Question about h265

[all4dom 101]

Hope this is the right forum & im saying my question right. I have a wi. 10 Intel i5 pc as my emby server. I'm streaming to a fire tv, roku tv, apple tv & samaung tv. Would I have a problem playing something that's h265? I don't know if playing media in h265 uses more resources or some clients can't play them. Thanks for your help.

Dom

 

[darkassassin07 652]

I've fairly recently (well, 2 months ago) started converting most of my media into HEVC (h265).

The web app wont play it without transcoding, but all the other clients I use (android, theater, and xbone) direct play it just fine.

 

So far I've shaved a wopping 20tb of data off of my library bringing it from 34tb down to 14tb. And I've still got another 10tb to put through the converter.

Edited January 5, 2024 by darkassassin07

[GrimReaper 4742]

11 minutes ago, darkassassin07 said:

The web app wont play it without transcoding

Which browser? 

[darkassassin07 652]

Edge/chrome.

I haven't looked too closely though as I don't use those clients, it's remote family. I also have plenty of processing power for transcoding so meh.

 

 

/edit: quick test to chrome on my phone direct plays, so maybe they're just limited by connection speed/quality settings.

 

Guess I'm wrong about the web app+HEVC

Edited January 5, 2024 by darkassassin07

[visproduction 315]

You can test if a browser can playback any video by simply dragging the file name onto the browser.  If it starts to download, then you know that video cannot be played on that browser without conversion.

[majorsl 23]

I think your PC will be just fine for that.  Everything in my collection, including 4K, is h265 and I'm on a Synology 1817+.  I'm pretty certain any i5 is more powerful than the Atom processor in my Synology.

[richt 94]

9 hours ago, darkassassin07 said:

So far I've shaved a wopping 20tb of data off of my library bringing it from 34tb down to 14tb. And I've still got another 10tb to put through the converter.

Just idle curiosity, what were you converting from to get such a drastic change?  Blu-ray files?

[darkassassin07 652]

Mostly 1080p h264 mkvs, but theres some variety in there, some lower res, the occasional mp4; I haven't been too picky.

Just using embys convert feature: custom, hevc, aac, mkv, original quality. They go in 8-12mbps h264 and come out around 2mbps h265 most of the time. I don't notice any difference visually, but again I'm not very picky about quality. Test some files for yourself and and see what you get.

I sorted by size on disc in sonarr and have been working my way down. I haven't gotten to the main movie library yet.

[rbjtech 5284]

It's a good way to do it and I've done something similiar.    A simple bitrate list will get you a very good list of candidates where bitrate has been 'stuffed' to maximise what could be stored on a blu-ray disk for example (30-40 Gb ~ Max 38Mbit/sec).    These 1080p Remux's will reduce VERY nicely using hevc to 8-10 Mbit/sec or 1/4 the size of the original while maintaining 90-95% of the detail.   

However, re-encoding already bit starved 1080p h264 (< 8Mbit/sec) is imo not worth it - as you WILL be losing quality if the end target is only 2mbps - hevc is good, but it's not that good lol.      Unfortunately, you may not notice this until played back at a later date - as you will be unlikely to review each encode.    I played it safe - anything under 1080p 12Mbit/sec stays as h264.

Edited January 9, 2024 by rbjtech

[visproduction 315]

I can get good quality at 2400 kbps for 1080P h264 mp4 if I set the encoding quality extremely high which no longer can be done in real time on an average i7 workstation.  This high quality encoding takes at least 3 to 5 hours on an older i7 Intel chip with plenty of RAM.  You cannot use this quality level for real time conversions.  You would need a dedicated graphics card, faster CPU whatever...  But, I don't encode in real time, I prep my videos before they go onto the media server collection so they are all mp4 and AAC audio and none need conversion.  At this higher quality setting from a 3rd party encoder AVI Demux, the media looks great at lower bitrates.