Bitrate in AVC vs HEVC

[JosephTocco]

In sound bitrate was explained, AAC 224 is high quality, but AC3 must be 640 to be high quality (or better 1500+).

How about bitrate difference between AVC and HEVC? Is the dependence similar? In HEVC lower bitrate?

[butterw]

Hevc is a more efficient video codec than avc.

You should be able to achieve at least 25% bitrate saving for the same quality, at the cost of longer encoding time. Hardware decoder support for 10bit is also much better in Hevc vs Avc.

[4kblurayguru]

In sound bitrate was explained, AAC 224 is high quality, but AC3 must be 640 to be high quality (or better 1500+).

How about bitrate difference between AVC and HEVC? Is the dependence similar? In HEVC lower bitrate?

AC3 640 would be better suited for multi-channel audio. On one particular 4k bu-ray, the bitrate was listed at 448 kbps for 5.1 ch
for 2 ch audio 192 kbps is decent enough

Tests done by many professionals have found that HEVC gives better compression than AVC but it requires updated hardware to encode and decode. Some content providers will stick to AVC for the next 5-15 years for resolutions 1080p and lower. HEVC now is for those who want to be on the cutting edge of tech.

Youtube is still streaming in AVC and their own VP9.

For everyday use, AVC is it.

[davexnet]

Even the OP's assumptions about audio bitrates is questionable, it doesn't take into account whether
it's compressed or not (1500?), nor the amount of channels in the stream

[non-vol]

If I remember right, AC3 is roughly on par with mp3... so if referring to let's say just regular stereo sound, 640 kbps has been an excessive bitrate for "high quality" compression for a very long time now. Although that is all very highly circumstantial and indeed such assumptions are "questionable" for many reasons. In audio world, for whatever reason, I find this easier: I'd be the first to jump and point out what's digital, what's not, what's the fundamental difference and why. Much before considering any form of lossy compression, digital audio has problems related to dynamics that don't (easily) quantifiably even exist in the analog or "natural" form. Bit depth. I don't know how to relate the concepts when it comes to video (even when I'm aware that to some degree, the same principles apply).

As for practical and "real-life" applications... I also recently took a look at the data on one of my blu-rays, indeed the main ac3 audio track was not 640, but 448 kbps for 5.1. I've also seen and heard 192 kbps stereo audio (mp2, which was developed in... the late 1980's perhaps?) being used on a recent television broadcast, and that was more than "decent enough".

And finally as for video, or to answer the OP's question... HEVC (x265 anyway) has progressed incredibly even in the last year and a half or so. 5 years ago there really was not much real-life use for it. That's changed. Lately, I have been successful in compressing 1920x1080 footage to even less than 50% of the original bitrate, with damn near the same subjective quality. A "high quality" movie in 2 gigabytes (or 1 GB per hour) is possible. I have a good bunch of those, where it "would be" twice the size if I'd tried it with x264 instead.

But to say it in terms of bitrates is really just not that simple. "AVC" is not one single monolithic thing. Some AVC encodes are incredibly efficient and you won't be able to compress them much further with any other codec, and on the other hand some AVC encodes are incredibly inefficient. It all depends on what exactly the source is, has it been compressed heavily to begin with etc., very much like the counterpart to this in audio land.