Like many of you, I enjoy watching the videos I capture on my various DJI and Autel drones on my 4K TV. I have a 6-year-old LG OLED 4K 3D TV, which was not able to play the 4K60 videos from my Phantom 4 Pro, Autel Evo II Pro or Mavic Air 2 directly from a USB memory stick inserted into the USB port on the back of the television.  However, several years ago, I found a workaround, albeit an expensive one, by purchasing a Phillips UltraHD Model BDP7501 Blu-Ray player and using the USB input port on that HDMI-connected device to play 4K media videos fluidly and in glorious full 4K on my LG OLED 4K TV. I could connect both USB memory sticks up to 256GB capacity as well as my external WDeasystore 8 TB USB hard drive, which has thousands of files from all my drones, and it would play them all!

Unfortunately, with the recent purchase of a DJI Mavic Air 2, I discovered that the Phillips Ultra 4K Blu-Ray player with the latest firmware updates would not read or play the 4K60 H.265 HEVC MP4 files recorded on my MA2. So, I decided to upgrade my Blu-Ray player to a more recent model Blu-Ray player to see if that would allow playing these 120+ mbps H.265 format MP4 files.  

First, I tried an LG Model UBK90 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray Player purchased from Best Buy connected to my LG 4K OLED TV via a high bandwidth 8K HDMI cable, but it would play neither the 4K60 H.265 120 mbps MP4 files from my Mavic Air 2 nor the 4K60 H.264 100 mbps MP4 files from my Autel Evo II Pro. I received error messages that the file formats were not supported, or, that there were no files on the media. So, I returned the LG Blu-Ray player to Best Buy.

Next, I tried a Sony Model UBPX700 4K Ultra HD Hi-Res Audio Wi-Fi Built-In 3D Blu-Ray Player also purchased from Best Buy (regularly $249.99, on sale for $179.99) and connected it to my LG OLED 4K 3D TV through a high-bandwidth 8K HDMI cable. It conveniently has a USB input on the lower-right-front corner of the player.  And - AMAZINGLY - it fluidly plays - with ZERO dropouts, stutters or pauses - both the 4K60 H.265 120 mbps MP4 files from my Mavic Air 2 drone as well as the 4K60 H.264 100 mbps MP4 files from my Autel Evo II Pro 6K drone.  Of course, 4K60 MP4 files from my older-generation DJI Phantom 4 Pro and DJI Phantom 4 can be played flawlessly as well.

For those of you fortunate enough to own a newer 4K TV that can fluidly play 4K60 H.265 files directly from USB devices, congratulations! But, if you, like me, have an older-generation 4K TV and want to enjoy watching ALL your recorded drone videos including the 120+ mbps 4K60 H.265 HEVC files from your Mavic Air 2, then the Sony UBPX700 4K Ultra HD 3D Blu-Ray Player might be a hardware solution for you as well.  AND - if you purchase this Blu-Ray player, you can now watch 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray movies and 3D Blu-Ray movies (if your 4K TV supports 3D).  You can display properties while playing the MA2 4K60 MP4 video files, and an info overlay will pop up confirming the current bit rate (typically, 118-126 mbps) and file compression type (HEVC) of the file being played. In addition, as soon as one video file finishes the player will automatically load and start playing the next video in sequence.  And the player supports the direct connection of my external WDeasystore 8 TB hard drive to the front USB port and it will display subdirectories, hundreds of file names per subdirectory and scroll long file names when selected in the media file list.  Nice!

If you have verified that your 4K TV that can SMOOTHLY play (no pauses or dropouts) the 4K60 H.265 120 mbps MP4 files generated by the Mavic Air 2, then please post a reply letting everyone know the make and model # of your 4K television.  And if you have identified other solutions to playing these files on your 4K TV, let me know that as well.

Now, I just need to figure out how to play these 4K60 H.265 HEVC MP4 files on my 10-year-old Intel Core i7 1st-gen CPU Windows 10 PC at normal speed without any stutters. New, latest-generation video cards from Nvidia and AMD are impossible to find in stock, so a video hardware upgrade isn't possible at this time.  Perhaps a latest-gen CPU upgrade would help. Any suggestions?

I just Chuck my footage into free handbrake and it works great everywhere.

I can play MA2 vids fine on my Sony 4K UR2 fine through a USB stick. Also works with VLC app on my Sony.

As another possible solution and can't be sure but I think you can try VLC on a Xbox One X console using a USB stick.

You should be able to use a Google Chromecast device plugged into the HDMI port of your TV and then cast to it from a computer running the VLCPlayer app.

Here's another solution that works well for playing h.265 encoded videos on any TV with an HDMI input. I have the new Chromecast with Google TV (CwGTV)  along with a USB-C hub adapter. With CwGTV you can install android apps, one of them being the VLC Player. I can then take an h.265 encoded video file on the MA2 microusb card and insert it in the USB-C hub. VLC on CwGTV allows you to browse the contents of the card and play h.265 encoded videos without any pauses, only nice smooth playback.

Chromcast with Google TV

iVANKY USB C Hub, 7 in 1 USB C Hub Adapter

Pappy3 Posted at 2-1 21:19
Here's another solution that works well for playing h.265 encoded videos on any TV with an HDMI input. I have the new Chromecast with Google TV (CwGTV)  along with a USB-C hub adapter. With CwGTV you can install android apps, one of them being the VLC Player. I can then take an h.265 encoded video file on the MA2 microusb card and insert it in the USB-C hub. VLC on CwGTV allows you to browse the contents of the card and play h.265 encoded videos without any pauses, only nice smooth playback.

Chromcast with Google TV

Pappy3 -

That's very interesting and would be a 50% cheaper total cost alternative to buying a Sony 4K Blu-Ray player, albeit with reduced capabilities (can't play 4K UltraHD or regualar Blu-Ray discs).

Have you confirmed that your Chromecast with Google TV setup will smoothly play 4K60 120 mbps MP4 format files recorded using the MA2?

Why not use the H.264 codec at MA2...?   

frankymusik Posted at 2-7 08:59
Why not use the H.264 codec at MA2...?

Unfortunately, at 4K60 on the MA2 only H.265 is available. At 4K resolution, the maximum frame rate available with H.264 is 30 fps.  

TheMann58 Posted at 2-5 12:31
Pappy3 -

That's very interesting and would be a 50% cheaper total cost alternative to buying a Sony 4K Blu-Ray player, albeit with reduced capabilities (can't play 4K UltraHD or regualar Blu-Ray discs).

Yes, Chromecast with Google TV will play 4k/60 videos from the MA2. Motion is fluid, no stutering. I used VLC Media Player to playback video from a Thumb Drive attached to the USB-C hub. Only a thumb drive or memory card formatted as "FAT32" is recognized by Google TV and this was the only configuration which was fast enough to supply a steady data flow to the VLC Media Player. Playing back using a PLEX server and client on Google TV did work with 4K/30 h.264. I was even able to config the PLEX client to do a direct pass thru, with no transcoding. So again, trhe only way to playback 4k/60 clip from the card is to copy the mp4 from the MA2 card to a thumb drive and plug it into the USB hub (like the one I mentioned in my previous post) and then use the VLC app on Google TV to play.  

TheMann58 Posted at 2-7 14:44
Unfortunately, at 4K60 on the MA2 only H.265 is available. At 4K resolution, the maximum frame rate available with H.264 is 30 fps.

... I see     

I see the advantage of 60 fps mainly in the fact that you can easily create a "slow motion" (during post production) without losing quality.
Without further processing, however, the TV shouldn't really care what frame rate is being passed to it ...?

By the way:
With the free version of Davinci Resolve, the codec can be converted (exchanged) very easily ...

Is very simple:
All TV's that are 2-3 years old will play without problems H265...but ....because is a "BUT":
- the encoding profile for H265 when you export it from Premiere for example MUST be "Basic"...not "HIGH"....also if you need >30Mbps, you just change the Level to 6.1....
Don't forget to check the "Use maximum render Quality" and Optical Flow.
Seems that DaVinci uses by default Basic instead of HIGH profile, being compatible with TV's...
Is THAT simple !
Audio you can leave ACC.

The generated movie can be put on stick and just insert it on TV...will work.
Cheers.

Have had the same problem recently. It seems that the  4K60 H.265 HEVC MP4 is too powerful for my old hardware to handle. The stuttering playback made me crazy... Finally, I had to compress the HEVC to H.264 1080P with the winx video converter and now they can play.