Playing 4K video files

[SlimCini]

Morning all. My PC (plex server) is connected by hdmi to my 4k TV. I simplistically thought a locally saved 4k video file, saved on the ssd, would play without much problem. How wrong I am. Stuttering galore on VLC. Is a dedicated gpu required just to play 4k video files?!

There's no streaming involved here. It's directly connected to the TV... Any thoughts?

 

[Oussebon]

Have you tried software other than VLC? There seem to be some VLC specific issues, including disabling hardware acceleration sometimes giving better performance even when you have a dGPU. I've seen https://mpc-hc.org/ mentioned as an alternative, or even the default Windows ones (Films and Tv app I think).

Have you tried playing the file via the Plex app on the PC out of interest? I'm pretty sure I've had Plex insist on transcoding things when playing them on the PC, while other software would just play the file.

 

[Wozza63]

Is it x265 format? Tried playing a couple of these on my Fire TV Stick (probably comparable hardware to a TV) and it would barely run.

 

[Oussebon]

If he's playing it on the PC with the TV just being as an output, it should be the i5 6600T doing the work rather than the TV's processor.

 

[Wozza63]

Hmmm, I'm not sure how Plex does it honestly. But 4K and x265 could potentially be putting a heavy load on that i5 whilst also streaming it. It tends to put a pretty heavy workload on any CPU that doesn't have a dedicated decoder (only Kaby Lake has it).


Edit: Just done a little benchmark of my own. 4K x265 playing results in about 50% CPU load on my FX-6300 (at 4.2GHz) which would be pretty comparable to the i5 6600T. Adding Plex on top of that would mean quite a large load if it is the case that Plex does the processing.

 

[SlimCini]

Plex is not involved and there is no streaming. I tried initially playing it in the plex player but stuttering made me give up. So I then quit out of plex and played the file locally and direct from the ssd, using the TV as my 'monitor'. Still Stuttering in VLC as well as the native windows software. So it seems an i5 can't play 4k video? Really? Does a UHD bluray player have something in it more powerful than an i5 or something?! How the heck do THEY play those files?!

 

[Wozza63]

It's not necessarily something more powerful. The Blu-Ray player will have a dedicated decoder to make it much more efficient. The CPU on the PC probably won't. What file/video codec formats are you using?