Grainy HEVC to AVC

[Ygramul]

This is Bronson (2008): https://www39.zippyshare.com/v/XXLcNVC4/file.html

I want to convert the movie from HEVC to x264 AVC because it's supposed to be playable on an old device and I want to add hardsubs. Unfortunately, the movie is very grainy in most scenes.

I use VidCoder (modified HandBrake) and its denoising filters (hqdn3d and NL-Means) don't really help much.

Is there anything I can do to convert to AVC and add hardsubs without turning the picture into a blurry mess?

Original MediaInfo: https://pastebin.com/xPmDhL0p

[LigH.de]

I see only one certain factor:

Enough bitrate.

Possibly a decimal magnitude more than your HEVC source...

You may aim at CRF 18 or less. Rather 15. Which may cause high bitrates in result which could get close to hardware limits reading the storage medium. So the optimum may be "CRF VBR with VBV constraints", if you are able to discover the video buffer limits for your playback device.

[Ygramul]

I see only one certain factor:

Enough bitrate.

Possibly a decimal magnitude more than your HEVC source...

You may aim at CRF 18 or less. Rather 15. Which may cause high bitrates in result which could get close to hardware limits reading the storage medium. So the optimum may be "CRF VBR with VBV constraints", if you are able to discover the video buffer limits for your playback device.

Yeah, I guess I'll try to up the bitrate. So far I only tried 6000 kbps (to match the original). I don't know what video buffer limits are, my knowledge is limited. I just want an old Samsung Galaxy S2 (yep) to handle it.

Would 2 pass encoding make a noticeable difference?

[jagabo]

You can probably get decent results with about twice the bitrate.

[LigH.de]

There is no technical difference between 1-pass CRF and the second pass of 2-pass VRB. The first pass just calculates the Rate Factor value to make the second pass produce a file with a size close to the desired size. 2-pass VBR is only useful if you have a file size limit you must obey. If you have plenty of space, 1-pass CRF will save you time and guarantee a specific maximum loss of quality.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 has 1.9 GHz quad-core Cortex-A57 + 1.3 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processors. I guess the decoding speed for FullHD AVC/H.264 video should in general be sufficient, I see no urgent need to limit the Profile@Level. The read speed from the used storage medium might be, don't rely on the cheapest SD card or USB stick.

I wonder if the inability to play HEVC (at all, or with sufficient speed) is just a question of the playback software. Did you try VLC?