Will the same RF value get the same quality in h.264 and 265?

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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truth1ness
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Will the same RF value get the same quality in h.264 and 265?

Post by truth1ness »

If I set the same RF in a 264 and 265 will the output be the same quality? Or would I be able to bump the RF down a notch to get the same result since the 265 codec is newer/better?

Also same with the encoding speed (slow, fast, faster, etc). Would fast and faster be equal on 264 and 265 or would the same setting on 265 be a notch or so better?

I'm just curious if I can compensate either setting a bit with the new codec to get the same quality with even lower size.
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JohnAStebbins
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Re: Will the same RF value get the same quality in h.264 and 265?

Post by JohnAStebbins »

No. And in fact if you pick 2 different presets (e.g. medium and slow) in x264 and use the same RF, you will get slightly different quality.
mduell
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Re: Will the same RF value get the same quality in h.264 and 265?

Post by mduell »

Nope and nope, that's not how either of them work.
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BradleyS
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Re: Will the same RF value get the same quality in h.264 and 265?

Post by BradleyS »

The documentation has some general quality guidance: https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/1.2.0/work ... ality.html

The numbers can provide similar results in some situations and widely differing results in others. Same for encoding speed presets. In practice, there are so many variables changing, perceptual quality is simply not an exact science.

Keep in mind that x265 in particular provides little improvement in compression for high/archival quality encodes in HD. It is much more impressive for delivering usable low bit rate and/or low resolution encodes, and high resolution encodes (greater than 1080p, think 4K and up). So if you're working from 720p/1080p sources, you might find that x265 takes a lot longer to encode for little if any benefit.
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