I recorded some 4k video and copied it to my Win10 PC. It wanted me to by a codec for $0.99. I installed VLC but the video was mostly grey smudges. I watched a bunch of videos and tried all their suggestions but couldn't get it to work. So I paid for the codec from the Microsoft store. It works in Windows Media Player but it sometimes stutters or fast forwards a bit. I have a GTX570 video card and never really have problems with videos other than this. I'm going to try recording in 1080/60 today and see if it works better.


Do you guys have suggestions on settings or what media player to use? I also tried the Movies & TV player in Windows but it gave similar results.

Personally I don't have any problems with playing video on my laptop. It is possible your processor or ram memory are not sufficient to play 4K video. Other things is the video codecs. Use 264 if your machine is a bit old. Apparently the 265 creates a bit more work for your processor to keep up...

tomekyo Posted at 4-4 12:41
Personally I don't have any problems with playing video on my laptop. It is possible your processor or ram memory are not sufficient to play 4K video. Other things is the video codecs. Use 264 if your machine is a bit old. Apparently the 265 creates a bit more work for your processor to keep up...

So I tried recording in 1080 and it plays much better but still not perfect. I got a desktop PC with an i5, 16GB RAM, and a GTX 570 video card. It plays worse on my laptop. I had my son play it on his new gaming PC with some fancy RTX 3080 video card and it plays perfect.
I rendered a 4k video to 1080 H.264 using DaVinci Resolve and it plays pretty good. I guess I'm stuck with this for now, but not a big deal - I'm more into the flying than I am the video making.

Hello there Mark Blaide. Good day and thank you for reaching out. I hope that our fellow DJI co pilots can give out what media player they are using to view there captured videos and there valued insights with regard to this matter as well. Thank you and fly safe always.

Yea, just spring for the codec, trust me it is worth it.

DJI Stephen Posted at 4-4 19:11
Hello there Mark Blaide. Good day and thank you for reaching out. I hope that our fellow DJI co pilots can give out what media player they are using to view there captured videos and there valued insights with regard to this matter as well. Thank you and fly safe always.

I use the Movies & TV application built into windows.

There was a way to get it free from Microsoft-

Hmm. A year later and neither the current VLC version nor the special 2.2.0 Weatherwax are handling the H.265/HEVC video on windows 10 very well- I am also getting the smudgy grey video. I am surprised at that, as the video format has been out a while now, VLC is usually all over things like this. The $.99 codec from MS would be fine except I do not use any of the built-in MS video players, so, doesn't seem like it should matter, but I guess I will try it as there does not seem to be many other options. This is a VR-ready PC from 2021, so, it's not a specs issue...

OK. The codec can indeed be had for free (go here in a browser and then let the MS store open the link ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9n4wgh0z6vhq ) , and it does allow you to play an HEVC file in MS's "Movies & TV" and Windows Media Player, but it does not fix the issue for VLC.