H.264 vs. H.265 Encoding

[Mac 128]

I know that H.265 is supposed to provide better encoding in a smaller size than H.264, and now that all of Apple's OS support HEVC H.265, I'm wondering what the best settings are to ensure the highest quality in the most efficient time.

I found that trying to encode the highest quality H.265 settings was going to take 56 hours on my Mac Book Pro. So I'm wondering if that level of encoding is necessary to achieve good results. Basically I'm going from .MKV files to .m4v files, in order to reduce the file size for various platforms from the Apple TV to the iPhone. But I'd like to retain the highest quality possible within a reasonable encoding time.

Is it better then just to stick with H.264 then to get faster encode times at a reasonably high quality? Or is it worth the extra processing time to go with H.265 files?

 

[h9826790]

I know that H.265 is supposed to provide better encoding in a smaller size than H.264, and now that all of Apple's OS support HEVC H.265, I'm wondering what the best settings are to ensure the highest quality in the most efficient time.

I found that trying to encode the highest quality H.265 settings was going to take 56 hours on my Mac Book Pro. So I'm wondering if that level of encoding is necessary to achieve good results. Basically I'm going from .MKV files to .m4v files, in order to reduce the file size for various platforms from the Apple TV to the iPhone. But I'd like to retain the highest quality possible within a reasonable encoding time.

Is it better then just to stick with H.264 then to get faster encode times at a reasonably high quality? Or is it worth the extra processing time to go with H.265 files?

It depends. IMO, the reason to go H265 is much much more than save storage space. Storage is cheap nowadays. The real reason is to use H265 is to provide high quality streaming (able to provide high quality video with the current average internet speed). For home use, unless all your hardware can handle H265 very well (obviously, your MacBook Pro is not there yet), it's usually better to stay at H264, and just encode the video with higher bitrate.

Even though I can encode a 4K movie in H265 in just an hour (because my 1080Ti can do hardware encode. I still prefer to encode videos in H264. My TV can play H265, my NAS can host H265, but in my own test, H264 still much better in compatibility. e.g. the TV player can handle seeking much better on H264. And all my consoles, TV box, mobile device... can play H264 videos on my NAS server smoothly. If I go H265, some device won't able to play it (even my Apple TV can't play it).

In my own observation. As long as the bitrate is above 12Mbps, a 4k video looks roughly flawless in H264, for H265, it's about 8000kbps. The saving is there, but not worth to spend 10x time for encoding, or lower the compatibility.