Reason #2: Wrong video settings in preferences Now restart your VLC and play that MP4 file again. Now move cursor to 'Input/Codecs' > 'Video Codecs' > 'ffmpeg', here choose Disable for 'Hardware Decoding' option. Go in the Tools > Preferences, then click Show all Setting from the bottom left side. Solution: Go to VLC on your computer and disable hardware video decoding. Reason #1: Limitation on Hardware Decoding for MP4 format, especially for subtitles 3 Main Reasons and Solutions for VLC Cannot Play MP4 Files You can solve this by trying other video players or converting the MP4 file to another VLC supported format, like converting MP4 to AVI, using MP4 to VLC converter - Wondershare UniConverter (originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate) software on Mac or Windows. If you are using a perfect video file that is not corrupted, then the problem can be related to the video codec. Mostly every different MP4 files are encoded with the different video codecs.
MP4 is a video file format with a multimedia container. I tried re-installing the latest VLC but no luck.'-A user from 'I have an MP4 video that I can play with Windows Media Player, but VLC couldn't play it.
Is it possible to play an MP4 file in the VLC media player? In most cases, the answer is yes, but things happen that you can't play MP4 files in the VLC media player, just like the user feedback below.