h264 vs h265

[kmac76]

H.265 is used more often if you are color grading your video in post production. If all you want to do is shoot good looking video, do a simple edit and share it with friends and family (and us, your Mavic extended family), then stay with H.264 and 1080p. In the long run the files will take up much less space on your hard drive. In fact, except for white balance, you could shoot everything in auto too if you're just shooting for fun, not commercially. Experiment and good luck.

Although I see lots of the typical online “burns” in this forum, my comment is not meant in that way.
That said, what you’ve said here is not correct. One of h265’s primary advantages over h264 is that its compression usually results in videos of equal quality being roughly half the size of what they would be had they been shot in h264.

As Covid has forced remote work en masse in a way that’s never happened before, one of the most common changes I have seen is video software being updated to support h265 to reduce bandwidth consumption. That’s just one of many examples of h265 being widely embraced. Since iOS 11, that’s how All apple devices store the video files created on the device. Intel processors 2017- present (“koby lake” forward) have special adaptations to support h265.

I’m not a video editor of any real expertise. If that’s still not an area where h265 is supported widely, I think that would be the only area where you could credibly suggest h264 over h265.

 

[kmac76]

H.264 and H.265 should be equivalent in image quality. H.265 files are roughly half as big, but require more PC computing horsepower to play back without stuttering.

Also H.265 files are not as standardized and compatible with various software post packages. Unless file size is a real issue, use H.264 if available.

I am sure because I have commented on this issue I will come across as over zealous, but this is incorrect too.

we all talk about frame rate in these forums. And that is become in between the frames the video codec has to predict what happens, pixel by pixel. A video encoding/deciding protocol must support a sufficiently advanced mathematical function for this technique to be truly useful. H.265’s intraframe prediction function is far more detailed than H.264’s, allowing for 33 directions of motion over H.264’s nine directions. That naturally means that h265 produces superior quality images At the same frame rate and resolution.

Dji has made a big deal out if 8k hyperlapse. although the marketing has not matched reality, only h265 supports the frame size to create 8k. H264 has been around for 17 years.... it’s fair to say its day is past.

 

[SkyeHigh]

H.265’s intraframe prediction function is far more detailed than H.264’s, allowing for 33 directions of motion over H.264’s nine directions. That naturally means that h265 produces superior quality images At the same frame rate and resolution.

That’s not strictly true. As far as P frames are concerned (not I frames) it doesn’t produce superior quality. It can only produce ‘potentially’ greater accuracy of the original source image and that is entirely image content dependent. Superior quality - no. Higher compression yes. The more you compress the more you lose.

The more advanced compression algorithm is what allows the file sizes to be reduced, while maintaining the same subjective quality of an H.264 encoded video source.

 

[kmac76]

"The more you compress the more you lose" is not an accurate statement. It hasn't been true for 10 years. Whether the media stream is voice, or video, that statement long ago ceased to be true. That is why, for voice, when VoIP first started to be used widely between 15 and 20 years ago, the sound quality was terrible. In that space, the most common low bandwidth codec, i.e. one which compressed a voice stream below the typical 90k a voice stream would usually consume, was known as G729. Back then, when you compressed, your voice sounded like snap, crackle, and pop.

Now, we all make calls across the public internet, whether we know if or not, without the benefit of any quality of service scheme, and yet a VoIP call is now superior in quality to a traditional land line. That's because of the sophistication of modern voice codecs like Opus.

The same is true in the video world. This Medium article describing differences between H265 and H264 - was written by people smarter than me. However, my personal experience supports the conclusion they reached, and a quick online search shows universal agreement on the topic. The language is a little on the fancy side, but the sentiment is correct. Their concluding paragraph states:

HEVC/H.265 not only has a better visual quality at a low storage and bandwidth but also a dexterously coding algorithm by encoding motion vectors with much greater precision and minimal residual errors. Besides the preeminent method used for inter prediction, this new codec also presents an improved deblocking filter and sample adaptive offset to reduce even more artifacts.

The key phrase there is "by encoding motion vectors with much greater precision." It is better in terms of the storage space it doesn't consume and it is better because it predicts motion vectors more accurately.

This goes way past how detailed I thought this would get, but that's ok, this is better than the typical thread that doesn't provide any real technical content!

 

[SkyeHigh]

We have to agree to disagree. What H.265 does is to compress the original source more accurately. It does this through better motion detection, variable block sizes and far more P-frames. By reducing the size of each video frame you get much higher compression of the resultant file compared to H.264.

You still have a very highly compressed image file, which will never be as good as the original and only very mildly improves on the H.264 and that’s subjective and totally dependent on the source image and a lot of motion.

The whole point of H.265 is to reduce required bandwidth and storage requirements. The downside is the hardware required to encode it and the much increased processing power to decode it.

And along comes H.266 and compression is doubled again.

 

[kmac76]

I will hold off on any further replies from here, agreeing to disagree, but...... I would challenge you to produce any document which states the only purpose of H265 was related to compression. H265 is on v4 at present, and all ITU-T documents and a closer inspection of the actual spec show that it was not created for compression only, but for enhanced resolution as well.

Part of the reasoning for H265 was in anticipation of 8K, which cannot be rendered using H264.

Most desktop hardware released in 2015 forward, and most mobile hardware from late 2014 onward, supports dedicated HEVC playback. 6-7 year old laptops are not used, by and large. They have all sorts of issues, never mind video production.

A tangible example of the widespread adoption of H265: From iOS 11 forward, all compatible Apple devices encode video on native iOS apps in H265. iOS 11 was released in September 2017.

 

[SkyeHigh]

At no point have I mentioned ‘compression only’. Of course any new codec will roll in more functionality but that is moving further and further away from my original reply on this topic.

 

[REBELimgs]

Ok, but why would I zoom in on a video?

For flexibility in post

 

[DieselE]

I use H265 as its 10 bit colour and can shoot log (this handles highlights far better but makes the pictures look washed out - which you adjust when editing) - but im a TV guy so need the max quality at the expense of easy workflow. I have to convert all the H265's into a DNXHR intra frame far less compressed codec which is a pain in the neck... But it's worth it for the quality. The filesizes jump x10! I don't know if the non log or non HDR mode in H265 is 8 bit or 10 bit. I'd suggest using H264 as you don't want your workflow to be a chore if its just for recreation.