Play 4K Video on Mac (macOS High Sierra Included)

Play 4K Video on Mac (macOS High Sierra Included)

4K playback support had already available on many Mac computer since Mac OS X 10.9.3. The recently released macOS High Sierra even enables 4K HEVC content playback on Mac system with a sixth-generation Intel Core processor or newer. From this great update, we can also get some disappointed news, you will fail to play 4K HEVC video on Mac computer equipped with the previous version of processor. Such as Core i5 or Core i3. In addition, even if your Mac computer meet the requirements to handle 4K HEVC video, you may still fail to play other unsupported 4K video such as 4K MXF, 4K XAVC/XAVC S, 4K Prores, etc on Mac.

Solutions to play any 4K video on Mac

Solution 1: Download 4K video player for Mac

Although you can’t directly play 4K video with the built-in video player offered by Mac, but you can try to download some third-party 4K video player for Mac. The following article will share you 4 best 4K Video player for Mac.

Best 4K video player for Mac

Top 1: Cisdem Video Player

If you often playback your movie in any format, you can’t miss out Cisdem Video Player for Mac, this is absolutely one of the best free video player tools. Cisdem 4K video player is pretty stable, flexible and lightweight audio and video player around, it is intuitive, and smooth to playback movies, works perfectly. You are able to play 1080P/4K video files without bugs or artifacts. All image, action, still or moving of the video, is delicately displayed. Throw favorite movies at it, and start to play virtually any video & audio file in a snap, you will get much watching happiness.

Top 2: VLC Media Player

VLC is one of the most popular best free media players, offering 4K playback initially at version 2.1 which was released in 2013. Just like the above mentioned 4K video player, it stays far away from spyware, ads and doesn’t track users. It allows you to input 4K videos encoded by virtually all codecs for playing. Despite that some VLC users said that 4K video is choppy or lagging, it is still a choice.

VLC is also a multifunctional media player. Besides serving as a (4K) video player for PC, Mac and Linux, it can also play DVDs, audios, stream media over computer networks and transcode multimedia files.

Top 3: Divx Player

DivX Player is the first of its kind, award-winning software offering free HEVC playback, including Ultra HD (4K), a must-have for those who appreciate high-quality video. Player is also optimized for movies, TV shows and web video clips in the Internet’s most popular formats, including AVI, DIVX, MKV, MP4 and more.

Top 4: 5K Player

For 4K playback, we can’t forget 5KPlayer, which is an excellent and the best free video player for 4K video files. It highlights with the support for 4K/8K UHD movies, along with the feature of AirPlay streaming video music from an iPad or iPhone to a PC. 5KPlayer is a toolbox of free (MKV) HD video player, music player, AirPlay media streamer and online video downloader. It is designed for playing 4K/5K/1080p HD videos, DVDs and radio with revolutionary design. It lets you get the awesome playing results.

Solution 2: Compress or convert 4K video for Mac smooth viewing

If your Mac computer is not powerful enough to handle 4K resolution video such as 4K HEVC video or the 4K video such as 4K MXF, 4K XAVC/XAVC S, 4K Prores that you try to play on Mac is not supported by either the default media player app or above listed 4K Video player app. Then the best solution is downscaling and transcoding 4K video to Mac computer more capable handling 1080p or 720p video.

Here, you can get the job easily done with downloading our best 4K Video Converter application – Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac. The program has enhanced media compatibility with 4K video encoded with various different compression codec such as H.265, H.264, Prores or container file format like AVI, WMV, MP4, MOV, MKV, FLV, TS, MXF, XAVC, XAVC S, etc. With the program, you can easily compress 4K video to 1080P or 720P video in various file format including H.264 HD MP4, H.264 HD MOV, H.265 HD, MPEG-4 HD MP4, MPEG-2 HD, MPEG-TS HD, MKV HD, WMV HD, Divx HD, AVI HD, BDAV HD, etc for viewing on Mac with media player software. Or directly output a device preset profile formats for transferring and viewing on iPhone, iPad or streaming to Apple TV.

Thanks to the batch conversion mode of the the program, you can load multiple 4K video into the program for conversion at one time to save your precious time. What’s more, it keeps constant update with perfect support for the new Mac OS, therefore, just feel free to download our program even if you have upgrade your Mac OS to the new macOS High Sierra.

How to Transcode and Compress 4K Video for Mac (macOS High Sierra Included) Playing?

Step 1: Load 4K video into the program.

Download the free trial version of the program. Launch it on your computer. Click “File” menu and select “Add Video/Audio” or click the “Add Video” button on the top tool bar to import source 4K video files into the program.

Step 2: Define the output format.

Clicking the Format bar, from its drop-down list, to compress 4K video to 1080p, just choose to output one of your desired HD file formats such as “H.264 HD Video(*.mp4)” under “HD Video” main category.

Step 3: Compress 4K to 1080p.

Click “Settings” on the main interface to open “Profile Settings” window, in video section, from “Size(pix)” drop-down list, choose “1980*1020” or “1080*720” to compress 4K to 1080p.

Step 4: Begin the conversion process.

After all setting is completed, hit the “Convert” button at the right bottom of the main interface to begin the conversion process from 4K video to 1080p or 720p video conversion or compression process.

When the conversion is finished, click “Open Output Folder” icon on the main interface to open the folder with generated files.