There is no doubt that when we talk about playback of media files on PC, the player VLC it is the most used by all… it is light, fast, has great compatibility and, above all, it is free. However, VLC is not without its issuesand if you notice that when playing any video looks slow (with lag, stuttering, tearing or even skipping frames), we tell you what you should do to fix it.
Of course, and before getting into the matter, you must make sure that the video format is compatible with VLC… this player is compatible with practically any format, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure first. All that aside, don’t worry if your processor is low power or relatively old, because it should be able to play your videos just fine in VLC, even if it’s a 4K resolution.
Solution if the video works slow in VLC
First of all, you must take into account that by default VLC uses hardware acceleration to speed up video playback, which means it makes use of your graphics card. If your PC has weak integrated graphics, this may be causing slow video in VLC, so try turning it off (you can always re-enable it later if you see that this wasn’t the problem). ).
To do this, in the screenshot above we show you where you should go. Go to the menu Tools -> Preferences or press CTRL + P in VLC, then go to the Input / Codecs tab and the option will be at the top: in the drop-down menu, select Disable and then click on Save. To turn it back on, simply go back to this same menu and select Automatic again from the dropdown.
Another possible solution is to disable the H.264 loop unblock filter. To do this, you must go back to the previous menu, and you will see that in the section that goes after hardware acceleration there is a drop-down in “H.264 loop unlock filter bypass”. By default, “None” is selected, and what we have to do is select “All” there. If after trying the problem that the video is slow is still present, you can return to the same menu and leave it as it was.
A third possible solution to the problem is change the cache value. To do this, go back to Preferences, but now you will have to select the option to show them all: you will find it in the lower left corner of the window, under “show settings”. We take advantage of the same screenshot that we show you below to show you where you should go: in Input / Codecs, you must go down to the bottom, to the Advanced section.
In this section, the first four parameters refer to the VLC cache times, and what you should do is increase them: we recommend initially setting double (for example, if the File Cache is set to 1,000 ms by default, the idea is put 2,000), and if the problem persists, try putting triple.
What if none of this works?
If none of the possible solutions that we have shown you in the previous section serve to stop the video from looking slow, with lag, with stuttering, etc. In VLC, the next thing you should do is reset the program’s preferences, that is, return it to the factory settings. To do this, access the Preferences menu again and you will see that there is a button at the bottom left (next to where you activated the view all settings) that says Restore preferences. Just tap on it, accept the warning that will appear, and restart VLC.
If after this the problem persists, we recommend that you completely uninstall VLC and reinstall it from scratch, making sure that you do so with an updated version. And, if doing this the problem persists, then it is quite likely that it is not a VLC issue but your PC, so you would have to look for the solution in other ways.
