Issues with playing 4k files
 

Hi Everyone,

I thought I’d share with you some issues that I’ve encountered with trying to play 4k content in the hope it may help those in a similar position.

A couple of weeks ago, John sent me a sample 4k file to look at. Initially, it played as an audio only file (displaying the blue note symbol). I thought it was a Codec issue, so with the help of John I located a suitable Codec at the k-lite site. The result was that the video displayed but was both jerky and lagged the sound track. I tried it on several other players but the result was the same.

I then used the resource monitor of my machine to look at the memory usage and found that the CPU was running flat out at 100%. With a bit of further digging I found that my machine (an Asus A54C) doesn’t have a separate graphics card and relies on the CPU memory to run. The upshot is basically the machine isn’t really geared up to support 4k, although maybe by stopping a lot of processes it possibly could run them.

To be honest, it isn’t a problem to me as I haven’t got the hardware (screen) to take advantage of 4k video and I usually download the MP4 SD versions of the files in any case.

So the upshot is if you want to view the 4k content and you have issues try loading a codec and if that doesn’t work try looking at your system and hardware to see if they support 4k. There may be an option to update your computer drivers in certain cases to make them compatible. Don’t forget that the 4k files can still be downloaded ok even if you can’t view them – you just need another 4k compatible device to run them on.

Hope that this information is useful and maybe saves someone a bit of time.

Chris

Thanks for the info. Will look into this myself.

Most 4k issues are down to the player you use rather than your PC. I imagine most people use WMP or VLC & neither are very good with 4K uhd. Try using either GOM player or Zoomplayer. Both play 4k perfectly for me & I am using a ten year old HP computer.
Another aspect of 4k sometimes not realised, even though you may not have the hardware ( screen ) to fully appreciate uhd what it does give you is the ability to zoom in without any loss of quality. It is great fun to get the girls face filling your screen in great quality before doing the same with the rest of her!