Am I expecting too much?

[atkinsonline]

Just received my Raspberry Pi 4 yesterday and I'm loving it but I seem to have some problems with video playback.

The video file is 2.6GB 1920x1080 H264 MPEG4 AVC (part 10) (avc1) and I've tried various ways to play it back but it always loses frames. I'm using the built-in VLC player and the media statistics show it's losing many frames a second. Despite that, the video does not look too bad but every so often it stops for 1 to 2 seconds. The audio sounds perfect.

It is currently playing from a 32 GB SD card but I get roughly the same performance from a USB 3.0 HDD or if streamed from my NAS via CAT6 cable. I briefly tried KODI as well and that was possibly worse but I only tried streaming from the NAS with KODI.

If I play a roughly 450MB file which is 640 x 384 Xvid MPEG4 I get zero dropped frames but I did expect the Pi 4 to be able to cope with 1920 x 1080.

Are there any tweaks I can make or is this too early after release and things will improve? I'm using the default Raspian OS. I'm very experienced with Windows and playing media files in general. On Windows PC, NVideo Shield, iPad etc I have no trouble streaming similar and larger files.
Regards
John.

[atkinsonline]

I found a great solution to my problems playing video on the Pi 4. LibreELEC has an alpha version of their version of KODI that is working great for me. I can even stream 4K from my NAS (only tried wired).

https://libreelec.tv/raspberry-pi-4/

[jamesh]

I found a great solution to my problems playing video on the Pi 4. LibreELEC has an alpha version of their version of KODI that is working great for me. I can even stream 4K from my NAS (only tried wired).

https://libreelecjtv/raspberry-pi-4/

LibbeElec is the best bet at the moment. Once a few software kinks are sorted out, we should have the same performance elsewhere too.

[gkreidl]

in VLC (using the x11-mmal-splitter) switch to full screen mode (f key) and you won't have any lost frames any more.