Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Play DJI Mavic Pro 4K Video with VLC

The Mavic Pro camera from DJI can shoot 4K video (up to 4096 x 2160) at 30 frames per second in an MOV wrapper with MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression codec. After the shooting, for PC users who are looking for a powerful 4K Video Player to watch the DJI Mavic Pro 4K video, VLC can be your first choice. However, a lot of people complain the DJI Mavic Pro 4K video playback very choppy on VLC media player. The following article some workable solution to fix VLC DJI Mavic Pro 4K video playback choppy issues.

Solution 1: Enable GPU acceleration.

Open VLC Media Player and click on Tools > Preferences or press Ctrl-P to open the settings window of the program. If you are using the simple settings interface, click on Input & Codecs on the left sidebar and check the Use GPU accelerated decoding box there.

Check use GPU accelerated decoding box

If you are using the all interface select Input/Codecs > Video Codecs > FFmpeg > Hardware decoding instead to enable acceleration this way.

Enable hardware decoding

Click on the save button afterwards and restart the media player to work with the new setting. Try playing several video files to see if hardware acceleration makes a difference in terms of playback. If it does, keep the setting enabled. If it does not, just go back to the settings to uncheck the option again.

Tips: The VLC GPU decoding is only available for selected operating systems. While Windows Vista and newer versions of the Microsoft operating system are supported, Windows XP is not at this point in time. The majority of graphic cards should support hardware acceleration just fine. Make sure you have installed the latest drivers though.

Solution 2: Compress DJI Mavic Pro 4K to 1080p

For those people who try to play DJI Mavic Pro 4K Video with VLC on Mac or your Windows OS is not in the selected operating system. There is a more effective to fix the issue: Downscale DJI Mavic Pro 4K to 1080p. What you need is simply a 4K Video Compressor. Here comes Pavtube Video Converter. The program is available on both Windows and Mac platform (get Mac version). In addition, it also has perfect compatibility with the new Windows and Mac OS.

The program has perfect importing support for the 4K H.264 MOV video shot with DJI Mavic Pro, thanks to its batch conversion mode, you can load multiple video at one time for compression to save your precious time. The application can assist you to efficiently compress DJI Mavic Pro 4K to VLC best workable HD file formats such as H.264 HD or other HD file formats with perfect quality.

The program supports hardware encoding acceleration, so that you can get up to 6x faster H.264 codec encoding speed as long as you run your computer on Graphic cards that supports Nvidia CUDA or AMD App technology. Hardware encoding acceleration is not available on the Mac computer.

Step by Step to Transcode and Compress DJI Mavic Pro 4K to 1080p for VLC Smooth Playback

Step 1: Load DJI Mavic Pro 4K files.

Start the program on your computer, click File > Load Video/Audio or Load from folder button to import DJI Mavic Pro 4K H.264 MOV files into the program.

Load DJI Mavic Pro 4K files

Step 2: Choose VLC best supported playback formats.

As a powerful media player, VLC can handle many video formats. After checking VLC supported video formats, H.264 HD Video(*.mp4) under HD Video main category would be a good choice. You can also choose other VLC supported HD file formats according to your own needs.

Choose VLC best supported HD file formats

Step 3: Compress 4K video to 1080p.

Click Settings on the main interface to open Profile Settings window, click Size(pix) 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.

Compress 4K to 1080p

Step 4: Start DJI Mavic Pro 4K video to VLC conversion and compression process.

After all the settings is completed, hit right-bottom Convert button to start to convert and compress DJI Mavic Pro 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 playback DJI video with VLC.