Newbie seeking advice how to convert HEVC to x264

[vhwul62]

Sorry to say, I have no knowledge about HEVC x265 x264 and all such matters.
So, please bear with me...

I have a video file that plays well on PC but not on TV. Media player does not support HEVC.

From HDD > thru a 10+ years old media player > to TV

There is no firmware update or something for this media player (AC Ryan), because it does not exist anymore.
Usually things go fine, but not with x265/

Sound is there, but the screen remains black.

As said, most probably this is because the player can not handle the newer video compression format(?)

This is what the manual of the media player says:

"
CONTENT FORMATS SUPPORTED:
• ASF/AVI/BD-ISO/DAT/DVD-ISO/FLV/IFO/MPG/MP4/M2TS/MKV/MOV/ M4V/TP/TS/TRP/WMV/VOB/RM/RMVB, resolution up to 720p/1080i/1080p
• AAC/APE/LC-AAC/HE-AAC/MP2/MP3/FLAC/WAV/MS-ADPCM/OGG Vorbis/PCM/LPCM/ COOK/RA-Lossless/WMA Standard (DRM, and Advanced Profile not supported)
• JPEG/HD JPEG/BMP/GIF/TIF/PNG

VIDEO CODECS SUPPORTED:
• MPEG-1/MPEG-2/MPEG-4 SP/ASP/AVC/H.264/x264/XviD/DivX/WMV9 (VC-1)/ RealNetworks(RM/RMVB) 8/9/10, up to 720p

"

This is what MediaInfo tells me

"
General
Unique ID : 13870950390328962138170303219423659 (0x663332E813DF4919B067AED9AB)
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 1.92 GiB
Duration : 1 h 27 min
Overall bit rate : 3 135 kb/s
Writing application : Lavf58.20.100
Writing library : Lavf58.20.100
ErrorDetectionType : Per level 1

Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main@L4.1@Main
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 1 h 27 min
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 50.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 (Type 0)
Bit depth : 8 bits
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

"

I guess.. HEVC is x265 ?

Tried to re-encode the .mkv to .mp4 using x264. This took very long, 2 hours or so. TMPGenc Video Mastering Works 6.
The .mkv is about 2GB but with default settings the output would be roughly 13-14GB.

So I reduced the bit-rate so I would get a 3GB file.
When playing this file there is a lot distortion, blocks, often unreadable subscriptions, etc.

So I did wrong.

Appreciate advice as to how to solve this.

Many thanks!

[jagabo]

You can easily convert your HEVC video to AVC (h.264) with a number of programs. Handbrake may be the easiest. But if you're going to be viewing more HEVC video you may want to get a new media player so you don't have to convert.

[vhwul62]

Many thanks a lot for the quick reply!
Handbrake ... am not familiar with the program.

Downloaded it.

Please could you help me a little bit further please ..

Is this correct?


[Attachment 58000 - Click to enlarge]

[jagabo]

You're source is 1080p50. So 1080p50 h.264 would be better if your player can handle it. Some old players cannot in which case 1080p25 or 720p50 should work. That preset will work but you'll have to go to the Video tab and force the frame rate to 50 or 25 or "saem as source". I also recommend selecting Constant Frame Rate there.

[vhwul62]

Many thanks for your help!
Truly appreciated.

[vhwul62]

Handbrake - I want to convert H265 to H264 (MP4)

I believe the below settings are correct?
If not, any suggestions to improve it.
Note, all settings within Handbrake remained unchanged.

I wonder why extension .m4v is selected instead of .mp4 ?

Thanks.


-

[Attachment 58981 - Click to enlarge]
-

[Attachment 58982 - Click to enlarge]
-

[jagabo]

Those settings should be fine. You can set RF higher (smaller files, lower quality) or lower (bigger files, higher quality). And the slower you set the Encoder preset the better the quality/size (going beyond slow (slower, veryslow, placebo) might gives some devices (some Blu-ray players, for example) trouble as the number of reference frames and consecutive b-frames may exceed their ability. Set Encoder Tune for the type of video may help a little too. Film, Animation, and Grain (retention) are the ones you care about.

Apple uses M4V for MP4 files with AC3 audio.

[vhwul62]

Many thanks again. If the results are okay, I guess leave this way.
Right now it is already running for 1 hour with time remaining, another 1 hour, so I hesitate to set the encoder preset to lower. I guess it'll take a week or so

I'll 'save' these settings for future purposes.

I have changed the extension to .mp4 manually.
One would expect that the extension would be .mp4 as that as been selected in the 1st screen.

Anyway, thanks again!

[vhwul62]

Sadly, I still have one question... subtitles disappeared after converting

1. before converting, dutch subtitles are displayed by default
2. after converting no subtitles

What am I doing wrong?? Should I 'tag' Default?


[Attachment 58990 - Click to enlarge]

[jagabo]

Turn off "forced only". Have you verified that "foreign audio scan" actually has subtitles?

[orsetto]

Unfortunately, Handbrake has an annoying enforced default of creating .m4v files when the source file is .mkv (despite selecting .mp4 as the output format). There is nothing you can do to over-ride this, aside from manually re-naming the file extension as you have done.

The .mp4/.m4v formats do not support soft subtitles (that you can turn on or off at will). So Handbrake and other similar utilities will usually default to omitting most or all subtitles contained in the original HEVC .mkv file when creating the .mp4/.m4v. You have two options for subtitles with .mp4/.m4v: tell Handbrake to encode them permanently in the video (always visible), or use a utility to pull the subtitles out of the .mkv and create a separate .srt subtitle file. If you want them always-visible, you need to choose which subtitles: HEVC files often contain multiple sub languages (as many as thirty). Depending on the video, some of these might be "forced " (i.e. required for a few scenes spoken in alternate languages). It can be difficult to figure out which is "forced" and which is "standard" unless the file has them named correctly internally. You can only choose ONE subtitle set to be permanently visible in the .mp4, so choose carefully.

If you prefer the subs to be switchable, or need more than one language for different people, you'll need to extract each subtitle you want from the HEVC .mkv to coordinate with your 264 .mp4. Name the extracted subtitle file EXACTLY the same as the video file, and keep it in the same folder as the video file. Most software and hardware video players will recognize the subtitle file and automatically play it with the video. You will also be able to turn the subtitles on or off this way with the player controls, also you can select different languages if you have multiple .srt files for this video. If you don't want the extra effort of extracting subtitles from the original .mkv, you can look for ready-made .srt files for your videos on several subtitle enthusiast websites and download them. Note you would need to choose the version that matches the exact name of your original .mkv file.

Converting HEVC to more-compatible 264 is a time-consuming nonsense task for most of us. Wasting a couple hours tying up your computer to convert a file, only to get mediocre results that lose quality, is not the best way to go. It would perhaps be better to buy a newer media player (or BluRay player with HEVC file playback feature) and stay with the original HEVC files. While I personally loathe the HEVC format precisely because it breaks broad compatibility, more and more of the wirehead geeky tech-obsessed people who create video files are moving to HEVC. Often you can still find 264 alternate versions along with the HEVC, but this option will slowly disappear and HEVC will take the field over completely within a couple years (just as they switched en masse from mp4 264 to mkv 264 format overnight a few years ago). Sooner or later you will be forced to get a newer HEVC-compatible player (or TV).

[jagabo]

mp4/m4v do support soft subs. But they must be in the right format, Apple's Timed Text format. ffmpeg will convert SRT to TT on the fly when remuxing. I don't know about handbrake. And any SRT formatting will be lost.

[vhwul62]

Thank you both!

I gave it another try and succeeeded this way ...


[Attachment 59014 - Click to enlarge]

Subtitles showed up nicely.