Written by Have some 4K footage recorded with your cameras on Drones manufactured by DJI, GoPro, Yuneec, Parrot, and wish to transfer and play the Drone video on your PC, laptop or Mac computer. The following article will show how to get that realized.
Minimum requirements to play 4K video on PC or Mac
After transferring 4K footage from Drone camera to your PC, Mac or laptop, before finding some application on your computer to playback the Drone 4K video. You should first check whether your PC and Mac meet the minimum requirements to handle 4K video.
Here are the minimum system requirements for PC and Mac for 4K playback based on processor and graphics chip manufacturer’s websites.
Integrated Graphics solutions that support 4K external displays (8GB RAM recommended with integrated graphics solutions):
4th generation Intel® Core™ processor family (Intel Haswell based CPUs) – (Intel® Iris™ Pro Graphics 5200 / Intel® Iris™ Graphics 5100, Intel® HD Graphics 5000 / 4600 / 4400 / 4200)
AMD A10-7800 APU
Discrete Graphics cards that support 4K external displays:
Nvidia GeForce
GeForce® GTX™ 970
GeForce® GTX™ 980
GeForce® GTX™ TITAN Z
GeForce® GTX™ TITAN Black
GeForce® GTX™ TITAN
GeForce® GTX™ 780 & 780 Ti
GeForce® GTX™ 770
GeForce® GTX™ 760 & 760 Ti
GeForce® GTX™ 750 & 750 Ti
GeForce® GTX™ 690, 680, 670, 660, 660 Ti, 650, 650 Ti BOOST, 650 Ti
AMD Radeon™ HD 7000 Series or better
Tips: You still need a monitor that is capable of playing back 4K video if you want to properly play 4K. Even if your computer meets the requirements, you may find that 4K video plays back choppy. This is due to the immense processing power required to play 4K. Therefore, if you care much about video playback performance over video quality, just compress 4K to 1080p for smooth video viewing experience.
4K Video players for Drone 4K video
If your PC, laptop or Mac computer are powerful to handle 4K resolution video, then the next important thing to do is find a 4K capable video player app. To save your time and energy, the following article has chosen 5 best free 4K video player software for Drone 4K video playback on Windows and Mac.
5 Free 4K Video Players for Drone 4K footage Playaback
#1 VLC Player (for Windows/Mac/Linux)
As one of the most popular best free media players, VLC offers 4K playback initially at version 2.1 which was released in 2013. Just like the above mentioned 4K video player, it stays far away from spyware, ads and doesn’t track users. It allows you to input 4K videos encoded by virtually all codecs for playing. Despite that some VLC users said that 4K video is choppy or lagging, it is still a choice.
#2 Media Player Classic and K-Lite Codec Pack (for Windows)
Media Player Classic is a very lightweight piece of software that is free, and has no toolbars or ads packaged with it. However, installing Media Player Classic on its own does not yet provide 4K playback capabilities. The key is to also install the K-Lite Codec Pack. This is simply a package of many different codecs, all rolled into one for convenience. The full package of K-Lite Codec Pack also includes Media Player Classic, so there is no need to download and install that separately. The latest version of K-Lite also includes both 32-bit and 64-bit codecs in the one package.
The lightweight nature of Media Player Classic itself allows the software to be used on even the oldest of computers – although to play back in 4K video you will require a more powerful system.
#3 Divx Player (for Windows and Mac)
DivX Player is promoted as one of the most popular choices for people to enjoy HD movies. Now it supports playback of files up to 4K in resolution. It supports DivX HEVC video with the HEVC plugin, as well as regular DivX and DivX Plus. Some of the unique features that are well worth mentioning with this 4K video player software including the ability to quickly switch between subtitles in various languages. You can also easily flick through different soundtracks in order to hear features like the director’s commentary, or the motion picture in another language when available.
#4 KMPlayer (for Windows and Mac)
The KMPlayer at first only serves for Windows users. But in April, 2016, a Mac alpha version was released for Mac users with OS X 10.6 or later operating system. It supports for a wide range of file formats and can play videos in superb quality, including 4K UHD. According to the description in its official site, the PC edition only works on Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7(32bit). If you need a 4K video player for Windows 10, 8.1 or 7, you’d better choose another program, such as 5KPlayer.
#5 PowerDVD
PoweDVD is simply the best companion for your home entertainment systems as well as for personal computers. This software environment is packed with advanced featured to manage music, movies and photos at same place. You will always have incredible experience with its rich tools. PowerDVD offers ability to enhance user experience for 4K and HDR TV.
Convert Drone 4K Video for PC, Laptop or Mac playback
Sometimes, you may fail to open certain 4K Drone video such as 4K H.265 capture DJI Phantom 4 Pro or 4 Pro+, or the drone 4K video playback very choppy with above listed 4K video player software or you may have the needs to play Drone 4K video with some non 4K-capable video player app such as Windows Media Player, QuickTime player on your PC or Mac computer. When in that condition, it would be ideal for you to find a 4K video player assistant – 4K Video Converter. The program here we highly recommend to you is called Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate, the program has full support for all 4K video such as 4K H.264 or 4K H.265 recorded with Drone camera video, you can not only use the program to convert unsupported 4K video to 4K media player compatible 4K video formats, but also compress 4K to 1080p for smoothly viewing on non 4K-capble media player app on PC, Mac or laptop.
Trim/Split Drone 4K video
If you wish to compress Drone 4K video with no quality loss, you can trim the 4K video to remove unwanted parts or segments or split large 4K video into small parts by file size, count or length.
Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate is available on Windows 10/8.1/8/7, it is also accompanied by an up-to-date Mac version –Pavtube iMedia Converter for Mac. The program is very easy to use, no matter experienced user or fresh could handle it very well. What’s more, the final results produced by the program are pretty high quality, the quality of the converted video is almost identical to the original video.
Free download Windows version
Free download Mac version
Step by Step to Convert and Compress Drone 4K Video for PC, Laptop or Mac Playback
Step 1: Load Drone 4K video.
Download the free trial version of the program. Launch it on your computer. Click “File” menu and select “Add Video/Audio” or click the “Add Video” button on the top tool bar to import Drone 4K video files into the program.
Step 2: Define the output format.
Clicking the Format bar, from its drop-down list, select one of your desired file format that you wish to output Drone 4K video, you can choose to output Drone 4K H.265 to 4K H.264 for viewing on 4K capable media players.
Or compress Drone 4K H.264 or H.265 to HD H.264, HD MOV, HD WMV, etc for viewing on non 4K capable media player apps such as Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player.
Step 3: Trim/Split Drone 4K video.
Trim or cut 4K video length
In the video editor window, choose the “Trim” tab and this tab is selected by default when the editing window appears. You can use the trim function to cut off unwanted parts from start and end. You can either drag pointers on the process bar or set exact time point in Start and End boxes to set.
Split large 4K video into small parts
Click the split button on the file list to launch the Video Split window. Ticking “Enable” option, you can split the 4K file by file count, time length, or file size.
Step 4: Begin the conversion process.
After all setting is completed, hit the “Convert” button at the right bottom of the main interface to begin to convert or compress Drone 4K video to your desired file format and file resolution
When the conversion is finished, click “Open Output Folder” icon on the main interface to open the folder with generated files. Feel free to play and enjoy converted Drone footage with any media players on your PC, laptop or Mac computer with no limitation.
