H264 Vs H265 - Which Should You Use?

H.264 and H.265 are both delivery format codecs but which should you be using in your workflow and to deliver to clients?

Well, both have advantages and disadvantages to their use so let's take a look at which is best for your needs.

You can skip ahead to the part you need using these timecodes:
Intro: 00:00
What is H.264/AVC: 00:57
How Does H.264/AVC Work: 02:08
What is H.265/HEVC: 02:57
How Does H.265/HEVC Work: 04:17
Why You Shouldn't Edit With Either: 05:57
Bitrate Vs File Size Vs Quality: 06:41
Different Codecs - Different Destinations: 08:13
The Take Away: 09:35

The accompanying article to this video can found here:

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[beaupillarvids]

Possible useful tip from personal experience: Only because of no budget for a new camera, I've continued to record heavy motion (real world, not gaming) HD 1080 video on a 2012 Canon camcorder (AVCHD files) all the way up to early 2023. But after upload to YouTube, I was always bothered by blocking induced on busy backgrounds (quick movements of trees/bushes) from their compression. So around 2020, instead of doing my usual H.264 HD export out of Premiere, I began to explore exporting my 1080 video in H.265 4k. Long story short, now, after YouTube compresses it, if I watch it on YouTube in 4k, my fast-moving, busy backgrounds have zero induced blocking from YouTube compression. This month I finally got a new rig (4k camera, faster computer, etc.) so maybe I won't need this trick anymore, but maybe someone out there can still use it.

[JvanPhoto]

This level of detail should be the standard but you have absolutely outclassed many larger channels. Keep up the solid work man, this channel is going places!!

[OrcCorp]

Indeed. Been rendering all my gaming content in H265 from Nov 2020 with my RTX 3080, with Premiere Pro. Absolutely amazing quality and fast rendering. As I've been creating all my content in 4k for some years now, the CPU rendering has been a time consuming process prior to moving to H265 and GPU rendering. Now it takes about 90-95% of the length of the video, in 4k at 40Mbps, with H265, to render the final video. So a 20 minute gaming video in 4k 60fps 40Mbps takes about 18-19 minutes to render. The quality is sharp, and the pipeline is 4-6 times faster compared to any CPU rendering. And the 40Mbps with the H265 is more than enough for 60fps content. It's just that I'm still not sure if Youtube processes the video back in H264. I'm getting conflicting info on the web for that. Some say the H265 format works nowadays on Youtube, while other insist that it doesn't. Who knows 🤷‍♀️

[__officialtony__]

What are absolutely amazing video. I wish nothing but the best after watching two hours worth of videos. This was the most information and most organized information without a doubt. This video kicked videos with three times the views out of the water.

[krzysztof.smiatacz]

very good explanation of the differences between codecs

[jacobhakobyan]

The sound level difference between your voice and that music you plug in is too much! Friendly advice to lower the music you play (the transitional music between different segments).

[vballgal]

Yours is by far the most comprehensive yet simple video I have found after trying to read about all of this online for over an hour - THANK YOU for taking the time to make these videos and educate us, beginners! Subscribed to your channel!

[Guardian]

This here is that video. Great explanation and straight to the point.

[TheTerk]

9:32 the platform you are also streaming too has to be able to dish out the x265 encoded stream to its users

[post-centrist]

Will AV1 or VVC-H.266 ever be wildly adopted as Industry Standards? I understand that AV1 incorporates VP10, is Open, and Apple is slowly accepting it, but I have yet to see AV1 used on the iOS YouTube apps. I’ve never seen VVC-H.266 used anywhere (except for online examples), let alone hearing about a company adopting it in their equipment so that it can be encoded, decoded, and rendered properly. I think MPEG-I is being saved for XR-MR-VR/AR.

[-Rizecek-]

From my experience, I can confirm that H.264 is faster to render. Youtube upload and processing slower with poorer video quality.
H.265 is slower to render, but faster and better quality video on YouTube. The file size is the same.

[TeknycFilms]

Everything I needed to know. Thank you!

[WolferAlpha]

Thanks for clarifying a little although I'm still a little confused, at least it gave me an idea that it's worth using h265 to record videos with the stock camera app on my phone, at least for some things, in other situations I use RAW video that has much higher quality and allows, later in the editor, to export h265 with a higher bitrate than the stock camera can record, not to mention that in RAW video the full sensor resolution (binned) is available

[DamianYerrick]

I was surprised not to hear anything about the patent situation. Last I checked, essential parts of H.265 were claimed by members of MPEG-LA, HEVC Advance, and a third patent pool.

[Brillig]

I have a reasonably modern M1 Macbook, which comes with Quicktime, which I use a lot. It is not able to open videos created with H.265, so I've switched my IP camera to record in H.264, which Quicktime happily opens.

[PrimeRsoul]

If bandwidth allocation is limited, x265 can offer a huge advantage. For static uploading this might not be critical, for live streaming x265 can be a huge improvement though. While working at an event where we ran into a scenario where bandwidth was limited, x264 was possible, but came with a lot of frame drops and stuttering at the receiving end. That issue disappeared when we switched to x265. Despite the limited bandwidth we had at the location, we were even able to utilize two feeds, with very limited frame drops.

I can imagine that streamers that game online at the same time would love this benefit. If upgrading the internet connection isn't an option, .. upgrading to x265 might offer a nice solution. Having said that, I'm not sure what the servers at YouTube or Twitch (for example) do with the format they receive, and if decompression at the viewer's end causes issues. So the benefit a streamer has (lower bandwidth usage on his or her end) might introduce drawbacks for the viewer. In the example used above however, all feedback was pretty promising.

[Lil-Britches]

I'm watching this video in April 2024 on the s24 ultra. The super slow mo tap function stopped working. Why....well cause I switched to HEVC cause it looks better. But to use super slow mo tap it has to be in H.264 😂 thank you for explaining all of this. I got this phone for video recording in UHD10+ is nice the slow mo is just a neat trick. Recording in H.265 is noticeable to say the least. Venues started paying my for my IG stories. 😂

[WhySteve]

The day I bought my Fuji X-T3, I've only been shooting 4k h.265 in .MOV and then I proxy to DNxHR for easy editing. The file sizes triple, but my old 4th gen CPU can at least handle the footage, lol. I learnt that when I notice my friend has a hardcore PC but struggles to edit sometimes because he proxies to h.264. Smaller files, but harder to decode.

[Bo_Hazem]

I only film in H.265 since like 2019. But for youtube might just opt for H.264 for studio videos because it's enough quality then export it as H.265.

[mynaturalsounds]

Nice introduction, I like H.265, but it is still not cvconvenient for distribution to everyone 😊