Why does x265 suck so bad?

[Aludin]

I officially challenge anyone to prove a significant quality increase in x265 over x264 at the same bitrate and provide me the source, x265 build and exact commandline used. Natural videos, no anime.

For the last 10 years I've heard nothing but excuses. When I made a bigass thread providing all my examples and commandlines, no one was able to explain exactly what is wrong with my workflow that's making x265 suck so bad.

Someone at doom9 suggested to lower the ctu size so it won't suck for SD videos. I tried that, it made the quality worse, not better.

For the longest time the most common excuse was that I'm testing SD encodes which x265 sucks at.

I got a new, 6-core computer and tested that theory out just now at 720p. x265 provided a 14% higher SSIM over x264 at this resolution, versus 10% at 544p.

Needless to say I'm not impressed and I fully expected this kind of dismal failure.

If I'm still somehow wrong about everything after 10 years of failed tests, show me the pudding.

Come on, I'm waiting.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Troll detected.

[Bwaak]

One of many comparisons: Video Compression Testing: x264 vs x265 CRF in Handbrake 0.10.5

[pandy]

H.265 is tailored for UHD resolution not SD or even HD...

[netmask56]

Do not feed - ignore

[pandy]

Do not feed - ignore

H.265 may provide higher blur than H.264 but some people may like it some not... same was when H.264 was introduced and offered higher blur than H.262 so at some point this may be fair impression .

[Aludin]

All I hear is whining and zero substance. Not surprised.

Come on triggered snowflakes, I'm calling you all out. Provide evidence of x265 providing anything close to the vaunted 50% less bitrate for the same quality and I will paypal you $100 or in bitcoin.

Troll detected.

AS, I had a lot of respect for you for rolling out that Windows 7 Image updater and personally helping me install my preferred OS on my new box back in 2018, you made $50 too. But now you made my shitlist.

I think $100 will go a long way in that third world shithole you live in, so what are you waiting for brachu?

One of many comparisons: Video Compression Testing: x264 vs x265 CRF in Handbrake 0.10.5

From that page:
On the whole, I would have to agree that the x264 CRF values produce very similar acceptance levels on x265.

Nothing close to "same quality for 50% less bitrate". Did you even look at the page you linked? Look at all the screenshots, many of them are WORSE quality than x264. The guy who did that comparison must be a better troll than me because in all my tests x265 is marginally better.

H.265 may provide higher blur than H.264 but some people may like it some not... same was when H.264 was introduced

Not true, the latest x264 is considerably better than an early version. The latest x265 after a whole decade of maturation is only marginally better than its predecessor.

[poisondeathray]

The 50% claims were with respect to the jm reference encoder h265 vs h264 .

x265 and x264 are specific encoder implementations of h265 and h264 respectively. No 50% claims have been made about that.

[Bwaak]

One of many comparisons: Video Compression Testing: x264 vs x265 CRF in Handbrake 0.10.5

Nothing close to "same quality for 50% less bitrate". Did you even look at the page you linked? Look at all the screenshots, many of them are WORSE quality than x264. The guy who did that comparison must be a better troll than me because in all my tests x265 is marginally better.

Of course, I've read the whole article and looked at the pictures. Have you? He wrote:

On the whole, for the average case, x265 showed bitrate of about 59% of that of x264 at the same CRF. ... the bitrate saving will vary depending on the specific CRF selected.

In his more recent test he writes:

H.265 was touted as offering 50% improved compression efficiency [over H.264] and was slated to replace H.264 eventually. Nevertheless, my early experiences with H.265 were that it was perceptually tricky – it produced softer images that didn’t have the obvious macroblocking that H.264 and H.263 did, but at the expense of detail. Some consider this “graceful” degradation, which may well be true, but for preservationists and archivists, saving bitrate at the cost of detail is not an ideal scenario.

He continues:

It seems that the beauty of H.265 is more in the fact the images are acceptable at lower bitrates as the artifacts are less visually distracting, but where there is a reference to compare to, it is obvious that detail has been lost.

He concludes with:

It would seem that H.265 is not quite the 50% bitrate reduction as often claimed, perhaps because I’m being extra-picky with regards to image detail. It definitely does produce less objectionable artifacts which often result in image smoothing rather than macroblocking. I found the bitrate reduction to be in the 30-40% ballpark considering the best encoding preset, which is still worthwhile.

[pandy]

Not true, the latest x264 is considerably better than an early version. The latest x265 after a whole decade of maturation is only marginally better than its predecessor.

x264 matured way longer than x265 exist and this is NORMAL - every codec need time to mature and refine. If you are unhappy with H.265 why you are not using other video codecs - there is full freedom on this.

[Selur]

side note: the comparison is from 'Posted on August 27, 2016', x265 did improve since then.

[Hoser Rob]

Troll detected.

Or yet another poor workman blaming his tools.

[lollo]

Troll detected.

Or yet another poor workman blaming his tools.

Both

[pandy]

Troll detected.

Or yet another poor workman blaming his tools.

Both

In my youth times most appropriate term was lamer but today when so many people suffer from various cognitive biases like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect?useskin=vector ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority?useskin=vector seem i can be accused about hate speech...

[poisondeathray]

The 50% claims were with respect to the jm reference encoder h265 vs h264 .

x265 and x264 are specific encoder implementations of h265 and h264 respectively. No 50% claims have been made about that.

Actually, Netflix made a 53.3% bitrate savings claim for x265 vs x264 at 1080p using VMAF as the measurement. Test sample size was a massive 720,000 videos (!)
https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Netflix-Finds-x265...P9-113346.aspx

VMAF isn't necessarily a great metric, but arguably better than SSIM

Definitely there is a trend with larger delta at higher resolutions. At UHD/4K, x264 is at a distinct disadvantage

[davexnet]

I know it's designed mainly for HD, but I've used it for a DVD rip or two from my own disks,
and was very pleased with the results. Kept the resolution as is, and set preset Fast CRF 22.

Not a scientific method, but to my eyes, the x264 version that looked as good was at least 50% bigger

Here's the title sequence to an episode of Thunderbirds (1965) ripped from my PAL DVD.

[JN-]

I did some testing of this a good while back. I found that hevc and h264 levelled out at approximately 70 Mbps, no advantage quality above that. At low bitrates there was a substantial difference in favour of hevc but no way 50%.

[pandy]

I did some testing of this a good while back. I found that hevc and h264 levelled out at approximately 70 Mbps, no advantage quality above that. At low bitrates there was a substantial difference in favour of hevc but no way 50%.

Test UHD/4k content, it should close or better than 50% - HEVC use coding techniques tuned for UHD and higher resolution content.

--
typos fixed, sorry

[JN-]

I did some testing of this a good while back. I found that hevc and h264 levelled out at approximately 70 Mbps, no advantage quality above that. At low bitrates there was a substantial difference in favour of hevc but no way 50%.

Twat UHD/4k content i should close or better than 50% - HEVC use coding techniques tuned for UHD and higher resolution content.

I cannot make sense of above post … twat ?

[Luke M]

I did some testing of this a good while back. I found that hevc and h264 levelled out at approximately 70 Mbps, no advantage quality above that. At low bitrates there was a substantial difference in favour of hevc but no way 50%.

Yes, at high quality levels there's little difference between codecs. This is true of codecs in general, not just this case.

[JN-]

Amazing how often its trotted out that hevc is x times better than h264 but never qualifying under which conditions.

[Cornucopia]

Amazing that all the testing trials I've reviewed have always qualified the scope and conditions of their recommendations. Not sure where you are looking.


Scott

[usually_quiet]

HEVC compression delivers its greatest benefits for 4K or 8K resolution progressive video, particularly when using 10-bit color or 12-bit color. That is why it was chosen for UHD Blu-ray, and UHD TV broadcasts when their distribution formats were under development. HEVC will probably be around for a while thanks to both of them being governed by strict technical standards even if newer forms of compression, AV1 and VP9, are preferred over HEVC for UHD streaming now because they can provide even better compression than HEVC without its licensing costs.

So, all this talk about what HEVC compression can't do at SD and HD resolution is somewhat beside the point. AVC was developed a few years before HD-resolution video became mainstream (for some digital HDTV broadcast formats and Blu-ray). Although HEVC can be used for these resolutions, AVC compression still works well.

[JN-]

Not sure where you are looking.

Its not where im looking, its whats trotted out ad nauseam by camera reviewers etc when mentioning the benefits of hevc over h264. It irritates me because its misleading. The cameras are typically ones nowadays that shoot at 4k 100 Mbps or higher and so there isn’t a quality difference, but they say it that the saving in size for the same quality ( typically by 1/2) is a given but it simply isn’t so.

All of the benefits that usually quite just mentioned are usually not mentioned. My interest is in cameras so I have seen reviews where its trotted out.

I recollect pointing this out to Philip Bloom in one of his reviews, he responded that thats what Sony said.

[lordsmurf]

Its not where im looking, its whats trotted out ad nauseam by camera reviewers etc when mentioning the benefits of hevc over h264. It irritates me because its misleading. The cameras are typically ones nowadays that shoot at 4k 100 Mbps or higher and so there isn’t a quality difference, but they say it that the saving in size for the same quality is a given but it simply isn’t so.
All of the benefits that usually quite just mentioned are usually not mentioned. My interest is in cameras so I have seen reviews where its trotted out.
I recollect pointing this out to Philip Bloom in one of his reviews, he responded that thats what Sony said.

Selling Atomos H.265 licenses is a reason?

Anti-H.264 is largely FUD.

A lot of "reviewers" don't know their ass from their elbow.

[JN-]

“Selling Atomos H.265 licenses is a reason?”

I never thought of that, very good point, agree with all.

[Cornucopia]

Also something to think about: some of the h.264 patents are starting to expire. Those who would profit from the licensing see h.265 as a more long-term cash cow. So they push that.


Scott

[JN-]

Also something to think about: some of the h.264 patents are starting to expire. Those who would profit from the licensing see h.265 as a more long-term cash cow. So they push that.


Scott

I thought the perceived wisdom was that av1 would take up the reins?

[Cornucopia]

For camera sensor acquisition, the requirements are different: real-time hardware system on chip low latency encoding, which cannot burden the system with too complex of an encoding strategy, modest but still substantial bitrates, modest complexity to downstream workflows, Intra-frame optimization.

AV1 doesn't cut it for this yet.


Scott

[hello_hello]

I used to think x265 sucked, but after building a new PC that was actually able to run it at a decent speed, I've changed my mind somewhat, and I was only testing it with 1080p and 720p encodes.

Generally, with the settings I was using for x264, and the settings I settled on for x265, at CRF20 for both at 1080p I thought the x265 encodes looked slightly better than the x264 encodes. I still have the results in a text file, so for one 1080p test encode, as an example, in the order of most faithfully reproducing the source to the least:

1756 kb/s
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

2516 kb/s
x264 --crf 20.0 --level 4.1 --preset slow --tune film --b-adapt 2 --me umh --subme 9 --partitions all --no-fast-pskip --stitchable

1605 kb/s
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

I also tried dropping the x265 CRF value to 18 for that one, while only using the slow preset, and the bitrate ended up roughly the same as for the first CRF 20 encode above, but I still placed it last on the list.

1753 kb/s
x265 --crf 18.0 --profile main10 --preset slow

Mind you the differences at CRF 20 weren't anything you'd notice while watching the video, only when comparing still frames. The order I placed them in for 720p encodes, in respect to "quality", was the same.

When encoding at 8 bit for x265 I thought the x264 version tended to win, although 8 bit x265 encodes generally resulted in lower bit rates than 10 bit.