Hello just making a poll, which one do you prefer? personally I prefer x265 but since the rarbg falldown i’ve seen that almost all 1080p rips are in x264, what do you think about that, and do you recommend any place to find more x265 content beside those in the megathread?
Note that H.264 and H.265 are the video compression standards and x264 and x265 are FOSS video encoding libraries developed by VideoLAN.
Important distinction, thanks for clarifying because I always forget!
x265 no contest, all day every day. Then again we should probably be migrating to AV1 ASAP
I think it has to reach a bit more device saturation before encoders jump to it. But yeah AV1 is much better for everyone. Having AOM there to work on it and protect it is a good bonus. Pirates and Netflix on the same team there lol
I guess I’ll have to see if my TV really can decode AV1 then, as my nvidia shield definitely won’t
amen. I just discovered AV1 so that seems cool as far as space saving goes
I just wish we had more AV1 releases
It’s not like a ton of people have compatible hardware anyway. It’ll eventually become more common as more uploaders can encode and downloaders can decode.
As far as I know most uploaders prefer software encoding for the best result. Even with the most advanced encoder (e.g. SVT-AV1) and the latest hardware, that becomes a taxing task with AV1.
Neither. AV1 if available, if not I download a high quality x264 copy and do my own transcode. AV1 is high quality with smaller file sizes, but isn’t very common right now.
Where have you ever found AV1? I’ve literally never once seen it in the wild. It seems awesome though, I would definitely choose that over anything else
It really is awesome. Lots of leaps forward for AV1 recently. It encodes faster than x265 in some situations with so much space saved. It’s still in the early stages, really, and the compression isn’t perfect, but for video streaming purposes, I’ll take it over x265 any day.
It encodes faster than x265 in some situations with so much space saved
on ffmpeg?
I tested it like 6months to a year ago I think, and it had similar storage requirement at similar visual fidelity but transcoding took what seemed 5x to 10x the time/e: for future reference, I’m testing a transfer to transcoding to AV1 instead of hevc
ffmpeg -i /path/to/infile -c:v libsvtav1 -preset 9 -svtav1-params tune=0:enable-overlays=1:scd=1:scm=0:fast-decode=1 -crf 50 -g 240 -pix_fmt yuv420p10le /path/to/outfileThese are a mix of what I read here:
https://gist.github.com/BlueSwordM/86dfcb6ab38a93a524472a0cbe4c4100
and here:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/AV1general gist:
preset is encoding speed, higher is faster, this setting gets me a bit faster than what i had my hevc encode set up
tune=0 tunes for being good looking
fast-decode lessens cpu use on decode
crf 50 seems fine for my use
-g 240 changes keyframe insertion to every 240 frames
-pix_fmt yuv420p10le gives 10bit color depth which helps with dark scenes and doesn’T cost much spaceOn ffmpeg, yeah. I can get close to real-time encoding with the new version of libsvtav1 and I save space with around the same visual fidelity as x265, at least, in my experience. If you want to try it out, I recommend using the ab-av1 tool, which automatically finds the best CRF to VMAF for encoding.
edit: Transcoding speeds, I don’t find that it’s slow, even if I’m using software for transcoding, though I’ve only been using it for my Jellyfin server for about a month or so.
how is the support for AV1 on devices? can most play it back? does plex support it?
"Most 2020 and newer 4K TVs have AV1 HW decoding support.
Apple hasn’t added AV1 hardware to any of their devices yet but they are easily capable of software decoding 1080p AV1.
These smartphone chips support AV1 hardware decoding: MediaTek Dimensity 1000 and newer All Google Tensor chips Samsung Exynos 2200 Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
Streaming devices with HW AV1 support: Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max Amazon Fire TV Cube 3rd Gen Google Chromecast with Google TV HD Onn. Google TV 4K Streaming Box Xiaomi TV Stick 4K Xiaomi TV Box S 2nd Gen
Roku Streaming Stick 4K 3820 Roku Streaming Stick 4K+ 3821 Roku Ultra 4800 Roku Ultra LT 4801 Roku Ultra 4802 /!\ Roku is not recommended for anime since it apparently does not support ASS or PGS subtitles
PC stuff: CPUs: Intel’s Tiger Lake (mobile 11th gen), Rocket Lake (desktop 11th gen) and newer support AV1 HW decoding. AMD’s Rembrandt (mobile 6000 series), Raphael (desktop 7000 series) and newer support AV1 HW decoding. 10+ year old desktop computers with a decent CPU are capable of software decoding 1080p AV1.
GPUs: Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series and newer support AV1 HW decoding. AMD’s RX 6000 series (except RX 6400 / 6500 XT) and newer support AV1 HW decoding. All Intel ARC GPUs support AV1 HW decoding.
People can use YouTube to check for AV1 hardware support on their current devices. Just turn on Stats for Nerds and play a video. It will show you the codec you’re using and YouTube defaults to AV1 if your device supports it. If your CPU usage is low during playback, it’s successfully using the HW decoder." also yes plex supports it afaik.
rav1ne and dav1nci on 1337x
Good looking out. Been using primarily usenet and haven’t seen anything pop with AV1 encoding.
1337x, search for AV1. There’s not that much right now, but I’m starting to see more of it.
For now its x265. Though later on itll be av1.
Wow I never heard of AV1 before, it sounds really promising!
For some reason plex doesn’t support it yet, though jellyfin does at least
I just heard about it a few minutes ago and it seems really nice too. Especially with all the space it saves.
I was trying to start getting some movies in 4k to take full advantage of my new 4k tv other than gaming, but honestly the sheer size of 4k films has me staying with 1080 for at least a little more
AV1 we should have more hardware acceleration in the future. AVIF is also promising.
Now with SVT-AV1, its debatably as fast or faster than HEVC
AVIF is just AV1 but for images. Doesn’t seem to relate much with movies
If it’s patent-encumbered, it doesn’t exist as far as I’m concerned.
x265 is just objectively better than x264. I’m not sure what’s to poll. It really comes down to the encoder themselves which ends up a better result. x265 has a minor draw back in that it’s new and older things don’t naturally support it and a decent draw back in that it takes more CPU power to decode the stream for playback. Other than that though x265.
The various quality though comes from inexperienced or lazy encodes for both formats being available. I have such a pet peeve for someone taking a x264 encode and uploading it in x265 with like a 2% file size reduction and talk about how much better it looks. And the general downloader eats it up because ‘x265 gud’ to a certain degree. It hurts because then that typically becomes all you can get and no conversion is truly lossless so even re-encoding them myself can take a lot of work to get the reduction without quality loss. I’ve seen x265 480p encodes that end up with bigger files sizes than if you encoded the shit in AVI, because they seem to think low CFR and 265 is instant quality at a “better” size. If you take the time to really dial in the settings, run it at a slower speed, and understand what type of content you’re encoding you can get an incredibly high quality small file. But that takes a decent amount of knowledge and a lot of patience. That’s what really sets apart good encoders/releases.
Idk the fix. It doesn’t help there’s also people convinced a larger file size has inherently better quality. Like seeing a bluray 1080p rip in x265 that’s a larger file than an entire bluray disc can hold drives me up a wall because usually it’s one of the more seeded files. Like obviously people uploading and tagging 4k lossless files know what they are providing, those files are needed for the proper encodes to eat up.
But RARBG tagged releases were amazing quality. You typically had to go up a few gigs for similar quality from another release. Pahe can really nail some tv shows. Few other encoders back in the day. YIFY/YTS are amazing for the size, but you are giving up some quality. But you can’t beat a 1.5gig movie that is better than streaming quality at times.
Yeah, I don’t get the poll. Why would anyone use x264 I don’t know!
The general pattern is that 4k will be x265 and 1080P encodes with DV / HDR10 need to be x265.
But non HDR / DV 1080P and below is x264.
That’s what the encoders on the cabal trackers are doing.
H265 is objectively superior in just about every way UNLESS you’re trying to play it on hardware that doesn’t support it. The only reason to use H264 is for broad compatibility.
The issue is more political than technical. Hopefully AV1 will fix that.
Pretty sure it’s just more of a hardware age issue. Smart TV makers don’t put much effort into their firmware, so if they don’t support a codec now they probably won’t support it ever. Devices made before a certain year probably won’t ever support H265. I suspect we’ll run into the same thing with AV1, unfortunately. It’s another objectively superior codec that will have compatible issues. 🤷
also its not just pure “compatibility”, but I had a time when I played vids to my TV over an old laptop (from around 2015). Worked like a charm. But some x265 vids went into full-on stutter mode in scenes where a lot of stuff was happening… was more a nuisance than a dealbreaker, but still, preferred x264 versions if I could get them
Sounds like your TV isn’t fully compatible with x265. You can get around that by using a modern streaming stick that supports it.
H.265. The file size difference is impressive, and without a noticeable loss of quality, if any.
x265. I do my own rips usually.
Do you use handbreak to do it? And what settings? Is it something that needs to be played around with to see how output is, so doing small segment to determine what is ideal?
No, I use Simple x264/x265 encoder in combo with MeGUI (do the avs in MeGUI, the encode on Simple x264/x265 encoder).
Yeah, you have to play around with it to see what quality suits you. And yes, that takes a looooot of time. Doing small segments will give you a general idea, but the end result may greatly differ in movies with a lot of fast moving action scenes. So, it’s best to just encode the whole thing (2 pass, I use the very slow preset, but I’m nuts), view the results and just go from there.
Since having a device that can natively watch x265 I only get that format now. I’m not sure of the quality is better vs x264 but for TV shows the disk space reduction makes up for any quality loss. Movies might be different and it depends on the film but I’m still only getting 1080p rips so again maybe the quality is that important compared to 4K?
I am 100% in on 265, I’ve gotten my Plex users to upgrade to newer devices or they can have transcoded video.
I would love to migrate to AV1 in a few years, but that’s a ways out.
4K x264 rips (the few that are out there) are hilariously big compared to the same quality 4K x265 rips
DivX using since 2004, no regrets
- The Chad DivX/XviD user
AV1 when available for everything other than 3d content which is ideally x265.
Honestly it blows my mind that x264 is still as popular as it is.
x264 is still popular because lots of active devices (mainly TVs and smartphones) still don’t have native support for x265.
People need to upgrade their shit
Remember how long DivX/XviD hung on for, it’s all down to device compatibility.
From a place of ignorance: why is x265 better for 3d and not AV1?
Strictly because the tooling doesn’t exist in an easy enough way to go from blu-ray -> full-sbs encode at this point.
I’m constrained by knowledge to only use tools like BD3D2MK3D to create full-sbs encode in x265 which I watch in VR.
If AV1 were an option in this tool I’d consider it, but the additional encoding time might not be worth it to me as the person actually encoding the files.
If anyone has knowledge of F-SBS or F-OU AV1 content or tooling please let me know as I’d be glad to learn.
Search for the user Infinity on TorrentGalaxy
They are re-uploading a lot of RARBG 1080p x265 releases but have are also releasing new movies / tv shows under their own tag with very similar quality and file sizes.
For some unknown reason Infinity strips off the subtitles from the releases. I like a good subtitle track with my release…
On his own releases he’s started embedding the subtitles which is nice… but yes i admit a lot of his rarbg uploads are missing the subs… I generally remux the rarbg ones with the english sub track so it’s annoying when they aren’t there… I’ve had good luck grabbing them from subscene though.
