VLC 3 and 4k HVEC hardware decoding

[Connie Mac]

The newest version of VLC (3.0.0) was released late last week and is supposed to have automatic HVEC hardware decoding. My Coffee Lake hackintosh (8700, i7 6-core, UHD 630 gpu) decodes UHD Blu-Ray ripped 4k/DTS-MA Blade Runner 2049 just fine; however, my 2017 MacBook Pro Kaby Lake (dual-core i7, HD 630) stutters with it. This file is in HVEC and comes in at 70 GB. Really frustrating because I was expecting the playback to be much better on the MacBook Pro than it is. Is there a software package or other way of verifying that VLC is using the gpu for video decoding? Or perhaps the lagging is because of the DTS-MA audio? It would be easy enough to rip with just the DTS 7.1 but I still would like to hear the experiences of others.

Has anyone tried one of the other Coffee Lake cpus (i3, i5) with 4k rips to see if it handles them well? I am planning to upgrade my home theater to a 4k projector, but without a suitable means of playback there's no need to do so. I don't want a dedicated graphics card but I also don't want to spend $380 on a cpu if I don't need to.

 

[michelb76]

Not answering your question as I don't know, but have you tried this player to see if you get a different result?
https://lhc70000.github.io/iina/
Played some of my heavier files a lot better than VLC below version 3.

You could check in VLC if the stuttering is IO bound, maybe your disk can't fill the buffer fast enough?

 

[bogdanw]

+1 for IINA, VLC is bloated

 

[Connie Mac]

Had not seen that app before. I'll give it a try. Looks like a fork of MPV?

 

[Connie Mac]

Wow, fantastic. MBP works great with this app. I'll try my Sandy Bridge quad core i5/HD3000 computer next. Thanks for the update.

 

[_mikey]

wow thanks for the tip on iina this player is excellent - playing hevc 10bit on mbp that i could not play before.

 

[ital]

Just wanted to chime in I have stuttering every 3 seconds using the new VLC 3.0 (and even the 3.0.1 and 4.0 nightlies) while playing x265 2160p content. (4k x264 plays fine though with VLC 3.0). I had never heard of Iina until this post.
Well- it plays the x265 smooth as butter. I'm quite impressed. Think you for the recommendation!

(Z270, 7700k, GTX980ti with the .104 driver, 10.13.2)