Does Linux play video at desktop resolution or player resolution?

[new666uk]

I have a DE I generally run at 1080p on a 4k screen but when I play a 4k video in VLC or Plex, do I need to reset the DE resolution to 4k as well?

In my previous Windows10 build of this machine I have to use the NVIDIA control panel to switch the whole display output to 4k to see videos at the correct resolution but a bit of googling suggests Linux treats the DE and the video player separately but I just want a sanity check in case my eye are deceiving me and I'm watching 4k at 1k by mistake.

[oshunluvr]

Well, your screen can only display what it's set at, so yes, you would need to have a 4k resolution to watch a video in 4K. Otherwise, the video player will scale down to the screen resolution.

[new666uk]

Thats what I thought. Looks like ai led me astray there and got my hopes up.

For some reason if I set DE to 4k and watch a 4k video I get stutter. It would play fine on the same hardware as a Win10 PC so I guess I'm back to finding and tweaking settings somewhere.

[oshunluvr]

Sounds like your video driver can't keep up. Are you using the "free" Nouveau driver or the proprietary version?

[new666uk]

I'm using the NVIDIA driver. I think its v560 or 570 from memory, whichever is latest. I'll look for the nouveau driver later.

Thanks

[claydoh]

I'll look for the nouveau driver later.

Don't bother, unless you want basic and poor performance. it is the stock one you use before you installed the proprietary Nvidia driver.