What is considered low bitrate? (h.265).

[Felow]

Greetings,

I've been encoding my videos using CRF 23 which is about 1500/3500 kb/s depending on the video, is that considered low bitrate for 1080p?. I'm asking because I've been using SAO filter since I read that it helps with ringing artifacts on low bitrate but after some comparisons, I noticed that disabling it results in preserving more details... so if my bitrate is high enough I'd rather disable it.

Thanks.

[jagabo]

I've been encoding my videos using CRF 23 which is about 1500/3500 kb/s depending on the video, is that considered low bitrate for 1080p?.

Generally, CRF 23 is lowish. But it depends on your purpose (just to watch personally, preserving precious family video for future generations), and how picky you are.

[_Al_]

I'm asking because I've been using SAO filter since I read that it helps with ringing artifacts on low bitrate but after some comparisons, I noticed that disabling it results in preserving more details... so if my bitrate is high enough I'd rather disable it.

What bitrate differences do you get with --sao or --no-sao? That should not be much at all. Not sure how relevant it is to save bitrate or not.

For example a subtle denoise can save you 1/6, 1/7th of bitrate for regular camcorder video on the other hand. Or are you working with cartoons and --sao or --no-sao gives a bigger difference for bitrate while using CRF?

[Felow]

I'm asking because I've been using SAO filter since I read that it helps with ringing artifacts on low bitrate but after some comparisons, I noticed that disabling it results in preserving more details... so if my bitrate is high enough I'd rather disable it.

What bitrate differences do you get with --sao or --no-sao? That should not be much at all. Not sure how relevant it is to save bitrate or not.

For example a subtle denoise can save you 1/6, 1/7th of bitrate for regular camcorder video on the other hand. Or are you working with cartoons and --sao or --no-sao gives a bigger difference for bitrate while using CRF?

The bitrate difference between --no-sao and sao is minimal. For example, the last video I compared is 2 745 kb/s (sao) and 2 726 kb/s (--no-sao) but with no-sao you keep more details... hair and moles aren't blurred for example, though I have to say I haven't compared ringing artifacts which sao is said to help with.

At first, I didn't notice any loss of details with sao vs no-sao but after doing more comparisons I started to notice...