H.264 vs H.265 comparison (1080p)

How to play, convert H.264 and H.265 videos:

File Sizes:

H.264 @ 1Mbps: 5,04 MB
H.265 @ 1Mbps: 5,01 MB

H.264 @ 3Mbps: 12,6 MB
H.265 @ 3Mbps: 12,5 MB

H.264 @ 5Mbps: 20,2 MB
H.265 @ 5Mbps: 20,2 MB

2-pass encoding

[nickgraauwmans]

The VP9 codec used by youtube from google is an open source codec that competes with h265. It is more efficient than h264

[TexasFamilyCamping]

thank you, you helped me with the battle I was fighting in my head. I sit here going over all the footage for our channel in Premiere and it looks great. And I output in h.264 and upload to YouTube, and it just looks blah to me. Everyone else loves it, but they didn't stare at the footage for days like I did. I appreciate you putting this comparison together for us. You ROCK.

[benedictodiptasuta]

Me watching at 240p: *They're the same picture*

[jomac_ph]

Thank you for the upload, this is very useful for us video editors that do this for a living.
Warm regards from Manila!

[LordLab]

will be nice to see side by side :
H.264 3Mbps vs H265 1Mbps
H.264 5Mbps vs H265 3Mbps

[harryarmour]

did this for a reply to someone but I thought I would also comment it:

x265 is impressive when it comes to its compression technology, I have found when comparing the two myself that for good streaming quality to ratio's x264 needs about 2.6x the amount of bandwidth to look the same.

so say we are encoding a 2 hour long film, for x264 to look good it need's a bandwidth of about 10 - 12Mb/s (depending on type of film) which would be = 9.9GB per 2 hour long film on average, where to get a equal or slightly better looking image on x265 you would only need between 3.5 - 5 Mb/s which would be = 3.8GB per 2 hour film on average.

so to sum it up:

x264 = 10 - 12Mb/s = 9 - 10.8GB Per 2 Hours
x265 (or HVEC/H.265) = 3.5 - 5 Mb/s = 3.15 - 4.5GB Per 2 Hours
Average file size difference:
9.9 ÷ 3.8 = 2.60
x265 = 2.60x smaller on average

Although x265 is significantly smaller its important to know that only a small amount of devices currently support direct play of this compression type (including web browsers, so YouTube as well) because of licence fees and if transcoding is required you will need a strong CPU/GPU to do so, so keep this in mind.

[enzmondo]

This is why I try my best to find the HEVC versions of the files I want to download.

[brettmoberg]

For 1mbps the difference is quite noticeable but when it gets to 3 mbps the difference is not negligible to the average person. So it really depends on the mbps but X265 is usually the best option for most. The lower the bitrate the better the x265 version will look compared to the x264. No matter the bitrate the x265 will always be a smaller video file compared to the x264 which is always good.

[Rolingmetal]

How can you ever compare two codec in the same video, probably coded in vp9? Sorry, I don't get it.

[JJOOLLNN]

It seems the higher the Mbps the less noticeable the difference becomes

[Jersongato]

h265 is beautiful :'3 ... but youtube does not support it and uses its ugly vp9 :'u (and av1 hmmm...)

[RemyRAD]

I definitely like that crisper look of the H.265 over that of the H.264 stream. There is an obvious, , perceptual, visual, difference. Kind of like the difference between, uncompressed WAV files and the horrific sound of MP-3.

And so it bears rendering everything out as, H.265 streams. Thanks!
RemyRAD

[TravelHere]

Best H.264 vs H.265 video comparison that I saw so far.
Seems like H.265 gives higher video quality on Youtube.
Also H.265 needs less bitrate for the same quality as H.264, that means also less space to store the video.
That means H.265 will export much faster then H.264 if you are editing or exporting your video in an editing program.
I always used H.264 to record my videos, but I think I will switch to H.265 soon!

[tutorxai]

But was this uploaded in h.264 or h.265?? 😂😂

[clligo]

I'm pretty sure YouTube compresses using VP9 at 6MBPS, which is a very similar codec to H.265. For this video, for some reason YouTube decided to use H.264 to compress. You will see a difference because of double compression, but keep in mind that both are actually higher quality.

[matrixate]

I find that it seems to handle hazy or dark video better, but overall, it does produce a more defined and consistent image. It just takes a lot longer to encode without harware acceleration.

[kasdimfer]

You should have done the video comparison at 1.5MB and at full screen the difference would have been overwhelming

[gedimangediman]

I have compared a 65" 4K TV and 145" 1080p proyector screen H264 6.55 GB aprox, with H265 1.5 GB in RARBG and they look the same. Is it my mistake or do they really look the same?

[oldtechnology]

H264 works and exports much better on my machine. Is good enough quality but i think we all are going to switch to hevc eventualy.

[thesouleternal]

100% processor usage running HEVC on my laptop. Overheats very quickly.