Playing with x265

[hello_hello]

I built a new PC earlier this year but as it turns out I haven't needed to do much video encoding, so I've been playing around a bit lately comparing the visual result of x265 encodes with the settings I'd normally use for x264 in an attempt to make them look similar. Not at identical bitrates though, because x265 would be expected to win (for HD, at least). I'm not a fan of x265's tendency to smooth fine detail, although I must confess after running a lot of test encodes, x265's "smoothing" might actually be growing on me a bit....

For anyone who might care, there's some screenshots below from two of my test encodes. The sources were 8 bit AVC. I used some light denoising in the first script, so the encodes can never look the same as the source, but a screenshot is included for reference anyway. Aside from the x264 encode, the 1080p samples were all encoded as 10 bit. The 720p samples were encoded as 8 bit. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has better ideas regarding x265's options.

The script I used for encoding was:

FFVideoSource("Source.mkv")
MDegrainNL(TR=2)
GradFun3()
Prefetch(8)

The order in which visually, to me, the encodes most closely match the source, keeping in mind a little noise filtering was applied each time.

Source:
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQqW

Encode A: 1756 kb/s
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQqg
x265 --crf 20.0 --profile main10 --preset slow --deblock=-1:-1 --no-open-gop --rc-lookahead 80 --lookahead-slices 0 --psy-rdoq 1.7 --aq-strength 1.3 --no-strong-intra-smoothing --no-rect --no-sao --selective-sao 0

Encode B: 2516 kb/s
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQqu
x264 --crf 20.0 --level 4.1 --preset slow --tune film --b-adapt 2 --me umh --subme 9 --partitions all --no-fast-pskip --stitchable

Encode C: 1605 kb/s
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQqc
x265 --crf 20.0 --profile main10 --preset slow --deblock=-1:-1 --no-open-gop --rc-lookahead 80 --lookahead-slices 0 --psy-rdoq 1.7 --aq-strength 1.3

Encode D: 1753 kb/s
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQqQ
x265 --crf 18.0 --profile main10 --preset slow

In the past, I didn't think x265 was all that great below 1080p (it's been a while though). The last time I compared them I thought x264 was still better at the same bitrate, but for the x265 Slow preset they seem fairly evenly matched at lower CRF values these days, with x265 requiring less bits (720p).

FFVideoSource("Source.mkv")
GradFun3()
Prefetch(8)

The order in which, to me again, the encodes most closely match the source visually. No noise filtering this time.

Source:
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQqi

Encode A: 2710 kb/s
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQq4
x265 --crf 18.0 --profile main10 --preset slow --deblock=-1:-1 --no-open-gop --rc-lookahead 80 --lookahead-slices 0 --psy-rdoq 1.7 --aq-strength 1.3 --no-strong-intra-smoothing --no-rect --no-sao --selective-sao 0

Encode B: 3321 kb/s
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQq8
x264 --crf 18.0 --level 4.1 --preset slow --tune film --b-adapt 2 --me umh --subme 9 --partitions all --no-fast-pskip --stitchable

Encode C: 2709 kb/s
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQq6
x265 --crf 18.0 --profile main10 --preset slow --deblock=-1:-1 --no-open-gop --rc-lookahead 80 --lookahead-slices 0 --psy-rdoq 1.7 --aq-strength 1.3

Encode D: 2315 kb/s
https://gifyu.com/image/SiQqR
x265 --crf 18.0 --profile main10 --preset slow