2025-01-11

Video encoding – How to generate an MP4 with H.265 codec using ffmpeg?

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM05 mins

I want to encode a video file to H.265. The last version of ffmpeg should be support H.265 (Source).

However, I could not find any information about the exact command.

I do not know, which library I should indicate after -vcodec.

I use the lastest Zeranoe FFmpeg Build (git-c78a416 (2013-10-26)).

Solution:

Background

FFmpeg supports encoding HEVC/H.265 since 2014-2-12 with libx265. Now you can use ffmpeg directly to encode HEVC or use another encoder then manually mux that into .mp4, .mov, or .mkv using FFmpeg.

Available Encoders

Current H.265/HEVC encoders are:

Only the MulticoreWare and DivX are suggested because of their development time and reliability.

Two x265’s

One confusion is that there are two independent projects both named “x265”, one by a Chinese college student and is practically dead, and another by a commercial company called MulticoreWare. Although the former started out first, it is practically dead now, and the latter is under active development and is endorsed by VideoLAN (the developer of x264).

Timeline of FFmpeg HEVC Encoding Support

  • 2013-10-12 .mov muxing support added in 53f903b.
  • 2014-02-12 libx265 encoding support added in bb6b173.
  • 2014-03-09 More complete Matroska muxing support for HEVC added in 38aee64.
  • 2014-03-09 More complete .mov and new .mp4 muxing support added in 9563e67.

tl;dr

Anyways, these are a complete set of current possibilities of encoding HEVC in order of my recommendation:

  • Directly using MulticoreWare libx265 with FFmpeg. This means with the latest Zeranoe build you can now do this:

    ffmpeg -i INPUT -c:v libx265 -an -x265-params crf=25 OUT.mov# With audioffmpeg -i INPUT -c:v libx265 -c:a copy -x265-params crf=25 OUT.mov

    Note: FFmpeg builds newer than 2014-03-09 allows you to mux HEVC into .mp4 files now (commit 9563e67):

    ffmpeg -i INPUT -c:v libx265 -an -x265-params crf=25 OUT.mp4

    You can also mux it in Matroska (.mkv):

    ffmpeg -i INPUT -c:v libx265 -an -x265-params crf=25 OUT.mkv

  • Using standalone MulticoreWare x265 and then mux the resulting file with FFmpeg or MP4Box. This will work with older FFmpeg builds that don’t have libx265 support.

    # Decode input using FFmpeg and encode using x265 using pipeffmpeg -i INPUT -f yuv4mpegpipe -pix_fmt yuv420p - | x265 --y4m -o encoded.265 -# Mux the resulting encoded .265 file into an .mp4 or .mov# Using ffmpeg: only works with newer builds that support muxing HEVC# Muxing to .mp4 supported since 03-09-2014ffmpeg -i encoded.265 -c copy out.mp4# With audioffmpeg -i encoded.265 -i INPUT -map 0 -map 1:a -c copy out.mp4# Using MP4BoxMP4Box -add raw.265 out.mp4# With audioMP4Box -add {INPUT}#audio -add raw.265 out.mp4

    Thanks to @Duvrai.

  • Using DivX HEVC Encoder and then mux it.

    The way of using it is similar to using standalone x265 (see above).

Update: FFmpeg has HEVC encoding support using MulticoreWare libx265 now.

Update 2: FFmpeg now has support for muxing HEVC into mp4 AND mov now.

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