Falcon Player

Almost always because of the codec the camera used, not the player.

XbotGo firmware 5.0.1 switched the Falcon from H.264 to HEVC (also called H.265) to make recordings smaller. H.264 plays in every browser on every computer. HEVC does not — it needs a decoder built into your computer's graphics chip, and browsers differ in whether they will use it.

The player detects this before playback starts. If your computer cannot decode the file, it tells you so, explains why for your specific browser, and shows you how to fix it — rather than leaving you with a black frame. Recordings from earlier firmware are H.264 and are unaffected.

Test with Chrome first. It is free, and it will tell you whether the paid codec can help you at all.

On Windows, Edge and Firefox decode HEVC through Windows Media Foundation, which needs HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store — about $1. But that codec only enables decoding on hardware that can already do it. Chromium-based browsers ship no software HEVC decoder on Windows at all, so if your graphics chip lacks an HEVC decode block, the purchase changes nothing.

Chrome on Windows talks to the same graphics chip directly and needs no extension. So: open the file in Chrome. If Chrome plays it, your hardware is capable and the Store codec will make Edge and Firefox work too. If Chrome cannot play it either, your hardware is the limit — do not buy the codec, convert the file instead.

Use Chrome. It is the right answer on every platform, and not only because of the codec — Safari cannot read the hidden .data folder that holds your tracking log, thumbnails and markers, and marker editing needs a Chromium browser. Safari decodes HEVC perfectly well, but you would lose most of what this player does.

Macs handle HEVC without anything extra, so Chrome on any reasonably modern Mac plays these recordings and keeps every feature.

On Windows it depends on the graphics chip. Chrome needs a GPU with a built-in HEVC decoder, which covers roughly four in five Windows machines in use: Intel integrated graphics from 2015 onward, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900-series and newer, AMD Radeon RX 400-series and newer. Edge needs that same hardware plus a paid codec from the Microsoft Store, so it works on fewer machines in practice. Firefox on Windows follows the same path as Edge.

On Linux, HEVC decoding in browsers is generally unavailable regardless of hardware.

Every browser on every platform plays H.264, which is why converting is the reliable answer when hardware is the obstacle.

With FFmpeg, a free command-line tool. It is one command, and the player writes it out for you with your file's name already filled in — open the notice it shows and expand "Convert it to H.264 yourself".

If you use a package manager, installing is one line: "winget install Gyan.FFmpeg" in PowerShell on Windows, or "brew install ffmpeg" in Terminal on a Mac. You do not need one, though. FFmpeg is a single self-contained program, so you can download a ready-made build — gyan.dev for Windows, evermeet.cx for macOS, both linked from the official download page — drop the ffmpeg file straight into the folder holding your video, and run it from there. On a Mac you will have to right-click it and choose Open the first time, because it is not signed.

The command writes a second file beside the original, named the same but ending in .h264.mp4 — for example VID_20260914_172740_01_01.h264.mp4. Leave both files where they are. Nothing is renamed, moved or deleted, and your original recording is untouched.

Load the folder into the player again and it recognizes the two files as one recording, playing the H.264 copy automatically. Expect the conversion to take roughly as long as the game itself, or about a quarter of that on a Mac, which uses a hardware encoder. The picture is unchanged — this is a format change, not a quality reduction.

No. The converted copy inherits everything, because the player treats it as the same recording rather than a new one.

A video is paired with its tracking log, camera markers, score markers and thumbnail by file name — VID_20260914_172740_01_01.mp4 with the .track, .vdata, .mark and .cover files of the same name in the hidden .data folder beside it. The converted copy is named VID_20260914_172740_01_01.h264.mp4, and the player strips that .h264 when matching, so both files point at the same sidecars. Markers you add afterward are saved against the original name too, so they are there whichever one you are watching.

This is why the conversion command writes a second file rather than replacing the first. A command that renamed the output to something like output.mp4 would produce a video that plays but has no markers, no tracking overlay and no score — everything this player exists to show.

When both files are present the player opens the H.264 copy by default, since that is the one guaranteed to play. The Video Info panel shows which one is loaded and lets you switch to the original on a computer that can handle it.

No. Clip recording re-encodes to H.264 regardless of what the source recording used, so anything you export plays anywhere.

That makes the player itself a practical way to share a highlight with someone whose computer cannot open the original — record the clip on a machine that can play the footage, and the exported file will work on theirs.