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How to Play MKV on VLC Smoothly?

How to Play MKV on VLC Smoothly?

Camille Wesley No Comment
VLC

VLC is one of the most popular media players people love to use for its strong power to play any video including the MKV container files. But sometimes, powerful as VLC will encounter MKV playback issue. Many feedbacks unveiled that VLC was very slow to play MKV once in a while. Below is just one case from VLC forum.videolan.org:

"The VCL is very slow when play .mkv videos comparing to.
I tried many video files, one example is the “NBC 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening.mkv” which has only 720p format. On one not so fast PC (windows 7) it can be barely played smoothly with other players, with VCL only couple of frames per second and many places stops for seconds. I have 5 PCs in the family, only one fastest PC can play it with VCL smoothly.
I wonder why?"

Fix VLC MKV playback problems

Similar Search: H.265 to VLC | AVI to VLC

There are many reasons to lead MKV files playback stuttering on VLC. Maybe your computer is too slow, then your VLC takes too much memory resource to run while VLC can’t handle your MKV files with certain codec. Now, let’s the solutions to solve MKV choppy playback issues on VLC.

Solution 1: Disable loop filter for H.264 decoding

VLC can play almost all media formats but it does not mean that its codecs are equally efficient at playing all of the. Therefore, one reason that VLC plays MKV files slowly is that libavcodecs H.264 decoding used in VLC isn’t very efficient. There is one trick you can try: You can speed up the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC playback by disabling loop filter for H.264 decoding. To do this go to Tools -> Preferences… (set Show Settings to All) and Input / Codecs -> Other codecs -> FFmpeg and in the drop-down box for Skip the loop filter for H.264 decodingchange it to All. Remember to press Save to save VLC settings and restart VLC after that to make sure changes are enabled.

Solution 2: Get VLC Alternative

VLC will take a lot of memory resources to run. It is surely unable to play most HD MKV videos smoothly on slow computers (those with 1Ghz processor or below). It proved that MpcStar can play MKV files smoothly even on slow computer. MPCStar is a universal video player that can play most formats of films downloaded from the internet. To ensure smooth playback and not get weighed down with too many codecs, MPCStar contains only the major codecs including Media Player Classic, FFDshow Codec Pack, 
RealPlayer Codecs, ActiveX controls, QuickTime Codecs and DirectVobSub (a.k.a. VSFilter).  The only problem is that these codecs are regularly updated and there appears to be no automatic update function but overall, this is one of the simplest and most powerful players I’ve tried since VLC player.

Solution 3: Convert MKV to VLC more compatible format video

Since MKV can’t be played on VLC smoothly, an ultimate solution is to convert MKV to VLC most friendly format. Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate is the utility for you. With it, you can fast convert MKV to AVI/MP4 that can be easily played in VLC. Besides, this video convert app can allow you to convert any other popular video and audio format like MP4, MOV, AVI, WMV, FLV, 3GP, VOB, AC3, MP3… with ultra-fast speed and zero quality loss. For those people with good video background, you can flexibly adjust the output video codec, bit rate, frame rate, resolution or audio codec, bit rate, sample rate or channels to get the best output video and audio quality for VLC player.

If you are Mac users, please turn to the equivalent Mac version named Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac to transcode .mkv files to VLC on Mac OS X (macOS Sierra included). 

   

Step 1. Click the “Add Files” or “Add From Folder” button to load MKV videos for converting. 

 

Step 2. As MP4 is a universally used video format, sure it can be supported by most devices (e.g. mobile devices, TVs, and streaming media players). Click the format bar to find “Common Video” > “H.264 Video (*.mp4).” 

 

Step 3: Adjust output playback settings for VLC.

Click “Settings” on the main interface to open “Profile Settings” window to tweak the output video codec, bit rate, frame rate, resolution or audio codec, bit rate, sample rate or channels, etc according to your own needs.

Step 4. Convert MKV files to MP4, on the main UI there is a big red button “Convert”, and click it to get down to converting MKV to VLC videos in MP4 format. Once the conversion ends, open output folder to locate the generated MP4 files. Then you can stream converted videos to VLC via Plex. 

Here is some Software Bundles for you to choose: 
ByteCopy($42) + Video Converter Ultimate($65) = Only $79.9, Save $27.1 

Note: Pavtube ByteCopy can decrypt Blu-ray to VLC and convert DVD to VLC more supported digital format.

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