Do you prefer x264 or 265 HEVC?
Do you prefer x264 or 265 HEVC?
Hello just making a poll, which one do you prefer? personally I prefer x265 but since the rarbg falldown i've seen that almost all 1080p rips are in x264, what do you think about that, and do you recommend any place to find more x265 content beside those in the megathread?
Note that H.264 and H.265 are the video compression standards and x264 and x265 are FOSS video encoding libraries developed by VideoLAN.
Important distinction, thanks for clarifying because I always forget!
x265 no contest, all day every day. Then again we should probably be migrating to AV1 ASAP
I think it has to reach a bit more device saturation before encoders jump to it. But yeah AV1 is much better for everyone. Having AOM there to work on it and protect it is a good bonus. Pirates and Netflix on the same team there lol
I guess I'll have to see if my TV really can decode AV1 then, as my nvidia shield definitely won't
The trouble with AV1 is that it's about a decade behind h.265 in terms of hardware support. Most people aren't upgrading their gpus every single generation, so by the time AV1-compatible hardware starts to see significant market share, it's pretty likely that h.266-compatible hardware will be on the market as well.
Of course, there's also software encoders; but benchmarks of current software encoders put av1 anywhere between 50-1000x slower than x265 for comparable quality and bitrate.
It's definitely cool that people are working on a royalty-free video codec, but h.265 is the undeniable king for the time being.
H265 is objectively superior in just about every way UNLESS you're trying to play it on hardware that doesn't support it. The only reason to use H264 is for broad compatibility.
The issue is more political than technical. Hopefully AV1 will fix that.
Pretty sure it's just more of a hardware age issue. Smart TV makers don't put much effort into their firmware, so if they don't support a codec now they probably won't support it ever. Devices made before a certain year probably won't ever support H265. I suspect we'll run into the same thing with AV1, unfortunately. It's another objectively superior codec that will have compatible issues. 🤷
Agreed. I've had problems playing h.265 on other devices, streaming, etc, where 264 would work fine.
also its not just pure "compatibility", but I had a time when I played vids to my TV over an old laptop (from around 2015). Worked like a charm. But some x265 vids went into full-on stutter mode in scenes where a lot of stuff was happening... was more a nuisance than a dealbreaker, but still, preferred x264 versions if I could get them
Sounds like your TV isn't fully compatible with x265. You can get around that by using a modern streaming stick that supports it.
Neither. AV1 if available, if not I download a high quality x264 copy and do my own transcode. AV1 is high quality with smaller file sizes, but isn't very common right now.
Where have you ever found AV1? I've literally never once seen it in the wild. It seems awesome though, I would definitely choose that over anything else
1337x, search for AV1. There's not that much right now, but I'm starting to see more of it.
For now its x265. Though later on itll be av1.
Wow I never heard of AV1 before, it sounds really promising!
I just heard about it a few minutes ago and it seems really nice too. Especially with all the space it saves.
I was trying to start getting some movies in 4k to take full advantage of my new 4k tv other than gaming, but honestly the sheer size of 4k films has me staying with 1080 for at least a little more
For some reason plex doesn't support it yet, though jellyfin does at least
AV1 we should have more hardware acceleration in the future. AVIF is also promising.
Now with SVT-AV1, its debatably as fast or faster than HEVC
AVIF is a great format, but I'm still salty over what Google did to JPEG XL. If at least Firefox adds support I will use JPEG XL on my websites with AVIF as fallback. Oh yeah, and then we have MS Edge that doesn't even support AVIF yet lol.
AVIF is just AV1 but for images. Doesn't seem to relate much with movies
x265 is just objectively better than x264. I'm not sure what's to poll. It really comes down to the encoder themselves which ends up a better result. x265 has a minor draw back in that it's new and older things don't naturally support it and a decent draw back in that it takes more CPU power to decode the stream for playback. Other than that though x265.
The various quality though comes from inexperienced or lazy encodes for both formats being available. I have such a pet peeve for someone taking a x264 encode and uploading it in x265 with like a 2% file size reduction and talk about how much better it looks. And the general downloader eats it up because 'x265 gud' to a certain degree. It hurts because then that typically becomes all you can get and no conversion is truly lossless so even re-encoding them myself can take a lot of work to get the reduction without quality loss. I've seen x265 480p encodes that end up with bigger files sizes than if you encoded the shit in AVI, because they seem to think low CFR and 265 is instant quality at a "better" size. If you take the time to really dial in the settings, run it at a slower speed, and understand what type of content you're encoding you can get an incredibly high quality small file. But that takes a decent amount of knowledge and a lot of patience. That's what really sets apart good encoders/releases.
Idk the fix. It doesn't help there's also people convinced a larger file size has inherently better quality. Like seeing a bluray 1080p rip in x265 that's a larger file than an entire bluray disc can hold drives me up a wall because usually it's one of the more seeded files. Like obviously people uploading and tagging 4k lossless files know what they are providing, those files are needed for the proper encodes to eat up.
But RARBG tagged releases were amazing quality. You typically had to go up a few gigs for similar quality from another release. Pahe can really nail some tv shows. Few other encoders back in the day. YIFY/YTS are amazing for the size, but you are giving up some quality. But you can't beat a 1.5gig movie that is better than streaming quality at times.
Yeah, I don't get the poll. Why would anyone use x264 I don't know!
The general pattern is that 4k will be x265 and 1080P encodes with DV / HDR10 need to be x265.
But non HDR / DV 1080P and below is x264.
That's what the encoders on the cabal trackers are doing.
The first time I grabbed a 1080 265 and it was almost half the file size of a 264 I had and the quality was visually the same, I knew I could never go back.
If it's patent-encumbered, it doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned.
Because of this post, I reencode a BD rip I made using handbrake to see how small the output file would be. I used the 4k av1 fast profile, but changed the audio tract to passthrough. Holy crap, 44gb down to 1.5gb. what black magic is this?
AV1 is very efficient (around twice as good as h264), but a filesize that low was almost definitely because the default encoding settings were more conservative than the ones used to encode the blu-ray. The perceptual quality of that 1.5gb file will be noticeably lower than the 44gb one
I've recoded a bunch of x264 to AV1 and routinely gotten file sizes that are 10-15% of the original file size (a little more than 1/10th the original size)
What I've found is that source content often has a lot of key frames. By dropping key frames down to one per 300 or one per 150 frames (one per 10 or 5 seconds for 30fps) and at scene changes, you can save a LOT of space with no loss of quality. You do give up the ability to skip to an arbitrary point in the content, however. You may have to wait a few seconds for rendering to display if you scroll to an arbitrary point in the content.
If you're just watching the content straight through, no issues. I set CRF to achieve 96 VMAF and I can't tell any difference in quality between the content with that setup.
I had one corpus of content that I reduced from 1.3 TB down to 250 GB after conversion.
Unfortunately, only the most recent TVs have AV1 playback built in, and the current Fire sticks, Chromecast don't have support for playback from a LAN source. I'm hoping the next crop of Chromecast and similar devices get full support, I'm assuming it's just a matter of time until AV1 decoding is included in every hardware decoder since it's royalyy-free.
AV1 is the shit. Still doesn't have broad support on consumer devices yet, but it will come.
Yeah doesn't work on my Roku lol so back to x265
H.265. The file size difference is impressive, and without a noticeable loss of quality, if any.
I've actually had a season of Better Call Saul in h.264, which was 10gb and another one in AV1, which was 1gb and the AV1 seemed to look better
For now, H.265, but I really hope AV1 support improves in the near future.
x265. I do my own rips usually.
Do you use handbreak to do it? And what settings? Is it something that needs to be played around with to see how output is, so doing small segment to determine what is ideal?
No, I use Simple x264/x265 encoder in combo with MeGUI (do the avs in MeGUI, the encode on Simple x264/x265 encoder).
Yeah, you have to play around with it to see what quality suits you. And yes, that takes a looooot of time. Doing small segments will give you a general idea, but the end result may greatly differ in movies with a lot of fast moving action scenes. So, it's best to just encode the whole thing (2 pass, I use the very slow preset, but I'm nuts), view the results and just go from there.
A lot of comments suggesting AV1 has better compatibility than h265. In my experience the opposite is true. H265 is supported by all of my devices including Plex on my smart TV without transcoding, whereas AV1 makes everything have a fit trying to play it. Am I doing something wrong?
AV1 seems like a more open successor to HEVC/x265 and since it's quite new compared to that only new devices are just starting to support it through hardware decoding/encoding
AV1 when available for everything other than 3d content which is ideally x265.
Honestly it blows my mind that x264 is still as popular as it is.
From a place of ignorance: why is x265 better for 3d and not AV1?
Strictly because the tooling doesn't exist in an easy enough way to go from blu-ray -> full-sbs encode at this point.
I'm constrained by knowledge to only use tools like BD3D2MK3D to create full-sbs encode in x265 which I watch in VR.
If AV1 were an option in this tool I'd consider it, but the additional encoding time might not be worth it to me as the person actually encoding the files.
If anyone has knowledge of F-SBS or F-OU AV1 content or tooling please let me know as I'd be glad to learn.
Since having a device that can natively watch x265 I only get that format now. I’m not sure of the quality is better vs x264 but for TV shows the disk space reduction makes up for any quality loss. Movies might be different and it depends on the film but I’m still only getting 1080p rips so again maybe the quality is that important compared to 4K?
I am 100% in on 265, I've gotten my Plex users to upgrade to newer devices or they can have transcoded video.
I would love to migrate to AV1 in a few years, but that's a ways out.
4K x264 rips (the few that are out there) are hilariously big compared to the same quality 4K x265 rips
Search for the user Infinity on TorrentGalaxy
They are re-uploading a lot of RARBG 1080p x265 releases but have are also releasing new movies / tv shows under their own tag with very similar quality and file sizes.
For some unknown reason Infinity strips off the subtitles from the releases. I like a good subtitle track with my release...
On his own releases he's started embedding the subtitles which is nice.. but yes i admit a lot of his rarbg uploads are missing the subs... I generally remux the rarbg ones with the english sub track so it's annoying when they aren't there.. I've had good luck grabbing them from subscene though.
As a cinematographer, h.265 is superior in every way. That being said I don't mind watching other formats, as long as their is a reasonable bitrate I'll even watch 720p content
DivX using since 2004, no regrets
- The Chad DivX/XviD user
All my content is converted to CPU encoded x265. Size is MUCH smaller and quality better than GPU encoded x265. My preference is to get remux copies of the content and then encode it myself.
Could you share your encoding settings?
Let's see if this works:
I don't keep 4k content, I find that 2k encodes for the stuff I really want at high fidelity is enough with Nvidia upscaling (Nvidia shield). Plus surprisingly some of my 2k files are no larger than 1080p.
If the original encoding is 265. Then 265
If its a high quality 264 encoding, then I'll transcode to 265
Otherwise I stick to 264
X265, obviously. AV1 is getting more and more common, so that'll be my next stop.
I prefer av1 to h265. h264 can play on anything, and while its debatable whether av1 is better than h265, av1 is supported in all browsers and gaining hardware support rapidly.
Also, av1 is a much smaller file size. In some cases, literally half.
Depending on the original source codec, yes, but h265 can do that as well. For me the nice part is the firefox browser support and increasing device support. h265 seems to be stuck in patent hell and not going anywhere.
HEVC Matroska forever ♥
H.265 tends to struggle with older, film grain heavy content in my experience, but for newer stuff it wins hands down.
I wish 1080p h265 web-dls were more common. No lossy encoding and multiple streaming services have 1080p h265 available. But I have only seen like a couple release groups do it and most torrent sites don't have them
I've seen those a lot lately on 1337x, but they should still be more common.
Maybe something isn’t right in my setup but I see a noticeable difference in quality between the two. If I have two different files of one movie, one H265 and one H264, I find the H264 picture looks better most of the time
That's not really a measure of the codec, but rather a measure of the encoder. A lot of x265 encoders are awful. They go with x265 for the smaller file sizes and over-compress it, similar to the old YIFY. Groups that use x264 already aren't as concerned with file size (if they were, they'd use x265), and choose settings that optimize for quality.
Same size?
H265 should always be smaller for comparable quality to an H264 file due to the better compression (as shown in OPs image)
Is your client compatible with h265? If not, the video may be getting converted with a loss of quality in the process.
I prefer HEVC, because my media server can transcode it quite easily and it takes way less space than h.264
Strange, confusing asymmetry in your title.
10 bit HEVC allows for some crazy good compression ratio. I love it. Put it into an mkv with chapters and externalized series op and ed I can remove and ignore - perfect.
8 bit AVC mp4 for compatibility - if that's the goal.
For acquisition - I'll take what I can get.
My server has a hard time with x265, they constantly stutter when I try to play them through jellyfin
X265 works fine for me with Roku, but I prefer x264 for 1080, av1 or 265 for 4k.
Same here, not 100% sure I think it's because of a lack of hardware H.265 decoding (in my case, at least)
i have always wondered the difference between the two encodings (beyond the obvious filesize). thanks!
i am also still lamenting the shutdown of RARBG. :(
Both allow for various degrees of parametrization between compression rate, quality, and performance. HEVC/H.265/x265 is just better at it - it allows for better compression at the same quality. Same for 10 bit. Same for AV1.
If you want maximum compatibility to players/playback you take 8 bit AVC/H.264/x264.
look for user "QxR" on 1337x. similar quality and size to rarbg x265. altough you might not find everything you are looking for
Do you know of any way to search 1337x for torrents from specific user?
x265 because I like the file size and am satisfied with the quality.
X265 all day long. Changed out most of my rips and gained terabytes of space back with no loss in quality.
It's amazing being able to hold an entire season of a show in the space that just a couple episodes at 264 would have used.
x265 because all of my devices support it. Once they release a Nvidia Shield TV like device that supports AV1 I'll change once again.
Maybe in the future AV1 will even get faster with the better implementations. It's a great codec just sad that the older Raspberry Pi's just hate x265.
I'm using a pi4 as a media center so 265 as it can cope with 2160p
Wait, does the pi4 support 265 now? I meddled around with it a few years ago, and it always had to transcode 265 to 264.
yeah, it plays 2160p x265 media nicely. Doesn't do Dolby Vision tho, play smooth but colour is off.
Not sure of your use case but shouldn't it only matter what your client (Roku, Fire stick, etc) is capable of playing or are you using the Pi as a client? If the former, the Pi should just act as a file server regardless of the format (provided it's all compatible with the client) while the latter will cause the media to be converted if it can't be played directly.
My old ass computers sadly can't handle h265 well so I tend to stick to h264. Moreover, my beamer cannot handle 4K or HDR so that makes more sense overall
Sounds like a time for upgrade
My opinion is based on Rarbg, that was the only time I paid attention. but x265 for sure.
1080p x265, 720p x264
x265 all the way, it uses less storage but can still look good.
I can't tell the difference
The picture quality will be pretty much the same or identical, but the 265 file will be about half the size compared to 264. That's the main benefit of h.265 is smaller file sizes without much if any loss in quality.
I have a personal Jellyfin server, and I usually reencode from x264 to AV1. Though if it's a matter of choosing a source, I always go for x264 for the least compression.
can you use AV1 as the source on jellyfin or does that not work out?
What are your steps for the reencoding to av1? Do you use ffmpeg? What's your command & options?
I just finished moving all my media to x265 and saved 7TB in the process. Quality looks plenty good to me but I always start from a remux if I can. Totally Worth it for the extra space.
Ah yes, you see these are number terms that indicate how videos are encoded. I absolutely understand how to feel with this post and are worthy of participating in the smart discussion in the comments.
imposter syndrome aside, left is a nice grid, right is a really really bad attempt at drawing a golden ratio. Sure left is better to maintain average quality. Why are people talking about converting to one and then the other? Why is the golden ratio one not symmetric!
I know this is a joke but if anyone is curious, the grids indicate how the compression works with each format.
Im far from an expert, but what I've picked up over the years is that videos are compressed by analyzing changes from one frame to the next. If two frames display the same colors in the same grid, the algorithm will recognize this and eliminate the duplicate information (i.e. this 10x10 pixel square is all red for the next 10 frames so record this grid square as red once and use that recorded value 10 times) and only storing what's changed from one frame to the next. With x264 the grid sizes are fixed so some duplication occurs and you have to store information for every grid. With x265, the grid size can scale as needed so you can store more information in a single 'container' (i.e. this 100x100 pixel square is all red for the next 10 frames) allowing compression to be more dynamic when it needs to be leaving you with smaller file sizes.
The joke was precisely that i was to dumb to properly understand this post. Thank you very much for your explanation. I definitely see the benefits x265 can have now. And i may actually use that knowledge when i see download files for both codecs.
I take it the images in the post aren’t the greatest reference then as one of the squares contains both background a portion of a face.
Makes me wonder what ai will allow us to do in the future knowing exactly what information can be compressed and what focus points must remain highest quality.
I mainly download x265. I have a few AV1 4K here and there but for now will still to HEVC till AV1 get more widely adopted
What happened to RARBG? I'm out of the loop
They shut down last month.
I prefer AV1. The improvement of H.265 over H.264 is not uniform. It takes a lot of effort to get consistent results across content and content types.
I'd like to have the hard drive space for x264, but as I don't I prioritise 265. If I do download 264 I then use tdarr to convert it to 265 myself.
Curious, Im pretty new to with encoding, but wouldnt going from 264->265 (lossy to lossy) cause further quality loss? I know you arent supposed to do that with audio, did it hurt your video quality at all?
This is accurate as you're making a copy from a copy. Better to download a remux and then convert that.
Yes, but I prioritise hard drive space over quality. There's occasionally artifacting and whatnot, but I don't have the space to download everything in super high quality.
I prefer whatever codec my hardware supports. Currently Pi 4 does both your options so I don't care which. x265 has slightly smaller file size for the same quality wish is nice.
x265 doesn't work for some hardware scenarios for me (e.g. files served up by UMS from my PC don't play properly on LG TV or using the standard media player on Roku). So I have to use x264 for anything that I won't be watching on a computer or via Stremio.
I prefer 265 for efficiency BUT there's a certain nostalgic warmth with 264 over-compressed fuzz. Same deal as with vinyl records. It was such an improvement on xvid back in the day....
I've been using x265 exclusively for all my media needs, except on the rare occasions where only x264 was available.
x265 for 4k hdr
x264 for 1080I'm on the same opinion as you, I'm super sad we lost all HEVC encodes just for 1 and 2 GB for a movie is amazing, and it is 1080p which is perfectly enough. There is nothing which will replace that for a while, I can imagine.
H.265 whenever i can use it
I’m a bit of a layman in regard to video codecs, what’s the actual difference?
So basically, quality can differ across them but most of the time you're gonna be happy with how it looks. But where it makes a bigger difference is file sizes. That's the main reason why I care
The one most browsers supports.
Shit, I like HEVC in theory for the compression especially but it’s copyrighted bullshit or whatever.
I use Plex with lifetime pass on my QNAP NAS and it has to hardware transcode HEVC to a playable format because of said copyrighted bullshit.
It doesn’t affect me that much unless I’m trying to jump around on the media as it will need to load. The other thing is that you can have Plex save transcodes but that obviously gobbles up disk space.
tl;dr 264 = 👑
Shit, I like HEVC in theory for the compression especially but it’s copyrighted bullshit or whatever.
Isn't the same true for AVC/h264, at least in principle? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Coding#Licensing Might be less of an issue in practice though, idk.
720p x264 - good quality, good space, good compatibility
H264 then encode to h265 manually
Unless you're specifically grabbing those high bitrate archival copies you really shouldn't be re-encoding from one lossy codec to another lossy codec.
