I noticed that when I play videos on my MacBook Pro and Dell PC, the videos are choppy and laggy. I was really surprised that I could not play my HD videos on any of my computers.
I was really impressed with how smooth and fast the video player on my Windows 10 PC was when I downloaded a 4K video from my iPhone onto my computer.
However, if you have a powerful graphics card and an appropriate software, you can easily play high-definition videos on your computer. This is because the video card will take care of the video encoding and decoding for you, so all you need to do is play the videos.
Computer games and videos can often look better or be smoother when played on a computer with an integrated graphics card.
To play high-definition videos on your computer, you’ll need a video card with at least 1GB of memory and a dual-core processor. However, if you have a semi-decent video card and enough memory, you can get your machine to play HD videos smoothly. ..
In this article, I’ll go through all the different methods you can try to get your system to play HD video smoothly. If you have figured out something else not mentioned here, feel free to post a comment and let us know!
File Location
To play a video locally on your hard disk, you need to copy the video files over to your hard disk and then play them from there.
The only time it would be better not to use your hard drive is if you have one of those 5400 RPM drives. Then the hard drive could be a bottleneck. In those cases, the videos may lag because of the slow hard drive.
upgrading your hard drive to a 7200 rpm drive is still the best option for most people, but if you can afford it, go for a solid state drive instead. SSDs are much faster than traditional hard drives and are becoming more and more common. ..
If you can’t fit your videos on your computer screen, they should be transferred to an external drive that is connected to your computer with a fast connection like Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, Firewire 800, eSATA, etc. If you’re transferring videos over USB 1.0/2.0, then the videos will lag even if the graphics card is fast!
System Resources
To avoid this, make sure that you close all other programs that are not essential to your work. This includes browser windows, background processes, and any other programs that are not currently in use. ..
If you are having trouble playing the video, try one of the following: -Close down any programs that may be interfering with the video playback -Restart your computer -Update your graphics drivers ..
In this video, you can try changing the priority of the video player to High so that it gets more of the processor power.
I do not suggest changing the priority for the process of your video player, i.e. VLC, MPC-HC, etc.
If you are using a dedicated graphics card, it is not necessary to do this. However, if you are using the integrated graphics card that is found on most CPUs, it can be helpful.
Convert to Another Format
If you don’t mind, you can also convert your videos to another format. For example, if your videos are all in AVCHD format, you can convert them to m2ts or a different format like MP4, etc.
Playing back AVCHD videos is more CPU intensive and requires a lot of decoding.
If you have the time, you can try out HandBrake for Windows and Mac and convert your videos to M4V. They will play just fine and still be HD.
Media Players, Codecs & Settings
The next thing to try is a different media player. My favorite for HD video playback is VLC Media Player. It has a lot of codecs and can handle quite a lot of formats.
You can try other players like KMPlayer, but I have found VLC to be the best. Another lightweight player to try is MPC-HC as it supports GPU acceleration too.
If you want to reduce the amount of looping that occurs when playing H.264 videos, you can change the post processing routine in VLC Media Player.
I changed the setting to All in my MacBook Pro and now I can play 1080p videos without any lag. This worked for me on my MacBook Pro. If you don’t have this setting, then keep reading!
If you’re using Media Player Classic, then you can try a different codec pack. For example, try uninstalling K-Lite Codec Pack if you have that and install the CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) instead.
If you’re using Media Player Classic, you can try changing the renderer to see if that helps. Go to Options – Playback – Output and choose a different one. ..
Video Card Drivers & Software
If you’re having problems playing videos, it could be that your video card is not compatible with your system or the settings are incorrect.
ATI Radeon HD card users should download the ATI Catalyst software to fix lag issues. Nvidia GeForce Experience is also needed for Nvidia card users to update drivers. ..
I suggest downloading and installing the full software package for your video card, which may include additional features that enable you to play high-definition videos. ..
Hardware Upgrades
If you’re not getting the results you want from your hardware, it might be worth looking into upgrading.
If you have a very old system or a system that is even a couple of years old, it may be time to invest in a new machine or to upgrade the graphics card/memory/hard drive. With the super deals on desktops you can find these days, there really is no reason you shouldn’t be able to playback HD videos smoothly.
If you have any questions about this article or if you can’t get your video to playback smoothly when you think it should, please post a comment here with your system specs, software, etc and we’ll try to help. Enjoy!
