x265 or HEVC, which is best/easiest?

[Dizzy49 99]

I'm updating a bunch of my videos and I'm trying to figure out if I should use HEVC or x265.   The HEVC files are 2-3x the size of the x265 so while that is something to keep in mind, it is not a critical factor in the decision.  My biggest factors are what is easiest to play and to transcode (4k to 1080p) for other devices.  Non 4k devices are some phones, and a bunch of Amazon Firesticks on 1080p Non-HDR TVs.

Thanks!

[pwhodges 2012]

HEVC is x265.  I presume you are speaking of using different software(or settings) for the conversion.  Tell us how you're doing it, and we may be able to give you some pointers.

Paul

[Junglejim 385]

1 hour ago, pwhodges said:

HEVC is x265.  I presume you are speaking of using different software(or settings) for the conversion.  Tell us how you're doing it, and we may be able to give you some pointers.

Paul

Maybe its x264 v x265.. ?

[pwhodges 2012]

I wondered that, but the sizes suggest otherwise.

Paul

[Oracle 85]

I've been in this same process as well and have been converted a shit ton of .H264 to HEVC. It really just depends on what your biggest priority is: File Size vs. Quality.

[Oracle 85]

Here is a script I created in PowerShell to automagically convert any video in a specified parent directory (and recursively through any subdirectories) from their original format to HEVC.

You just need to point paths to input/output, log, and FFMPEG/FFPROBE exes.

Lemme know if you have any questions.

StreamShift_1.0.7.ps1

[CharlieMurphy 92]

I've been tempted to encode large series to AV1. I know a lot of devices would need a transcode for now but HEVC still won't even play in a browser in most circumstances.

But since nobody mentioned this yet, it seems obligatory... HEVC is h265. x265 is the software tool to encode h265/HEVC. x264 is the software tool to encode h264 (aka AVC). Correct me if I'm wrong.

9 hours ago, Dizzy49 said:

Non 4k devices are some phones, and a bunch of Amazon Firesticks on 1080p Non-HDR TVs.

I can say that 1080p HEVC will need to be transcoded for some new 1080p devices. I'm unsure about Firesticks, but some new Roku TVs that are 1080p won't support HEVC. I assume they saved $$ on the HEVC license since it's not 4k anyway.

[Oracle 85]

4 minutes ago, CharlieMurphy said:

I can say that 1080p HEVC will need to be transcoded for some new 1080p devices. I'm unsure about Firesticks, but some new Roku TVs that are 1080p won't support HEVC. I assume they saved $$ on the HEVC license since it's not 4k anyway.

I've noticed this as well. I've found that I've had to transcode a few movies encoded as 1080p HEVC over the last few days. It doesn't affect me, but I just thought it was interesting.

[Ronstang 293]

1 hour ago, Oracle said:

I've noticed this as well. I've found that I've had to transcode a few movies encoded as 1080p HEVC over the last few days. It doesn't affect me, but I just thought it was interesting.

What devices are you having to transcode on?  Most of my library is HEVC and 10bit color and I never have to transcode anything.....which was by design.  Firesticks are the best at compatibility and play everything I throw at them.  The main devices I use in home are Firesticks, Sony Google TVs, LG 4K TVs and Android phones.  Outside of the house I have friends using Samsung TVs and Toshiba Fire TVs....all require no transcoding.  If ROKU devices aren't consistent with HEVC playback I would avoid them unless you have one.

 

1 hour ago, Oracle said:

I've been in this same process as well and have been converted a shit ton of .H264 to HEVC. It really just depends on what your biggest priority is: File Size vs. Quality.

I did EXTENSINVE testing a couple of years ago struggling with this.  I still have a rather large library of H.264 content but I have replaced or will replace it with H.265 when I can and if I can't I'll convert the H.264 content to H.265.  I'm very picky about quality and I prefer H.265.  It took me over a year to fine tune my settings to get what I want so I stacked up a lot of hard drives with recorded TV movies because I wasn't going to use H.264 anymore.

Depending upon the source quality (higher quality sources compress farther in the encoding process) H.265 is on average 40-50% smaller in size at the same quality.  With my settings I think H.265 is the quality winner anyway so the smaller file size is a huge bonus.  Most of my content is recorded movies from sources like TCM, Encore, Sony, MGM and sometimes TV movies and once encoded with H.265 I can get about 3K movies on a 4TB hard drive.

People that view my content tell me it looks like it's paying off a disc and it's mostly recorded TV yet the file size for my average movie with copied source audio averages about 1.5Gb and my average playback bitrate is ~2Mb/s so the load on my system is non-existent since I never have to transcode anything except PGS subs that I usually replace with SRT anyway. 

[CharlieMurphy 92]

54 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

If ROKU devices aren't consistent with HEVC playback I would avoid them unless you have one.

100%. This was my verdict on Roku TVs for this very reason. I haven't seen a Roku device other than the TVs have this issue.

55 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

With my settings I think H.265 is the quality winner anyway so the smaller file size is a huge bonus.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but have you shared the settings you like anywhere you could link? Or maybe make a thread for sharing settings? I'd like to encode shows to 1080p HEVC, or alternately get an arc A380 and encode to AV1. I know with AV1 I'd be doing more transcoding but if that runs on the ARC card, transcoding AV1 to H264 might not be so bad.

[rbjtech 5284]

19 hours ago, CharlieMurphy said:

I don't want to hijack this thread, but have you shared the settings you like anywhere you could link? Or maybe make a thread for sharing settings? I'd like to encode shows to 1080p HEVC, or alternately get an arc A380 and encode to AV1. I know with AV1 I'd be doing more transcoding but if that runs on the ARC card, transcoding AV1 to H264 might not be so bad.

There are no 'settings' - it all depends on so many variables that it's impossible to even give guidance on this.  There is a wealth of info out there - but my honest advice is to try play and see if you are happy with the quality vs filesize vs time taken to do it.  Pretty much every file is going to be different - so don't assume what works for one movie, works the same for the next.  Tv series / seasons are 'generally' encoded the same, so you can apply those settings to all episodes for example.

On AV1, unless the majority of your clients have AV1 decode, then you'll be encoding twice, one for the encode (and even on hardware, this takes a lot longer than even hevc) and again to decode during a transcode (losing the quality you fought so hard to maintain..).   The space saving over AV1 is from what I can see 'minimal' vs well encoded hevc - so not worth it imo - not yet anyway.  

[CharlieMurphy 92]

I don't want to hijack, as I said, but they did share the ffmpeg settings (variables) for encoding shows with NVENC to 10-bit HEVC 1080p with some instructions for different sources (TV or Blu-Ray). When people go down the rabbit hole of finding a good starting point they like for encodes, I'm always interested in where they land. I'm not so arrogant to assume my perception of encode quality is better than theirs.

Anyway, my logic for AV1 vs HEVC isn't file size or quality, its that HEVC doesn't play in a browser without transcoding and I still see 1080p devices that don't support it and need transcodes. Roku Ultra and their 4k streaming stick play AV1 now. Since 1080p Roku TVs don't play HEVC I assume it's to save on the license. With that in mind it seems like as AV1 gains hardware decode support in more ARM chips, even the cheapest Roku 1080p TVs will be able to decode it without paying for it. So neither codec will direct play on every platform now, but AV1 is on the way in and HEVC still transcodes on brand new devices and in browsers after all these years.

Every Windows browser plays AV1 now I think.

Edited April 25, 2023 by CharlieMurphy

[rbjtech 5284]

32 minutes ago, CharlieMurphy said:

I don't want to hijack, as I said, but they did share the ffmpeg settings (variables) for encoding shows with NVENC to 10-bit HEVC 1080p with some instructions for different sources (TV or Blu-Ray). When people go down the rabbit hole of finding a good starting point they like for encodes, I'm always interested in where they land. I'm not so arrogant to assume my perception of encode quality is better than theirs.

Anyway, my logic for AV1 vs HEVC isn't file size or quality, its that HEVC doesn't play in a browser without transcoding and I still see 1080p devices that don't support it and need transcodes. Roku Ultra and their 4k streaming stick play AV1 now. Since 1080p Roku TVs don't play HEVC I assume it's to save on the license. With that in mind it seems like as AV1 gains hardware decode support in more ARM chips, even the cheapest Roku 1080p TVs will be able to decode it without paying for it. So neither codec will direct play on every platform now, but AV1 is on the way in and HEVC still transcodes on brand new devices and in browsers after all these years.

Every Windows browser plays AV1 now I think.

Browsers yes.  Edge has a free HEVC Plugin which allows direct play of HEVC, but agree Chrome/Firefox etc don't have this out the box - as you say, licenses are the only obvious reason why.   All other hardware in the last 5 years or so that supports 'UHD/4K' will play hevc - it has to as that is the universally accepted codec for 4k video.  AV1 hardware support is only in the last 2 years, maybe less.

I *think* ultimately, AV1 will gain popularity quickly once mainstream GPU's become affordable and Intel and AMD include hardware ENCODERS in their silicon.  h266 is also out there - just to stir things up haha. 

[pwhodges 2012]

As an aside: to my eyes, when AV1 is starved of bits (say by an unexpectedly complex bit of video in a space-sensitive encode), it degrades more gracefully than HEVC.  Of course, this may have been a chance artefact in the examples I have noticed.

Paul

[speechles 2055]

3 hours ago, CharlieMurphy said:

Roku Ultra and their 4k streaming stick play AV1 now.

The Roku Express 4K model also has AV1 support. Emby will properly detect AV1 support on any Roku models, present or in the future.

[Abejo 15]

I was also thinking about re-encoding my library, but what I can do with HEVC from PCs is very slow.

[FFMTL 0]

On 24/04/2023 at 11:35, Oracle said:

Here is a script I created in PowerShell to automagically convert any video in a specified parent directory (and recursively through any subdirectories) from their original format to HEVC.

You just need to point paths to input/output, log, and FFMPEG/FFPROBE exes.

Lemme know if you have any questions.

StreamShift_1.0.7.ps1 4.31 kB · 12 downloads

Very useful ! My only comment would be that you could not determine what would be modifed prior to execution.

For those interested,

    V1.0.8 - Added PSLoggin for more effective login, added Switch for Logging only, and added some file/Stream info to the output.

But the rest of the script function has not been modified.

StreamShift_1.0.8.ps1

[GrimReaper 4739]

This topic really needs amended Title, suggestions are welcome. 

[FFMTL 0]

33 minutes ago, FFMTL said:

Very useful ! My only comment would be that you could not determine what would be modifed prior to execution.

For those interested,

    V1.0.8 - Added PSLoggin for more effective login, added Switch for Logging only, and added some file/Stream info to the output.

But the rest of the script function has not been modified.

Public/HEVC Conversion at main · Frafou/Public

StreamShift_1.0.8.ps1 10.3 kB · 0 downloads