Handbrake HEVC Settings

[masotime]

I had difficulty deciding where to post it so I'm going to cross-post.

During WWDC, Apple announced that hardware and software support for HEVC would be available natively on Apple devices. I'm a big fan of HEVC, but IIRC the encoding options will affect the ability of devices to play back HEVC encoded video.

Has anyone tried encoding videos on Handbrake in HEVC and successfully playing them back natively in High Sierra? (using all the hardware / software acceleration and in QuickTime etc.)

If so, what encoding settings did you use to make it work well? Thanks!

 

[Ritsuka]

You have to use the nightly builds of HandBrake if you want files playable on Quicktime.

 

[masotime]

You have to use the nightly builds of HandBrake if you want files playable on Quicktime.

Thanks! That is good to know. I realized Handbrake hadn't been updated in some time. Do you know what's the reason for requiring the nightly builds? is it some version of x265 or some e.g. ffmpeg option that must be enabled?

 

[Ritsuka]

There are at least two different way to store hevc in mp4, older version of HandBrake wrote "hev1" as the track format, QuickTime wants "hvc1". And a bit set to 1.

 

[masotime]

There are at least two different way to store hevc in mp4, older version of HandBrake wrote "hev1" as the track format, QuickTime wants "hvc1". And a bit set to 1.

Thank you! That's very good to know.

 

[Maxwill]

High Sierra's H.265-capable apps want hvc1 instead of hev1. Handbrake's stable release as of now (September 26, 2017) does the latter. Nightly builds should do the former and provide you with OS X compatible video, though I haven't tested this personally yet.

Relevant code change: https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/commit/67dfaca7ac3ec56cc4ab3c7f9f60ab3b7c43a0db

 

[masotime]

Yeah, I've been sticking with Nightly builds. I'm a little disappointed by Handbrake's release schedule - they were supposed to be going for more frequent stable releases, but it seems they haven't followed through with that.