Play GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 with VLC

Play GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 with VLC

Different from the previous GoPro camera models, the newly released GoPro Hero 6 uses the new High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) – also known as H.265 to record high quality 4K 60fps video at roughly half the size with equivalent image quality. After the recording, some people recommend VLC as the excellent free, cross-platform to view GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 files, however, a lot of users complain that they encounter video lagging, choppy, glitch or not playing issues when working GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 with VLC. The following article will show you the effective solution to fix the VLC GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 playing issues.

Hardware requirements to for 4K HEVC playback on computer

First, the Mac needs to be on Sierra not el Capitan. Windows 10 should work but you still need the appropriate hardware for it.
Here is a list of what is supposed to be the minimum hardware requirements:
Intel 6th-generation ‘Skylake’ Core processors or newer
AMD 6th-generation ‘Carizzo’ APUs or newer
AMD ‘Fiji’ GPUs (Radeon R9 Fury/Fury X/Nano) or newer
Nvidia GM206 GPUs (GeForce GTX 960/950) or newer
Other Nvidia GeForce GTX 900 series GPUs have partial HEVC hardware decoding support
Qualcomm Snapdragon 805/615/410/208 SoCs or newer. Support ranges from 720p decoding on low-end parts to 4K playback on high-end parts.
Nvidia Tegra X1 SoCs or newer
Samsung Exynos 5 Octa 5430 SoCs or newer
Apple A8 SoCs or newer
Some MediaTek SoCs from mid-2014 onwards

How to play GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 with VLC?

The libde265 team released a production version of the popular VLC media player for Windows capable to play HEVC 4K Ultra HD video. The minimum system requirements for viewing 4K UHD video is a PC with an Intel or AMD CPU equivalent to
– Intel Core i7 with 4 cores, running at 2.3GHz.

The VLC media player with libde265 HEVC video codec is available for download on GitHub:
https://github.com/strukturag/vlc-2.1/releases/latest
The .zip version can be used without installation, just extract to any folder and run the “vlc.exe”.
The source code changes are available on:
https://github.com/strukturag/vlc
https://github.com/strukturag/vlc-2.1

Play GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 with VLC on slow computer

If your computer doesn’t meet the minimum hardware requirements to play 4K HEVC video, then the best solution is to compress GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 to VLC much capable handling 1080p H.264 file format. Here, you can get the job easily completed by downloading our best 4K H.265 Compressor – Pavtube Video Converter. The program has perfect importing support for the 4K H.265 video shot with GoPro Hero 6 camera, thanks to its batch conversion mode, you can load multiple GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 video into the application for conversion at one time. This powerful yet simple to use application can assist you to efficiently transcode and downscale GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 to 1080p or 720p in H.264 format for smooth playback experience in VLC on even slow computer.

Related article: Compress 4K to 1080p | Play Phantom 4 4K on VLC | Play 4K Video on VLC 

Tips: The program supports hardware encoding acceleration, you can get up to 6x faster H.264 codec encoding speed as long as you run your computer on Graphic cards that support Nvidia CUDA or AMD App technology.

Pavtube Video Converter can run perfectly on Windows 10/8.1/8/7, for Mac users, you can switch to download Pavtube Video Converter for Mac to complete the conversion on macOS High Sierra, macOS Sierra, Mac OS X El Capitan, Mac OS X Yosemite, Mac OS X Mavericks, etc.

Step by Step to Convert and Compress GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 for VLC Playing

Step 1: Load GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 video.

Start the program on your computer, click File > Load Video/Audio or Load from folder button to import GoPro Hero 6 4K H.265 files into the program.

Step 2: Choose VLC smooth playback formats.

As a powerful media player, VLC can handle many video formats. Here, we choose one of its much capable playback file formats “H.264 HD Video(*.mp4)” under “HD Video” main category. You can also choose other VLC supported HD file formats according to your own needs.

Step 3: Compress 4K video to 1080p.

Click “Settings” on the main interface to open Profile Settings window, click “Size(pix)” drop-down list to select “1920*1080” as the final resolution for output video for smooth playback effect with VLC. You can also tweak other settings to make them more fit with VLC.

Step 4: Start the final conversion process.

After all the settings is completed, hit right-bottom Convert button to start to convert and compress GoPro Hero 6 4K video to VLC best compatible 1080p H.264 formats.

When the conversion is finished, click “Open Output Folder” icon on the main interface to open the folder with generated files. Now you will have no video lagging or stuttering issue when playing GoPro Hero 6 4K video with VLC.