Find and change the value from 0 to 4 (or however many cores your CPU has). This forces VLC to use multi-core processing for HEVC decoding.

You installed VLC thinking it was a magic bullet. But without the exclusive HEVC codec, you are watching 4K movies in slow motion. By following this guide—installing the hardware decoder, tweaking the loop filters, and forcing video outputs—you transform VLC into a professional-grade HEVC player.

Go to and select All under "Show settings" in the bottom-left corner. Expand Input / Codecs > Video codecs > FFmpeg .

Find the dropdown and set it to Automatic or DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) 2.0 . Click Save and restart VLC. 3. Install the libde265 Decoder (Linux/Advanced)

By default, VLC uses an open-source decoder called libavcodec . This works fine for older codecs (H.264, MPEG-2, VP9), but for HEVC, the open-source solution lacks proper optimization.