Play 4K Video with QuickTime Player

Play 4K Video with QuickTime Player

Category : 4K Formats , Desktop Player

For Mac users who have a lot of personal 4K video shot with your iPhone, iPad or cameras, you will come the idea to play the 4K video with QuickTime Player, the default and pre-installed media player app on your Mac computer. However, a lot of people complain that they often suffer the video playback choppy or stuttering issues when using QuickTime Player to view 4K video just as the conditions listed below:

“Good morning, I am shooting video on my mavic with all the default camera settings (4K, .mov). When I try to play the video back in QuickTime I experience stuttering and choppiness when viewing on my brand new one month old late 2016 MacBook Pro.”

Why suffer 4K playback choppy issue with QuickTime Player?

As a matter of fact, it is a common hardware issue, your Mac computer is not powerful enough to handle 4K video playback. To play 4K video on Mac computer, make sure that your Mac computer meet the minimum requirement listed below:
– Mac OS X 10.6 – 10.13
– Intel Core2 Duo 2.4GHz processor or higher recommended
– 512 MB RAM or higher recommended
– 250 MB of free disk space

Other things to consider:
– You need to have a monitor which is capable of playing back 4K video if you want to properly play 4K.
– Even if your computer meets the requirements, you may find that 4K video plays back choppy. This is due to the immense processing power required to play 4K.

Fix QuickTime player 4K video playback choppy issues

To smoothly view 4K video with QuickTime player, it would be a good option for you to compress 4K to 1080p or 720p with smaller file size. Here, you can get the job easily done with our best Mac 4K Video Compressor – Pavtube Video Converter for Mac. The program has full support for all 4K video encoded with different compression codec such as H.264, H.265, Prores or container file formats like AVI, WMV, MP4, MOV, MKV, FLV, TS, MXF, XAVC, XAVC S, etc. The program supports batch conversion mode, so that you can load multiple 4K video into the application for converting and compressing to QuickTime player most favorable QuickTime MOV files with perfect quality.

Related article: Play 4K MXF on QuickTime Player | Play 4K with MX Player | Play 4K Video with VLC

To downscale 4K to 1080p, make sure to adjust output file resolution as 1980*1020 or 1020*720 in the program’s profile settings window. You can also tweak other settings according to your own needs.

How to Compress 4K to 1080p for QuickTime Player Smooth Playback on Mac?

Step 1: Load 4K video. 

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.

 Load 4K video files

Step 2: Output QuickTime player supported file formats.

Clicking the Format bar, from its drop-down list, select QuickTime Player best compatible “MOV – QuickTime(*.mov)” under “Common Video” main category.

Output QuickTime player best compatible file formats

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, select “1980*1020” or “1080*720”.

Step 4. Start 4K video to QuickTime player conversion.

Click “Convert” to let this smart converter start transcoding 4K to QuickTime .mov with 1080p or 720p resolution on Mac. When the conversion is done, you can play the converted videos in QuickTime player without hassle.


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