Written by What is H.265/HEVC?
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also know as H.265, is a new video compression standard. HEVC was developed with the goal of providing twice the compression efficiency of the previous standard, H.264 / AVC. End-users can take advantage of improved compression efficiency in one of two ways (or some combination of both):
-At an identical level of visual quality, HEVC enables video to be compressed to a file that is about half the size (or half the bit rate) of AVC
-When compressed to the same file size or bit rate as AVC, HEVC delivers significantly better visual quality.
Best Free H.265 Video Player software
H.265 is the next step and will almost certainly become popular very quickly. Because H.265 is so much processor intensive, therefore, many regular video player apps lack the capability to decode this high efficiency video coding. The good news is that there are, not many, but a few free and better-performed H.265 media player. Below are a list of 5 best Free H.265/HEVC video players are current available.
1. VLC Media Player
VLC is a free and open-source media player which can play many codecs without the need of codec packs. But for playing an HEVC format video, it requires to download a specific x265 as a free software library and application for encoding video streams into the H.265/MPEG-H HEVC compression format. But if you click the “Download x265” button on that page, a landing page of “400 Couldn’t parse URL” would appear and you will fail in downloading the H.265 encoder for VLC.
2. Divx Player
With the free Divx HEVC Plug-in, you can experience the latest video standard for quality and compression. By using the new DivX HEVC profiles supported in DivX Player, you can create DivX HEVC videos in MKV at file sizes smaller than H.264 and watch DivX HEVC videos on any computer and in your favorite browser.
3. Potplayer
Potplayer also serves as a free HEVC player for HEVC/H.265 encoded videos as well as any many other multimedia formats or codecs like H.264, MP4, FLV, MKV, AVI, MOV etc. Besides playing HEVC codec videos, you can also download 3D and blu-ray movies/videos for playing on this marvelous video player, which makes it unique among the best HEVC players. But sadly it’s only available on Windows.
4. Hoid P HEVC H265 Video Player
Hoid P HEVC H265 Video Player is a video player that supports High Efficiency Video Coding format – H.265. This media player for Android allows you to play h265 videos, h264, prores, mxf videos and more formats. Hoid is the first app. for Android that allows you to play files encoded in the new High Efficiency Video Coding format.
5. UFUSoft Blu-ray Media Player
They key new feature of UFUSoft Blu-ray Media Player is support for the new H.265 High Efficiency Video codec on which all 4K media is going to be based. UFUSoft Blu-ray Media Player integrates its award-winning blu-ray player software to provide a seamless entertainment ecosystem that lets you enjoy all your favorite media content including Blu-ray disc, Blu-ray folder, ISO image files, 4K and 1080P HD videos and other popular video/audio formats, including MP4, MXF, MTS, MKV, AVI, FLV, MPEG, MP3 etc with zero quality loss.on Windows PC or Mac.
Alternative solution to play H.265/HEVC videos
Apart from playing H.265 video with above listed free video player apps, sometimes, you may also need to transcode H.265 to H.264 or other popular file formats for playing on smartphone, tablets, game consoles, HD media players, editing with Edius Pro, FCP X or upload and sharing on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc. In addition, it would be better to compress 4K to 1080p to get a smooth video playback, editing and sharing process.
Here, with our best H.265 decoder encoder tool – Pavtube Video Converter for Windows/Mac (support Mac OS X El Capitan), you can easily convert H.265 to virtual any file formats or device/program preset profile formats. In addition, you can do some simple editing video work with the program to trim video length, crop video file size, merge separate video into one, split large files into small parts, add video/image/transparent text watermark, insert external SRT/ASS/SSA subtitles, etc.
Further Reading:
How to Stream H.265/HEVC 4K Videos to Roku 3,2,1 for Sharing?
How to Stream HEVC (H.265) 4K Videos to Apple TV 4/3/2/1?
Best Exporter: From Adobe Premiere to Prores and HEVC/H.265
Ingest Samsung NX1 H.265 Videos to Sony Vegas Pro 13/12/11? More Details?
Encode/Decode H.265 Files to PS4 for Playing
Leave a Reply