How to Solve VLC Media Player HDR Not Working?

VLC HDR Not Working? How to Solve VLC HDR Playing Problems? Best VLC alternative 5KPlayer is the best free HDR video player for Mac and Windows 10.Easier & Fast Solution

How to Solve VLC HDR Not Working – VLC 4K HDR Choppy and Stuttering?

Question:
"Been fiddling around with 4K material for a week or so now, and haven't really found an optimal solution to play 4K HDR files on my PC. (Ryzen 1600 @ 3.8GHz, GTX 1070ti).
The main issue is that I can play Blue Planet just fine in VLC 3.0, while playing other content is rather choppy. The files use the same codec and container (MPEG-H Part2/HEVC H.265 MKV) and around the same bitrate. All of the content is 4K HDR."– from Reddit forum

Solutions:

Possible solution 1: Go to Tools on the main UI of VLC > Preferences > Show Settings "All" > click on Input/Codecs > Video codecs > choose "FFmpeg" > on the right part, find Threads. It is by default set to a value of 0, please change this to something else like "4" > click on Save > Then, restart your VLC to see if it works or not. BTW, this only works for Windows PC, and it won't apply on Android platform.

Possible solution 2: VLC is barely using any CPU while using about 15~35% of the GPU during 4K HDR playback, so maybe you can try to enable VLC hardware acceleration to help decode 4K HDR videos.
1. Go to Tools > Preferences > Input/Codecs
2. In the Input/Codecs settings window, choose "Automatic", "Direct3D11 Video Accerleration" or "DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) 2.0" from the drop-down menu of Hardware-accelerated decoding.

Hope this works for your VLC 4K HDR choppy problem. However, I have tested a 4K HDR 60fps 10bit video on my Windows 7 computer, the VLC media player totally can't play the file. If your HDR video is up to 10bit, I really suggest you to use a more powerful 4K HDR video player to digest such a file.

How to Fix VLC HDR Not Working – VLC HDR Washed out Colors?

VLC washed out colors when playing HDR 4K MKV etc videos must be another big headache to most VLC users. As when this VLC HDR issue happens, the image quality is quite disappointing.

Question:
"VLC 3. Playing 4k MKV with HDR.The colors are washed out and dull. How can I play a file with HDR and have it tone-map correctly to a non-HDR 4k display????" – from Reddit forum

Solutions:

Possible solution 1. Reset the color settings of NVIDIA cards if you are using Windows PC
1. Right click your computer desktop and choose NVIDIA Control Panel.
2. In the new popup window, click on "Adjust video color settings" in the left part.
3. On the right part, select the display you want to change. Then, check "With the NVIDIA settings", click on "Advanced" and choose "Full (0-255)" in the drop down menu of Dynamic range.
4. Click on "Apply", and then restart your VLC media player to if it can solve VLC HDR not working or not.

Possible solution 2. Change the corresponding settings of VLC
Option 1. Change the output: After ransacking, the best choice from VLC official forum and most VLC users is to choose OpenGL. Just open your VLC > Tools > Preferences > Video > choose "OpenGL video output for Windows" or "OpenGL video output" from the drop down menu of Output > then, click on Save button.
Option 2. Change VLC video filters: Choose Tools > Preferences > check All under Show settings > scroll down to Video and expand Filters > click on Postproc and set the Post processing quality to "6" > scroll down to choose Sharpen and set the Sharpen strength to "1.50" > click on Swscale and choose Lanczos as the Scaling mode > then, Save and restart your VLC player.

How to Solve VLC HDR Not Working – VLC HDR Drop Frames?

VLC drop frames especially when playing 4K/HDR HEVC videos. Possible solution is from VLC forum, suggesting you to go to Tools on the main UI of VLC > Preferences > Show Settings "All" > click on Input/Codecs > Video codecs > choose "FFmpeg" > on the right part, find Threads. It is by default set to a value of 0, please change this to "1" > click on Save and restart VLC.

However, this method is not proved to be useful by many users. Besides, the official support of VLC didn't give any solutions. So, you are highly-suggested to use a VLC alternative to play 4K HDR videos without troubles before the official workaround is out.

Notice: If VLC HDR not working problem is still here, your graphics drivers maybe outdated, please install the latest graphics drivers.

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Final Words:

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