Hi Stephen,

When high definition videos of large sizes are opened in VLC Media Player, the HD video doesn’t play perfectly at all times. The HD video freezes and skips a few frames while the audio plays perfectly. The video might hang a few seconds and loop around the same point again.

In order to fix this video freezing issue you can try a combination of these methods till the video plays smoothly:

1. Increase Cache Values
Even when playing an offline video, VLC needs to cache it. It preloads a certain portion of the video from the hard drive to your computer’s main memory or RAM. From there, the player accesses it and plays it. It happens constantly as a video is being played. 

• Open Tools -> Preferences (CTRL + P).

• In Show settings select the All.
• In Advanced settings, click on the parent option that says Input / Codecs.
• In Input / Codecs scroll down to the options under the heading Advanced.
• Change the values for File caching (ms) from 300 to a higher value like 1000 or 2000. The value is in milliseconds.

2. Change Video Output Settings

• In the menu bar, click on Tools -> Preferences (CTRL + P).
• From the options present, click on Video.
• In Video Settings, under Output change the value from Automatic to DirectX (DirecDraw) video output. Try OpenGL video output as well.

I hope this helps in solving your issue.

Regards,
Lokesh