Most relevant tests for 4K video clip viewing?

[DesNat]

I'm unable to play 4K video clips in VLC that I've edited, and am wondering which benchmarks would most impact this usage?

It seems to me that it might be 2D GPU scores, but which component? Image rendering? There's only about a 40% increase from my lowly GPU to the GTX 680, so that doesn't seem like it would have enough of an impact.

This is my baseline:


TIA,

Ken

[David (PassMark)]

It would depend somewhat on what codec was used with the clips.

Some CPUs have special modules for doing video decoding of some codecs, when used with the right software. See,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video

But your now relatively old Nehalem i7 920 CPU, doesn't have this feature.

But otherwise I would think that the 2D image render test and the CPU tests are the most relevant.

[DesNat]

It would depend somewhat on what codec was used with the clips.

Thanks for the ultrafast reply, David.

The clips are encoded using Photo JPEG (a QuickTime codec), so I don't think that is one of the codecs that would be helped by hardware decoding.

But otherwise I would think that the 2D image render test and the CPU tests are the most relevant.

That's what I was afraid of. Even though my system is 5 years old, the best (still affordable) CPUs benchmark only about 2x as fast as my current CPU (and as I mentioned, GPUs only about a 40% improvement on the image render test). Given that VLC only plays a couple of frames and then stops, I'm not convinced that even getting a new, faster system would materially help.

Thank you for the info; I appreciate your help.

[David (PassMark)]

Try a different codec.
Might just be a bug / quirk in VLC.

[DesNat]

You're right. I've now tried Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, Quicktime Player, and Daum Potplayer (sic!). They all play the file to some degree, though none can play at real time speed. VLC playing only a couple of frames and then nothing seems like a definite bug.

Thanks again for your help. At least I know what to look for and expect if I decide to upgrade my computer.