Playback Issues With UHD 4K H.265

SteveFL

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Location
Pensacola, Florida
Country
United States
Dash Cam
BlackVue DR900S-2CH, DR650S-2CH, DR750LW-2CH
Straight to the point here. I just received my BlackVue DR900S-2CH a couple of days ago and though I like the camera, I found that even the BlackVue Viewer won't play back the footage from the front camera smoothly at all. Thinking it was the viewer, I uninstalled and then re-installed the latest viewer but the playback was still choppy and the audio somewhat.

Through some research I found that it was my PC. Though it is fairly new, (less than 2 years old) the processor is not sufficient to playback the UHD H.265 video. I have played the video with no problem at all at work, and I will admit it looks impressive.

The thing that irritates me is that for a camera system costing almost $500, BlackVue would have put in some notification that a computer needs a compatible processor to provide a smooth playback of this UHD H.265 video. Comments I have sent to BlackVue have yet to been replied to with an adequate resolution to this
 
Thats why many makers stay away from H.265.

I tried it with the mobius 2 and 1080p H.265, and it worked just fine on my 5 year old quad core computer ( core I7 - 3770k )
But on my little sisters old dualcore laptop with some low end intel or AMD cpu it was not able to play in any way

So change the camera to H.264 and you should be good.
 
a lot of computers struggle with 4k files also, good luck if you need to send a file to your insurance company and they try and view them
 
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So what settings in the DR900S do you change to have it record in H.264? I can't seem to find any documentation on how to change this.
 
I did see they mentioned something about using H.264 if your computer wasn't capable
Yea, but how do you know your computer isn't compatible until you try and play back the video, especially if you computer is less than 3 years old.
 
My next question is that if you record in H.265 and then convert it to H.264, do you maintain the same quality as H.265 but with a much larger file size or do you lose quality during the conversion? I know going the opposite way, from H.264 to H.265, you do lose quality but what about going from H.265 to H.264?
 
if you re-encode you're going to give something away in the process, if playback is an issue you're better off just recording in H.264, if you ever need to send a file to an insurance company you're going to be pushing it to find anyone that will be able to play your files if they're H.265, something else to consider
 
My next question is that if you record in H.265 and then convert it to H.264, do you maintain the same quality as H.265 but with a much larger file size or do you lose quality during the conversion? I know going the opposite way, from H.264 to H.265, you do lose quality but what about going from H.265 to H.264?
You have the same choice of bitrates whichever format you record in, so the recorded files will be the same size. H265 should record a bit more detail, although if you are going fast under trees then you may not see much difference, and if you are not going fast under trees then you don't need the extra detail because it is probably not visible!

Converting it from H265 to H264 without loosing your extra detail will require a higher bitrate, converting it and using the same bitrate will loose the extra detail.

Any conversion always looses some quality, although doing it only once should not be noticeable, which ever direction you are going. Converting it back and forth 10 times will make it look rather poor quality.

The big advantage of H265 should be that you can record at a lower bitrate giving you longer record times, but I think if you compare recordings while driving under trees in your highest bitrate and next highest you will decide that you still want the highest bitrate, in which case you will not see much advantage to using H265 and you might as well record in H264. H265 would be much more useful if our cameras could manage variable bitrate so that when parked with not much moving the bitrate goes down to near zero, however since they always run at the specified bitrate, even if there is nothing moving and the image is pure black at night we are not going to see much advantage. If you want to archive your video then converting it to variable bitrate H265 can save a huge amount of space.
 
Try VLC media player or K-lite codec player. I think 2 yr old pc should have no issue with playing it.

Usually it's the codec in software choice that's an issue. Try it and let us know if that worked. H.265 is great IMO. Just like FLAC is great for audio vs MP3. H.265 is the future.
 
H.265 is the future.

challenge is so many people have computers that are living in the past, try sharing a 4K H.265 file with your insurance company and see how they go, it will get there but it's early days still
 
challenge is so many people have computers that are living in the past, try sharing a 4K H.265 file with your insurance company and see how they go, it will get there but it's early days still

That's a good point. One can always convert from 265 to 264 and then share it with them. Free software Handbrake will do that for you. I guess the main attraction of H.265 is smaller video size vs H.264 which will lead let u save more videos on your HD, so more storage space saved. With 4k video h.264 file size is crazy big even with TB hard drives.

What's actually best IMO with 900S dashcam that you can choose h.265 codec for 1080p recording which will be even smaller file size. That's what i'm attracted too. For 4k recording you actually need 4k monitor to see the resolution difference. Yes i'm aware down sampling from 4k to 1080p yields much better resolution then 1080p recording but that's extra work to do which probably won't be practical.

Anyway wishing everyone Happy Memorial Weekend.
 
this is great if i get the best you can get 900s and the insurance company or police cant watch the tape if its ever required its equal to not having a dash cam at all lol or maybe i should buy and keep an extra iMac Pro 18-Core with 128 RAM for $13,000.00 on the side so i can give it to the Police with the SD card lol
 
Thanks folks you made my life easier, all questions answered
 
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