MKV won’t play because of HEVC codec, how to fix?


MKV won’t play because of HEVC codec? Read this post to learn a workaround to make HEVC MKV movies play correctly.

Issues playing HEVC MKV movies through VLC
“Hi all, I am having issues playing HEVC MKV files on my system. I have a Windows 8.1 64 bit PC with 4GB RAM and Intel Core i5-4210U processor @2.40GHz. I tried the latest version of VLC player, and it can smoothly play 1080p H.264 MKV videos but sadly not the 1080p HEVC MKV files. I experienced very choppy playback, skipping frames, grey screens and audio and video out of sync issues. It’s totally unwatchable. Is there any way to fix this? Any solutions guys? Thanks for any advice.”

The reason you’re able to play H.264 .mkv files more smoothly is likely to do with the level of compression. In comparison to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HEVC (also known as H.265) offers about double the data compression ratio at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate. So because your HEVC files are more compressed, your computer has to do a lot more work per frame to uncompress everything.

An easy solution we suggest is converting HEVC MKV videos to the widely-accepted H.264 MP4 files. It’s maybe not the best possible solution, but it’s at least one solid workaround, and it’s worked for us when we had similar problems in the past. Here’s how.

How to convert HEVC MKV movies for smooth playback?

Here’s what you need
H.265/HEVC Converter
make HEVC/H.265 movies playable on a Blu-ray playerBlu-ray player won’t read HEVC (H.265) video

Follow these steps:
Step 1: Start up H.265/HEVC Converter for PC/Mac. When its main interface pops up, click ‘Import’ to input your source media.
get Blu-ray players playing HEVC (H.265) video

Step 2: Select your required file type as output format
This H.265/HEVC decoder for Windows/Mac offers a wide variety of output formats for users to choose from. You can select one as target format depending on your player supported file formats. We would recommend choosing the widely-accepted H.264 MP4 as output format.
convert HEVC/H.265 movies for viewing on a Blu-ray player

Step 3: Custom video and audio settings
If necessary, you can click ‘Settings’ button and go to ‘Profiles Settings’ panel to modify video and audio settings like video encoder, resolution, video bit rate, frame rate, aspect ratio, audio encoder, sample rate, audio bit rate, and audio channels.

Step 4: Start H.265/HEVC files to H.264 MP4 Conversion
When ready, click ‘Start’ to begin format conversion. As soon as the conversion is complete, you can click ‘Open Folder’ button to get the generated files for playing smoothly.

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