Mac Mini M1 H.265 encoding?

[SWAON]

Hey guys,

I have big collection of series on iTunes and I would love to convert all H.264 videos to H.265 to shrink my storage. For that reason I'd consider buying Mac Mini M1. To those who already bought it, has someone tried to convert x264 to x265 and tell me how that went? What software did you used (like Handbrake or other 3d parties?), what results did you get and so on. I'd really appreciate any info on that, since is my most important consideration about my purchase. Thank you in advance.

 

[MadCar]

I'd take a look over at the Plex forums. They seem very happy with the performance even with apps that are running under Rosetta so it seems very positive so far in relation to encoding using the M1 Mini.

 

[MadCar]

Here is a thread you might find useful.

Plex Media Server running on Apple Silicon M1 chipset i.e. new Mac mini, MacBook, etc

@Balthazar2k4 I have a Mac mini M1 8GB to be my replacement Plex Media Server as my 2012 Mac mini cannot go on forever. Unfortunately I just cannot get PMS to run. If I run it I can get the briefest flicker of the Plex chevron in the menu bar and then nothing. Not even an error message...

forums.plex.tv

Also Handbrake have a native M1 app in Beta now.

Release 1.4.0 Beta Universal Binary for macOS · HandBrake/HandBrake 8

 

[SWAON]

Also Handbrake have a native M1 app in Beta now.

Release 1.4.0 Beta Universal Binary for macOS · HandBrake/HandBrake 8

Thanks for the plex link. It seems that the initial impressions on Handbrake running with Rosetta 2 was positive. Didn't know they started doing the M1 beta already. Good job of the team.

 

[ShredDude]

I’ve done some fairly extensive testing with the native HandBrake app on the M1. You can do crazy fast (180-220 fps) hardware encoding via VideoToolbox for HD content (x264/265) but the file size and quality is sub optimal. Using software encoding 264->265 1080p runs about 30fps, which isn’t bad! Same settings in ffmpeg under Rosetta get about 15 FPS. The software encoding pretty much consumes all my cores, but the system remains responsive. It’s literally the only thing that can get my MBP fans to turn on, and boy, do they ever.

 

[SWAON]

I’ve done some fairly extensive testing with the native HandBrake app on the M1.

Are you using the new beta version or the old intel one for Handbrake?

 

[ShredDude]

Are you using the new beta version or the old intel one for Handbrake?

Beta Version 1.4.0-beta.1 (2020111100)

 

[dhy8386]

I’ve done some fairly extensive testing with the native HandBrake app on the M1. You can do crazy fast (180-220 fps) hardware encoding via VideoToolbox for HD content (x264/265) but the file size and quality is sub optimal. Using software encoding 264->265 1080p runs about 30fps, which isn’t bad! Same settings in ffmpeg under Rosetta get about 15 FPS. The software encoding pretty much consumes all my cores, but the system remains responsive. It’s literally the only thing that can get my MBP fans to turn on, and boy, do they ever.

Seeing exact same thing. I haven't compared the VT vs x265 quality yet extensively but eye test, the VT version had to be encoded at 8K+ BR to yield comparable quality to x265 which was closer to 2K BR. And of course the resulting 9GB file vs 2.3GB file.

 

[Admiral]

I’ve done some fairly extensive testing with the native HandBrake app on the M1. You can do crazy fast (180-220 fps) hardware encoding via VideoToolbox for HD content (x264/265) but the file size and quality is sub optimal. Using software encoding 264->265 1080p runs about 30fps, which isn’t bad! Same settings in ffmpeg under Rosetta get about 15 FPS. The software encoding pretty much consumes all my cores, but the system remains responsive. It’s literally the only thing that can get my MBP fans to turn on, and boy, do they ever.

I'm doing some x264 -> x265 software encoding right now on my newly-arrived 8GB RAM Mac mini M1, and the performance under the Handbrake 1.4 beta 1 appears to be on par with my 2018 32GB RAM Mac mini 6-core i7 in terms of frames per second (they're churning away on the same file right now), which is somewhat less than I expected based on reported Geekbench scores, but the Mac mini M1 remains very responsive and its fan, although running, remains silent and there is very little heat coming out of the machine — either the case, or the rear vent. Compare to the i7 mini, which is very warm to the touch, with a blast of hot air from the rear vent. The i7's fan is very audible.

The true import of this is that the Macbook Pro M1, which also has a fan and therefore will perform virtually identically to the Mac mini M1, is going to completely obliterate the 13" Macbook Pro 4-core i5 I just bought in June. But based on the M1 performance, I think I will keep my powder dry for the rumored M1X or M1Z models, which should start off at least 70% faster than the M1. Good times.

 

[SWAON]

I think I will keep my powder dry for the rumored M1X or M1Z models, which should start off at least 70% faster than the M1. Good times.

I plan to do the same.. Thank you for your comment

 

[jetrois]

Feels I'm waiting for M1X or M1Z as well that performance should be amazing.

 

[pmiles]

I don't think you want to transcode from H.264 to H.265. If you had the original source then transcoded it to H.265 you will get better results... H.264 is already compressed (it threw information away to compress it that is lost forever). Trying to compress a compressed format only throws more information away. The results will be sub-optimal.

I doubt you want to give up quality for disk space... because if you did, you would have used a more aggressive compression format from the start.

 

[apple_iBoy]

I'm doing some x264 -> x265 software encoding right now on my newly-arrived 8GB RAM Mac mini M1, and the performance under the Handbrake 1.4 beta 1 appears to be on par with my 2018 32GB RAM Mac mini 6-core i7 in terms of frames per second (they're churning away on the same file right now), which is somewhat less than I expected based on reported Geekbench scores, but the Mac mini M1 remains very responsive and its fan, although running, remains silent and there is very little heat coming out of the machine — either the case, or the rear vent. Compare to the i7 mini, which is very warm to the touch, with a blast of hot air from the rear vent. The i7's fan is very audible.

The true import of this is that the Macbook Pro M1, which also has a fan and therefore will perform virtually identically to the Mac mini M1, is going to completely obliterate the 13" Macbook Pro 4-core i5 I just bought in June. But based on the M1 performance, I think I will keep my powder dry for the rumored M1X or M1Z models, which should start off at least 70% faster than the M1. Good times.

Are you using the x265 VideoToolBox preset in handbrake? It flies!

 

[Admiral]

I don't think you want to transcode from H.264 to H.265. If you had the original source then transcoded it to H.265 you will get better results... H.264 is already compressed (it threw information away to compress it that is lost forever). Trying to compress a compressed format only throws more information away. The results will be sub-optimal.

I doubt you want to give up quality for disk space... because if you did, you would have used a more aggressive compression format from the start.

With content I myself have created, of course I start from my own original source for best results. With content I have stolen acquired I gots to make do.

Regardless of the provenance of the source material, I find software-based encoding to be far preferable to hardware-based encoding regardless of the manufacturer. Apple's h.264 and h.265 hardware encoding are indeed amazing, but both are really only suited to the use case of live video streaming. Which is a real use case — choose the tools that give you the best results for the thing you want to do.

 

[Botts85]

The M1 flies at hardware encoding. It smokes my i9 iMac. It is between 3-4x faster (FPS wise) at H265 transcodes.

It loses in video quality to the Intel Mac at hardware encoding though.

 

[SWAON]

Guys what software you use for the encoding? That would be useful to know as well

 

[Botts85]

FF-Works and Handbrake for me.

 

[SWAON]

FF-Works and Handbrake for me.

Never used FF-Works, how it is compared to Handbrake?

 

[Botts85]

Never used FF-Works, how it is compared to Handbrake?

It's a raw front end for ffmpeg, so it's not as convenient as Handbrake.

It is arguably far more powerful, and more customizable if you want to tweak things.

My regular go to is Handbrake though.

 

[phrehdd]

convert all H.264 videos to H.265 to shrink my storage

Are you wanting to take an H.264 file and compress it yet again with H.265? Or, are you suggesting you would decompress the file first then recompress with H.265? The former would give lousy results and the latter, not sure how you would do that. Curiously, storage is rather cheap these days so unsure why saving storage space is an issue.

 

[SWAON]

Are you wanting to take an H.264 file and compress it yet again with H.265? Or, are you suggesting you would decompress the file first then recompress with H.265? The former would give lousy results and the latter, not sure how you would do that. Curiously, storage is rather cheap these days so unsure why saving storage space is an issue.

I was wondering the same, is it worth converting already h.264 videos to h.265 storage wise. It seems the whole process takes much more time and save relatively not that much storage.

 

[Honza1]

H.264->H.265 is probably not worth the effort, unless you also need to do something else. Some H.264 stuff is in ridiculously high bitrates. If one needs to change something, H.265 works fine and M1 can do it. Both using VideoToolbox (which is ridiculously fast) or using software encoder. My understanding is, that while VideoToolbox is extremely fast it is not that good or size efficient. Software encoding in Handbrake (the beta for M1) works fine. It converts at about real speed (30fps), depending on material.

 

[Aleksid1]

I tested GPU-accelerated video encoding on M1 Mac Mini (H.264 VideoToolBox) in Handbrake Beta and constant quality mode (new feature for M1 Macs, it works like -crf in libx264).
With the same file size and options (FullHD, 60p), visual quality much worse than with libx264 or with nvenc (NVIDIA). I encoded a H.264 with NVIDIA Geforce 1060 (nvenc H.264) and visual quality much better.
So it seems that M1 video encoder is bad. Regrettably.

 

[Botts85]

I tested GPU-accelerated video encoding on M1 Mac Mini (H.264 VideoToolBox) in Handbrake Beta and constant quality mode (new feature for M1 Macs, it works like -crf in libx264).
With the same file size and options (FullHD, 60p), visual quality much worse than with libx264 or with nvenc (NVIDIA). I encoded a H.264 with NVIDIA Geforce 1060 (nvenc H.264) and visual quality much better.
So it seems that M1 video encoder is bad. Regrettably.

My experience in testing is that M1 too aggressively distributes bitrates.

The M1 constant quality encodes look far better than the QuickSync / NVENC encodes in areas with motion, M1 gives more (too much) bitrate to those, but M1 tends to smooth out detail to save bitrate in static scenes, making them look a little plasticky.

Apple might be able to adjust that with firmware.

 

[Aleksid1]

Thanks for the confirmation. I also tested HEVC encoding in Handbrake with M1 VideoToolBox option and visual quality is the same as H.264 with the same file size. That's very strange. I see no visual difference beteween H.264/HEVC using VideoToolBox encoder. Quality really should be improve by Apple.