tried the latest version of the said three players to no avail. My players can smoothly play 1080p videos but sadly not the 1080p HEVC files.

  • First stop: VLC:
    • Very choppy playback. Skipping frames. Grey screens. Audio and Video out of sync. Takes too long to skip. Unwatchable.
  • Second stop: MPC-HC (CCCP)
    • Better than VLC. Doesn't take too long to skip. Audio and Video still out of sync. Choppy playback.
  • Third and final stop: Potplayer
    • A lot better than MPC. Skips fast. But a bit choppy. Very much watchable. Only problem: Audio and Video out of sync.

What I tried further(in MPC):

I tried the madVR codec, instead of CCCP; but, to my surprise, I found the playback worse and my CPU usage skyrocketing to about 90%. I now use the EVR instead of madVR.

I really want to watch the video. But how do I?

Possible Answer:

Maybe the file is broken.

Well, I tried the same file on a 1080p TV, and it played smoothly with audio and video in sync.

Second, I can easily play 1080p .mkv files smoothly. It is just those HEVC mkv files that won't play smoothly 🙁

Best Answer

You are going to find some slowdown on a machine running Windows 7 with only 2GB of RAM, a Pentium(R) Dual-Core T4500 @2.3Ghz and an Intel GMA4500M when running high-quality, heavily compressed video. The reason you're able to play normal .mkv files more smoothly is likely to do with the level of compression. This from Wikipedia:

In comparison to AVC, HEVC offers about double the data compression ratio at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate.

So because your HEVC files are more compressed, your computer is having to do a lot more work per frame to uncompress everything.

What I might suggest is uploading these videos to something like Google Drive and watch them from there, letting the cloud servers do the hard work of decompressing. It's maybe not the best possible solution, but it's at least one solid workaround, and it's worked for me when I had similar problems in the past.

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