H264 vs H265 for YouTube: Which Codec to use at 1080p, 1440p & 4K
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- Опубликовано: 16 июл 2024
- Should you render in H264 vs H265 for RUclips? In this video I discuss both the render times and video quality on RUclips if you encode videos in H265 compared to H264. While HEVC is generally considered to be the better and more efficient codec, H264 still beats H265 encoded video on RUclips at a resolution of 1080p. At 4K and 1440p, you are better off rendering with H265 - both as its generally faster and because of much better visual quality
Timestamps:
00:00 H264 vs H265 for RUclips
00:44 Testing Methods
01:14 H264 vs H265 Render Times
03:45 How to play H265 videos on Windows
04:45 Best codec at 4K
06:23 Best codec at 1440p
07:48 Best codec at 1080p
09:21 Conclusions
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First I want to mention that I appreciate guys like you devoting this kind of time to topics such as this. I had an interest in doing more of a deep dive into CODEC as it related to rendering. I have recently acquired a significant upgrade in video recording hardware that will do H.264 and H.265 CODEC as well as HLG and D-Log M color settings. The downside that I wasn't prepared for was the doggishly slow rendering times. It is amazing that people generally have no idea why and the reason I found myself doing the deep dive on the research.
My computer is running on a 64 bit buspath with an AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U 8 core 18 thread CPU with onboard Radeon Graphics and 32gb of RAM. I had this computer built by Lenovo to be able to handle such things as video rendering as I got more in-depth with it.
I am still learning and still playing around with different parameters.
I have what should be a simple and basic question for you. When you do post processing on your video clips, do you first render each individual clip with overlays and then go back and super select pieces of those original (and edited) clips to trim in to a larger completed video or do you do all of the trimming and organization of your clips into the desired timeline story and then render all of the various edited scenes pasted together as a finished video? It seems like color grading and the other adjustments rendered into each individual RAW clip and then useing those renders for the final timeline edit would make the most sense but I haven't gotten that far yet and your answer could provide me with a shortcut. Keep in mind that my scenario is with in-the-field scene acquisition (with variables) and not gaming screen feeds.
Also please mention where bitrates are managed, is it on the editing platform or the RUclips platform when doing the uploads?
Love the data-driven approach for quantitatively comparing video quality
Thanks you for the video. This is exactly what I needed. Recently, I've switched to H265 because I started making much longer videos and didn't want to deal with uploading such large files to RUclips and I wasn't happy with the image quality at 1080p. But 1440p an 4K looks good. I think I'll keep uploading H265.
Great video thanks for this, explained and very well articulated ❤
That's smart and extremely useful information again, thank you very much ;)
Thank you for this helpful information. I hope your channel gets a ton of views.
Happy to read! Thanks
Another great video. Very helpful.
This is a great video. Would love to see ProRes 422 included in the next comparison
finally someone who made a detailed video about h264 vs h265, I use h265 at 51k bitrates for RUclips Live streaming and the quality is far better for 1440p
Appreciate it! Yes especially for live streaming the improved compression of H265 is huge!
@@TechGuides totally agree sir
@@TechGuides Thank you so much, just this one video explained so much
thanks for covering this!
My pleasure, thanks for watching!
this is fabulous info, thank you :)
Your channel should have got more views than it should. Really intuitive content
Amazing video. Very helpful.
Glad it was helpful!
I was looking for a good answer in quality and compression. Thanks for the simple to understand explanation. I often download TV or movies and this has been a question for me for some time. 4k often too big files and some so much smaller than you question the quality. But this makes sense that the 265 is half the size. 👍
Been doing close to year youtube and started uploading my 1080p videos as 1440p etc your videos have been very helpful thank you 😁👍👍
Cheers!
thanks man! all clear! cheers!
Hey, great video! I have a question. I also use Davinci Resolve Free. I saw on another video that the H265 is the newer and better codec, and generates smaller file sizes (while producing a higher quality video) but any time I do a test render at H264 and H265 my H265 videos are always around 40% bigger. Any idea why this is if they are supposed to be smaller files?
As a bonus question do you know the approximate Mbit of the individual "automatic" quality settings (least, low, medium, high, best) in Resolve?
thanks for your wonderful work
I was wondering
if I upload 4K HDR 4:2:2 Video
what's is the best Codec? how much bitrate should we use for best quality?
thank you
I was wondering why all my gameplay videos tend to look like garbage while other people's videos are much sharper in motion, regardless of bitrate - others almost always upload at least at 1440p. Also I thought that I'm losing my sanity after seeing that the quality of my videos seemed somewhat random after each upload.
Thank you so much!
Wow! This is top content! Thank you!
Cheers!
nice one, but can you also make a export setting video with all the H265 setting explained like- high, main, main 10, hdr color, slowest, vbr or cbr in hevc etc. thanks for the video
great work!
Appreciate the support bro!
Always making quality videos. 👌
Appreciate it man. Just saw you've been subbed for 6 years - absolute legend!!
Thanks for your effort❤❤❤❤
Thank you for watching!
A year later later but this still seems to be the case. I just switched to 265 and my 1080 upload test looks like trash. I upscaled same clip to 4k in render export and it looks much better. I had to find out what was going on. Thank you for this video
Thanks Helpful
Could you next time talk about the editing process with these codecs?
I recently switched over to 265 and recording with cqp instead of cbr and now editing is a nightmare.
I have to make proxies because the footage when scrubbing is laggy. What's the optimal best looking, optimal file size setup on obs that works well when editing.
I ended up buying davinci studio for the video card encoding but it's still slow when editing without proxies
I've recently performed some render tests that suggest RUclips is greatly reducing the bitrate of, specifically, its VP9 encode of 1080p. RUclips's choice to encode a 1080p video with VP9 instead of h264 also seems rather random/hard to determine, so I wonder if this is the cause of the randomness you observed. The time frame that you conducted this experiment in might also be relevant, as RUclips's 1080p encoding settings seems to be in flux recently. The old adage of uploading in 1440p/4K to force VP9 might even be counter-productive now, as this will force the (bitstarved) VP9 encoder for its 1080p downscale.
I'm investigating exactly this (advantage / disadvantage) of uploading 1080p at a higher res to trigger VP9 for the 1080p encode for a future video.
Here I never seemed to get VP9 on my pure 1080p video, always AVC.
@@TechGuides hello, do you have any results yet/when can we expect the video? cheers
@@TechGuides Will surely wait for the results. I recently found this trick to render 1080p video to 1440p for better youtube VP9 compression. But it seems, I am too late on this & everyone already seem to be doing this. May be because of this overuse, youtube has made the VP9 algorithm to render a 1440p upload to compress much more for lower resolutions.
For me, this is not a problem at the moment, but surely willing to learn more.
@@TechGuides only way to get VP9 1080p is if it gets somewhat viral, Otherwise, stuck at bad AVC1
So, Why RUclips said: h264 and 8000kbps for 1080p 30fps video?
You saved me. I have been uploading 1080p so far. Suddenly I moved to 4k. RUclips was not able to give quality visuals. You actually have the root cause
Happy to hear!!
@@TechGuides can you try video on Cricket 24 game and graphics settings?
h264 to h265 cut my render times in half on my i7 7700k + rtx 2080 !! thanks for all the tips
Thank you very much, no bullshit video right here and straight to the point!
I record in 1440p at 44mbs and then upscale to 4k all hevc, when I render I always render at 100% quality, am I doing that right or should I just export at 1440p 100% quality?
this is amazing, exactly what im looking for!
it is a magic that h265 provides less render time with higher visual quality. it made me feel like dumb because i was exporting my warzone gameplays on h264 for 2 years 😅 i was rendering at 60 mb bitrates on 1440p but i will start rendering at 40 mb bitrates on h265, since it equals to my old preset, according to your graph. i might render at 60 mb for short videos. i'd like to render 80 bitrates but youtube processing takes too much time, i dont know if its only me. (i have 11-12 megabit upload speed)
also, for me it is another good thing that h265 uses gpu. i recently got 5800x3d and while rendering videos on premiere pro, the cpu temperature constantly hits 80 degrees. so i will get rid of another problem by switching to h265.
by the way we dont have to change any recording settings for h265 exports, arent we? im recording on h264 codec in obs, must i change it also?
and do you think is there any point to render at higher bitrates than the bitrates that we record at? for example, i record at 45 mb's in obs and radeon software, is it pointless to export it at 60 mb's in premiere pro?
Brilliant! Yeah H265 is pretty magic, and AV1 is even better ;) I also enjoy the much lower CPU temperatures since my 13900k frequently hit 100°C while rendering 🥵 No you don't need to change anything except for the codec. Well since RUclips tends to always favour the higher bitrate I would say technically yes but at the same time it also doesn't really make sense. I have never tested this though ;)
@@TechGuides omg wouldn't 100 degree kill your cpu? by "except for the codec" did you mean we only have to use the h265 codec in video edit softwares, not in obs recording settings? i just wanted to make sure, if you meant that i will not change anything obs.
If I export my H.265 1080p project into H.264 before uploading to youtube, will it solve the bad 1080p h.265 issue?
Can you talk about AV1 codec using Voukoder?
I have a 4090 gpu and 13900k cpu... When I try to render in 4k60 on free version of Davinci 18 using h265 codec it's soooo slow.. I'm not sure why. I'm new to video editing
if I im not rendering my footage and just uploading it should i still record in h.265 (1440p)
what about for upscaling videos from youube in VP9 or H265
Thank you very much for the in depth video. One Question: Should I use H.265 when I upscale 1080p to 4k? I am very uncertain, because after all it is still 1080p, isn't it?
Always use H265 if you have the option. Also upscaling to 4K will still result in much better looking content as I showed here: ruclips.net/video/LT7ymi5Ajgo/видео.html
@@TechGuides thanks for the reply, helped me a lot
And AV1? Great video as usual! 👌
It seems that only big channels / high volume videos get AV1 for now so its not really possible for me do to proper testing Im afraid. I do have one that got AV1 though so I could calculate its quality but not like I do here with differing bitrates
I have tried both on streaming on H.264 in 1080p I get a consistent or smooth streaming while on H.265 is a hit or miss and behaved worse on 1440p, sometimes it works and sometimes it stuttered. I’m using obs to stream in RUclips.
Si im still a bit confused here, when i record with a insta 360 i use 5.7k at 30 fps then in davinci i edit them after having to use insta softwear to change the format. I did a few things the othert day as follows
1) saved it to my cpmputer using proress
2) again with 265
3) then with 264
the difference with proress was a lot, much clearer, but that was saving to computer not youtube
What i dont really get is the bitrate setting as it can be set to auto or maximum. if the insta bitrate is say 40 when im exporting from insta to davinci is it worth have a higher bitrate when exporting the same footage from davinci to the computer or even to youtube.
I have also recorded clips in 1080 and then upscaled them to 4k and that makes a difference.
so bottom line in your cool video is this, 1080 use h264, 4k and above use h265, when would you upload in proress?
sorry for the long post, all the best and yes now subbed
sorry just seen a llink in the description about best bitrate, will have a watch
one more question, when saving to my computer to watch on the computer what should i save the film in, i have a M1 macbook pro
I don't own an Insta 360, so I cant advice on the process of using the Insta Software but I would recommend to use the highest possible bitrate on exporting before taking the footage into Davinci Resolve. Reason being that you want the best possible quality.
Then render in 4K and h265. I'm also working on a comparison of the best bitrate for action footage so stay tuned for that!
I can stream h264 with higer bandwidth, but as soon as i start h265, i get continue loss in in network tab in obs.
Your spreadsheet doesn't explicitly state if those bitrates are based on h.264 or h.265 exports or what frame rate you're using. It seems like everything is 60fps(59.94?) but again just want to clarify. Thanks!
Also the 4K values don't match up with the numbers documented on your spreadsheet where VMAF scores go from 70.9 to 74.8 going from 60Mb to 100Mb respectively.
did you ever figure out which is better for frame rate?
Slightly off topic, but wondering if you could help me. I play on an Xbox Series X, but stream from a PC via an Elgato HD60X capture card. My PC has a 12th gen i7 with 32GB of RAM and an RTX 3060 GPU. Also, I've got Verizon FiOS gigabit service, so my speeds are consistently 800ish mb upload/download even with 7 people in the house using devices online. That said, I heard it said that you should use separate encoders for streaming and recording if you can. In OBS I have the option of using x264 or H.264 for streaming in the advance settings. In the recording section if gives me the options of H.265 or HEVC for the encoder. I've been using H.264 for both and haven't had many issues, the exception being high action scenes while playing Fortnite. I've noticed in the recording that it's skipping/missing frames and jumping around even though OBS never gives me warnings or signs that I'm missing frames due to encoding lag. I've been using CBR as the rate control and had looked into changing that to CQP or VBR, but wondering if it would help to use H.264 for encoding the stream while using HEVC for encoding the recording. Any thoughts?
Also, with these settings, I'm never using more than 8-10% of my CPU whilst streaming and recording.
Which codec is best to save video for editing? if one material is shot on h264, and the other material is shot on h265.
What do you mean by "save video for editing"? I would assume that you store the file in the codec its shot in and then would just use the superior codec, i.e. h265, when rendering
I usually record = clip clips on amd with hevc and then rendered it with avc in vegas pro is this good? quality seems fine.
Id render in HEVC instead of AVC. Also make sure to render at 1440p or 4K. The quality diff is remarkable
i've been doing H.265 for over a year now and I recently did in 1080p 24fps s-LOG2 with S-Gamut and color graded in davinci. But when I upload it on youtube it's almost like my entire grade has been stripped. Is it just my eyes messing with me or does this happen to other people?
It's called color shift. Very annoying. A lot of videos around here in youtube.
So if we have 1080p video and we upscale it to 2K or 4K we should render it with h265 as well ?
Precisely!
I have a question, if i encode in H.265 there is a you tube requirements where it says video must be in H.264 format so what should i do?
RUclips does not force you to use any codec. They only have some rather outdated recommendations ;)
nice video but I have a question xd, should I put in timeline for a 1080p video to 4k and then render it at 4k? or timeline 1080 and render it at 4k?
Thanks! In DaVinci Resolve? I usually set the timeline to match the source material and than shortly before rendering I change the resolution to 4K. I think its not recommended to render a 1080p timeline in 4K but I honestly have never tried it myself
@@TechGuidesyou're right 👍🏻
@@Futball_LifeHey, how did you made your RUclips profile photo ?
Aren't h265 file sizes much larger than h264 though?
I’m trying to upscale and render as x265 from Vegas. The output video has different color/levels but it looks like the colorspace is the same as the h264 file (in which the color has retained the original sources color). Any thoughts on why h265 is changing color/levels and how to fix?
Also, x264 is still the industry standard because of compatibility. Is it still worth it to use x265 let’s say if you were to render to multiple platforms? Also hevc may require twice as much time to encode which can effect choice.
@@theirregular013any answer ?
You can encode H264 with the GPU as well.
That's what NVENC does for many years now.
NVENC supports H.265 and AV1 aswell, what's your point?
True but you can't use your GPU for H264 encoding in (the free) Davinci Resolve
@@TechGuides Fair enough. But to decide which of the two codecs takes more of your computing power, you'd rather run both of them on your CPU. Besides, your iGPU even supports H264 and H265, so there should be even more options with your specific rig, if it weren't for the lack of software support.
This 10 minute video explain better than most encoder weeb.
Food for brain: RUclips uses different codecs to process what we upload:
- avc1 = h.264 for 1080p
- VP9 = h.265 (HEVC) for 4K+
- AV1 = NEW HEVC for 4K+
can you do a newer cod benchmark and test all the settings?
I've tried doing a new one in Plunder but got super inconsistent results. Might re-do at least the upscaling part sometime in the future though!
The problem with your 1080p test is you used bitrates that are too high for that resolution to test the efficency of the codec, bastically at that high bitrates both codecs reach thier maximum quality. If you had used bitrates between 8 and 15 Mbps you probably would have got more usefull results. Thanks for your tests.
me using the forbidden extension named h264ify for my chrome browser and the video loads smooth as silk
I have upscaled my video to 4k and rendered to h.265 in Da Vinci resolve. After uploading this rendered video on RUclips... Whenever i play video at 1080p quality it plays smoothly...But my video lags or jitters while choosing 4k format..Why is this happening ?
Sounds like a performance issue on your system frankly. Mind sending me the link?
@@TechGuides RUclips is not allowing my to send the link 🥲
@@TechGuidesHow to send the RUclips link in the comments section? It's not possible 😅
how many bitrate for 1080p60 vids with h265?
I did a full video covering the best bitrates for RUclips: ruclips.net/video/LT7ymi5Ajgo/видео.html
I am exporting my 1080p in davinci and upload it to RUclips. Which is vest for me h.264 or h.265 ???
H265
@@TechGuides thanks bro.
@@Rockyman.Have you tried h.265 ? How's your experience after uploading on RUclips ?
@@Gaurav.P0 good.
how do you know what it looks like at 60m when youtube compresses it to far below that
the graph shows the uploaded bitrate, not the actual one after RUclipss processing
@@TechGuides so should you just encode at 100mb regardless since it gives the best quality when shown on youtube at lower bitrate
no av1 comparison? it's been a mature codec at the time of this video and stomps h265 into the ground as the "future" of codecs.
You're right, however DaVinci Resolve (the free version) unfortunately still does not support AV1 encoding as can be seen at 00:58
Thanks for this Video!
I render in H.264 1080P60 and my Videos looks, i think very good.
Greets
my video export faster in h.264 compared to h.265 , & even size is smaller , i tested multiple time same result for all resolutions ,plz update your test results , my config i7 12 gen 3060 gpu
That's perfectly normal, I've also often seen longer render times with H265 for busy scenes when lots of CPU resources were needed. Regarding file size: Eventually what only matters is the perceived quality which is noticeably better with H265 at the same file size.
So you mean if we upscale 1080p footage to 4k , should we render it in h.265 ?
Yes absolutely!
@@TechGuides ❤️
4:11 I'm sorry, are they selling addons for windows now??
Pretty much. There are a lot of payed tools in the Microsoft Store nowadays
lets say i upscale 1080p footage to 4k, should i use h.264 or h.265?
Always h265 if your system supports it!
@@TechGuides ok thanks.
@@athavankandiah7643Hey, did you try?
Swiss Quality videos!
Со стороны RUclips было довольно глупо вводить эту механику. То, что RUclips подменяет кодек в видео с VP9 на AVC1 на малоизвестных каналах с небольшим количеством просмотров только усугубляет ситуацию с дисковым пространством видеохостинга.
YT is not run by the smartest people in the world Russian boy
Thanks! Yeah it does not make so much sense that they would use AVC instead of VP9 on every video. The only "reason" I can come up with is that it takes much more processing power to re-encode in VP9 instead of AVC so maybe they figure that for small channels the excess in compute is not worth if when only serving a few views...
@@TechGuides You can't be serious? YT is run by total imbecelios hence the result
How ridiculous that Microsoft could not absorb the cost of each seat having HEVC. Instead everyone has to go through a load of hassle with the MS Store for the sake of $1.
Actually I am always having a doubt that, while recording games should I record h265 directly or record it in any other format and then encode it to h265?
If you can, record in H265 to save some space!
@@TechGuides of course I can do that. But will it cause issues while editing and rendering?
I'm exclusively using H265 when recording in OBS and havent had any issues. A less capable system might struggle a bit more but I assume you have a good system to do your edits? In terms of rendering there should not be any difference :)
This stupid HEVC extension triggers me. I forgot, that I already had the free version of it (it was free at the beginning) and paid for it again. Worst 1-2 EUR spent.
4:09 or just download a codec pack like every sane person.
Why even?! H265 era never happened.
Make something uself such H264 VP9 and AV1 RUclips output quality comparison
plus what program even supports h265???
Every program on Windows supports HEVC playback as I showed in this vid ;)
My VP9 video is still relevant btw, 1440p and 4K trigger it and its quality is obviously better than AVC. AV1 is only relevant for really big channels / high traffic videos and does not apply to 99% of RUclipsrs so no I wont be able to compare that even if I wanted
@@TechGuides Huh? 1440p triggers VP9 again?!
VP9's quality only better cos RUclips uses the fastest preset of H264 and I'm pretty sure botched H264 like MainConcpet that comes with Adobe Products. 100k bitrate looks like sht. You gotta go out of your way to ruin 8 mbit of H264 to look this bad on purpose or being clueless. I use X264 though and 8Mbit looks really good.
Nah mate AV1's trigger threshhold has been lowered to 50k -100k depending on the channel. My channels are not so big. 120k subs and and 45k subs resepctively. The 45k sub channel get AV1 codes after a video hits 50k views. Probably overall channel views factor in more
@@KotaMW Playback support is never an issue on PC regarding of the video codec. You can get anything played not even thinking if it supported. Maybe WMV doesn't play this but anything player you install has got everything installed like VLC. Pick any and you're good to go to play any video format and codec. I use SMplayer and never even bothered thinking about downloading codecs like in the old days K-lite codec pack
@ Flagship Bowtie Yes 1440p most definitely triggers VP9: ruclips.net/video/-MrpPA-wCiM/видео.html
This video has over 200K views and is still "only" VP9: ruclips.net/video/cybTSx2Z1rA/видео.html
Soon you can't hardware encode h264? My chromebook from 2013 can, but you can't? And you can't view h265? This is so bizarre to me. I came here wondering about the best youtube and found a video of a man who can't encode 264 wtf. I just checked my cheap laptop if it can encode both and I'm at 9% on a single thread for both h264 and h265 at 1080p. I don't have a graphics card but the igp says sure no problem.
Sorry but I think you confused something. You will always be able to encode in h264 or any older codec. Its just less efficient to do and produces larger file sizes with worse quality compared with newer ones
@@TechGuides I was commenting on how you do not have hardware acceleration for encoding of h264. That is quite shocking. I know your hardware has it of course but you don't know how to do it is what i mean. You showed your CPU being pegged because you were software encoding without using your GPU. I was trying to say that All GPUs iGPUs and APUs going back some 15 or 20 years have h264 hardware acceleration not the high end but litterally all. Even a raspberry pi. But for some reason your i9 with nvidia 3xxx doesn't. That's just funny. And you can't view h265 at all or in the editor without paying for it. That's just crazy. I was showing my son this. I was looking for answers and found a video that looked ok but then released this person has no idea what they are doing.