When I tried to play 4K video shot by Canon EOS 5D Mark IV on my PC I noticed that the playback was smooth and perfect only when using Canon EOS Movie Utility. The playback on the camera itself was perfect as well.
However, while using any other player or video editor the playback was discrete and laggy. The audio was obviously ahead of video. My PC is good enough – remember that it plays your files smoothly with Canon EOS Movie Utility.
I performed some testing with several PCs trying to play 4K .mov files shot by Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and gathered the following statistics:
PC # 1. Windows 7 64 bit.
• QuickTime - playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video.
• Windows Media Player – does not play at all, complains on incompatible format.
• VLC player - playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video.
• Cyberlink PowerDVD 16 – crashes when opening the file and sends the crash report.
• ACD See Pro 10 (embedded player) - playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video.
• Cyberlink PowerDirector 15 (embedded player) - playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video. While trying to produce 4K HEVC 264 video in .mp4 container the resulting file is about 10 times less, though plays back smoothly.
PC # 2. Windows 7 64 bit.
• QuickTime - playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video.
• Windows Media Player – does not play at all, complains on incompatible format.
• VLC player - playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video.
• Cyberlink PowerDVD 14- playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video.
PC # 3. Windows 10 64 bit.
• Windows Media Player - playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video.
• Movie & TV application - playback discrete and laggy, the audio obviously ahead of video. I managed anyway to find one Windows 10’64 machine, which played the file smoothly with Windows Media Player. This was not the result one would like to achieve.
The Canon EOS Movie Utility cannot do anything with the video files, it’s capable only of playing and splitting them. But it can neither edit video, nor produce video files.
Moreover.
I performed further testing and found out that:
1. TVs would not play.mov files shot by Canon EOS 5D Mark IV from USB flash. I tried Sony and Panasonic. Keeping in mind that according to page 420 of the User Guide even if I connect the camera to the TV using HDMI cable I will only see full HD video, I wonder if 4K .mov files shot by Canon EOS 5D Mark IV can be played on TV at all.
2. Page 421 of the User Guide says that I can transfer video files to my PC to view and edit them using standard programs. I reported above the result with video players. The result with video editors is even worse. I tried Adobe Premiere CC 2017, Cyberlink PowerDirector 15, Vegas Pro 14.
None of them supported 4K .mov files shot by Canon EOS 5D Mark IV.
The bottom line is that I failed to find a method to properly playback 4K .mov files shot by Canon EOS 5D Mark IV on TV and on PC and edit them on PC.
Of course, I tried to resolve the above issues with Canon support. The answer was surprising: they just said that they just tested their .mkv files with Canon EOS Movie Utility and do not care about anything else.
I wonder if anybody had better experience with 4K .mov files shot by Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and can educate me on how to handle them.
