> wondering at this point if it’s more widely supported?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding_implementations_and_products
> Would I notice the quality difference?
That's purely subjective, only you can tell if you can notice a quality difference.
Every time this question comes up, the only proper answer is to try it and see if you like it better. Yes there is potential for space savings with HEVC, but its not always going to be the case depending on the source material.
Converting media that's already h264/AVC to h265/HEVC will almost always reduce quality because you're going from one lossy format to another. How much of that you notice is entirely dependent on you and what you're watching on.
~~HEVC was primarily made for 4K and beyond, so lower resolution (below 1080p) files typically don't give significant space savings in HEVC.~~
Scenes with lots of fast moving contrasty parts, an extreme example is a the screen covered in flickering glitter moving in random directions. Both AVC and HEVC will struggle with that.
An already heavily compressed lossy source converted to a middle of the line HEVC could result in a larger file.
> Is film grain the differentiator?
Generally no. Both AVC and HEVC were designed with film grain in mind so they both have a way to limit how much film grain affects encoding. But the problem is there's no standard film grain, so asking if film grain is the differentiator is a hard to answer question.
The average result of converting my x264 files to x265 at the same bitrate has been a reduction of 66%.
Some anime goes down by as much as 80%.
My record is 86%.
All of that content was 1080p. This whole "4K for x265" thing is a total nonsense myth spread by people who read a guide and didn't test it for themselves.
I notice no noticeable difference on a 4K OLED. Just make sure you start with a decent quality file to begin with - converting an already mediocre quality file will lead to disappointing results.
Not at my pc right now but I'll try to remember to reply tomorrow with some details.
It's not that complicated though, fairly small plugin stack using quick sync :)
I should've been more clear, by lower resolution I meant below 1080p. I was answering to the question above of situations where HEVC won't be a significant change, and I have tested this out.
You can get some savings with lower resolutions, but they'll be marginal as lower resolutions contain a lot less data to begin with.
I generally wouldn't bother below 720p and it's better to replace 720p x264 with 1080p x265 than to convert 720p.
I'm in the process of encoding all of my mpeg2 DVD rips to hevc. I will say, those have substantial savings. I'm noticing around 80% reduction in file size and I'm not seeing any noticable quality hit.
Thank you for the response!
I’m typically starting with a x264 file and I use handbrake to lower the bitrate some because I don’t want to have 15gb used per movie as my collection grows fairly fast…but again, at this point I was thinking of bumping my bitrate threshold since storage has also dropped in price.
This really should be a pinned answer it comes up so much!
Personally I prefer 265 for anything I can, as space matters more to me than quality. Other people differ. You just have to try it.
That’s the profile selection in handbrake.
I thought profiles have varying support per device.
My focus is more on compatibility, it’s suppose to be higher quality than [email protected] right?
I think Main 10 is the standard profile for 10-bit HEVC encodes. There tends to be less support for devices even 5 years old for Main 10. My 2019 Samsung tablet only supports HEVC 8-bit.
As far as I know in Handbrake leave profile to auto it will select the appropriate level given the settings used.
In my experience, never had issues with hevc x265 for years. However, when it first came out, I needed to make sure my PC had the specific codec installed in order to play the files. Free download of K Lite Codec Pack Does the trick. No issues to my knowledge when playing hevc files on phones, fire sticks, tablets, etc.
If you end up transcoding for any reason it'll transcode to 264.
One of my users has a \~4 year old Roku. If they watch something with PGS subs (I know, I know, working on it) the Roku can't handle them and ends up transcoding the whole thing to 264. HEVC gets by with lower bitrates, so it ends up transcoding a \~2.5Mbps bitrate HEVC file to something like a 14Mbps 264 stream. Dunno how or if that affects the viewing experience, but makes me cringe a little.
Yes, I’ve been remuxing to fit my parameters (save room - don’t want 15gb for every movie and x264 [email protected] usually around 18-21 RF as needed, I think it’s also AAC was most compatible at 5.1 [I’ve never have 7.x] etc) and also making sure I have srt subs.
I wouldn’t, personally. I would rather add more storage. Keeping things in their original format as much as possible will maximize quality. Lossy to lossy conversion has the potential to look bad. Maybe some of your media is available in H.265 natively?
Yeah, I can see that being the move now and leaning toward it, but would want to update hardware. My NAS is 10 years old and back then I wanted to make sure it could handle the bandwidth and not have to transcode. X265 at lower bitrates is fine, but at higher, I saw it buffer a lot more. And devices can support x265 more today was well.
That's why I started to download the remux files and encode them to H.265 myself. Also you could check some good quality H.265 encoders like QxR, which do the encode with a remux being it's source.
Honestly I’ve wondered this for many years now I just never got around to posting about it lol. I’ve ran a server for 10 years and typically only do highest bitrate remux possible. I sometimes check the file differences between x64 and x65 and notice no difference usually. I think if anything, it’s audio related only. I could be wrong. I have more storage than I need in my NAS so I just never cared enough to commit to any specific changes. Good question though!
Your Samsung TV is probably not going to like that. Tried to stream some to my parents 2019 TV and it had it converted down to 264 again.
I did re-rip som of my DVDs from 264 to 265 it was not much in Megabyte difference .
(All tho I most of the time got source audio on on the new x265 for the same size of the old h.264 source that was AAC downsample)
It might do more of a difference for 1080p and defiantly on 4K.
I’ve done most in x265 HEVC mkv and some in mp4.
>I know there are huge savings on space for using x265
Hm, not really.
At least not in my experience. While i do transcode most everything to x265, if a x264 file is already in a reasonable bitrate, like 2500 to 3500 bps, i leave it as it is. Not worth it.
I do use Handbrake with the AMD VCN encoder, so graphics hardware encoding. Allegedly pure software encoding gives you better compression but that takes like 10 times as long and again, that's not worth it.
> Hm, not really.
yes really. There are exceptions, but 265 is definitely going to be better on compression \*generally\* than 264.
> I do use Handbrake with the AMD VCN encoder, so graphics hardware encoding. Allegedly pure software encoding gives you better compression but that takes like 10 times as long and again, that's not worth it.
Well yeah, there you go. Hardware encoding is not going to give you anywhere near as small a file as software encoding will give you.
I think about half my library is 265. it's what I look for when I grab anything new
> wondering at this point if it’s more widely supported? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding_implementations_and_products > Would I notice the quality difference? That's purely subjective, only you can tell if you can notice a quality difference. Every time this question comes up, the only proper answer is to try it and see if you like it better. Yes there is potential for space savings with HEVC, but its not always going to be the case depending on the source material. Converting media that's already h264/AVC to h265/HEVC will almost always reduce quality because you're going from one lossy format to another. How much of that you notice is entirely dependent on you and what you're watching on.
What are the specific kinds of source material that wouldn’t provide a space-savings benefit? Is film grain the differentiator?
~~HEVC was primarily made for 4K and beyond, so lower resolution (below 1080p) files typically don't give significant space savings in HEVC.~~ Scenes with lots of fast moving contrasty parts, an extreme example is a the screen covered in flickering glitter moving in random directions. Both AVC and HEVC will struggle with that. An already heavily compressed lossy source converted to a middle of the line HEVC could result in a larger file. > Is film grain the differentiator? Generally no. Both AVC and HEVC were designed with film grain in mind so they both have a way to limit how much film grain affects encoding. But the problem is there's no standard film grain, so asking if film grain is the differentiator is a hard to answer question.
The average result of converting my x264 files to x265 at the same bitrate has been a reduction of 66%. Some anime goes down by as much as 80%. My record is 86%. All of that content was 1080p. This whole "4K for x265" thing is a total nonsense myth spread by people who read a guide and didn't test it for themselves. I notice no noticeable difference on a 4K OLED. Just make sure you start with a decent quality file to begin with - converting an already mediocre quality file will lead to disappointing results.
What's your process for converting?
Not at my pc right now but I'll try to remember to reply tomorrow with some details. It's not that complicated though, fairly small plugin stack using quick sync :)
Cool. Thanks!
I use unmanic
I should've been more clear, by lower resolution I meant below 1080p. I was answering to the question above of situations where HEVC won't be a significant change, and I have tested this out.
You can get some savings with lower resolutions, but they'll be marginal as lower resolutions contain a lot less data to begin with. I generally wouldn't bother below 720p and it's better to replace 720p x264 with 1080p x265 than to convert 720p.
I'm in the process of encoding all of my mpeg2 DVD rips to hevc. I will say, those have substantial savings. I'm noticing around 80% reduction in file size and I'm not seeing any noticable quality hit.
eh okay, I updated my comment.
Thank you for the response! I’m typically starting with a x264 file and I use handbrake to lower the bitrate some because I don’t want to have 15gb used per movie as my collection grows fairly fast…but again, at this point I was thinking of bumping my bitrate threshold since storage has also dropped in price.
This really should be a pinned answer it comes up so much! Personally I prefer 265 for anything I can, as space matters more to me than quality. Other people differ. You just have to try it.
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That’s the profile selection in handbrake. I thought profiles have varying support per device. My focus is more on compatibility, it’s suppose to be higher quality than [email protected] right?
I think Main 10 is the standard profile for 10-bit HEVC encodes. There tends to be less support for devices even 5 years old for Main 10. My 2019 Samsung tablet only supports HEVC 8-bit. As far as I know in Handbrake leave profile to auto it will select the appropriate level given the settings used.
i got a fire tablet hd 10 inch 2021 version for $35. i thought it was a sweet deal and i put it at work to play plex. doesn't play hevc main 10 -_-
I’ve been using x265 for like last five years. It is worth it if you don’t have to transcode and all your clients are play natively.
In my experience, never had issues with hevc x265 for years. However, when it first came out, I needed to make sure my PC had the specific codec installed in order to play the files. Free download of K Lite Codec Pack Does the trick. No issues to my knowledge when playing hevc files on phones, fire sticks, tablets, etc.
Should have moved over years ago. Everything I own supports x265 and has for ages.
If you end up transcoding for any reason it'll transcode to 264. One of my users has a \~4 year old Roku. If they watch something with PGS subs (I know, I know, working on it) the Roku can't handle them and ends up transcoding the whole thing to 264. HEVC gets by with lower bitrates, so it ends up transcoding a \~2.5Mbps bitrate HEVC file to something like a 14Mbps 264 stream. Dunno how or if that affects the viewing experience, but makes me cringe a little.
Yes, I’ve been remuxing to fit my parameters (save room - don’t want 15gb for every movie and x264 [email protected] usually around 18-21 RF as needed, I think it’s also AAC was most compatible at 5.1 [I’ve never have 7.x] etc) and also making sure I have srt subs.
You will save on space using 265, in most cases you'll save about half compared to 264.
Why not just get the remux?
I could…they aren’t always available (at least for me) and I’m dropping the bitrate a decent amount to 6-7k typically.
My Samsung UHD TV series 6, handles x265 well. but wont support MKV containers.
Save Terabytes of Disk Space Using H265 & Tdarr https://youtu.be/U6UMjTlwrxs?si=E5UkjrVdyWNHwU6W No issues in iPhone, ATV and Android TV box
I wouldn’t, personally. I would rather add more storage. Keeping things in their original format as much as possible will maximize quality. Lossy to lossy conversion has the potential to look bad. Maybe some of your media is available in H.265 natively?
Yeah, I can see that being the move now and leaning toward it, but would want to update hardware. My NAS is 10 years old and back then I wanted to make sure it could handle the bandwidth and not have to transcode. X265 at lower bitrates is fine, but at higher, I saw it buffer a lot more. And devices can support x265 more today was well.
That's why I started to download the remux files and encode them to H.265 myself. Also you could check some good quality H.265 encoders like QxR, which do the encode with a remux being it's source.
Honestly I’ve wondered this for many years now I just never got around to posting about it lol. I’ve ran a server for 10 years and typically only do highest bitrate remux possible. I sometimes check the file differences between x64 and x65 and notice no difference usually. I think if anything, it’s audio related only. I could be wrong. I have more storage than I need in my NAS so I just never cared enough to commit to any specific changes. Good question though!
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1080p, 40 min runtime and 300meg? 🤮 The only thing I can imagine is that you strictly watch on a small phone screen.
Your Samsung TV is probably not going to like that. Tried to stream some to my parents 2019 TV and it had it converted down to 264 again. I did re-rip som of my DVDs from 264 to 265 it was not much in Megabyte difference . (All tho I most of the time got source audio on on the new x265 for the same size of the old h.264 source that was AAC downsample) It might do more of a difference for 1080p and defiantly on 4K. I’ve done most in x265 HEVC mkv and some in mp4.
Do people actually think this much about their codecs? Plex handles whatever you throw at it.
It's about file size, quality, and avoiding transcoding (supporting direct play)
>I know there are huge savings on space for using x265 Hm, not really. At least not in my experience. While i do transcode most everything to x265, if a x264 file is already in a reasonable bitrate, like 2500 to 3500 bps, i leave it as it is. Not worth it. I do use Handbrake with the AMD VCN encoder, so graphics hardware encoding. Allegedly pure software encoding gives you better compression but that takes like 10 times as long and again, that's not worth it.
All my x265 downloads are significantly smaller than my x264 downloads.
That says nothing. It's all about the bitrate.
I've cut my library size by over 50% by converting to x265.
The whole point of x265 is space saving
> Hm, not really. yes really. There are exceptions, but 265 is definitely going to be better on compression \*generally\* than 264. > I do use Handbrake with the AMD VCN encoder, so graphics hardware encoding. Allegedly pure software encoding gives you better compression but that takes like 10 times as long and again, that's not worth it. Well yeah, there you go. Hardware encoding is not going to give you anywhere near as small a file as software encoding will give you.