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Getting ready for H.265

A

amro

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 7, 2008
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I'm wanting to use Handbrake to convert my mkv movies to h.265 in order to use on my 10.5 iPad Pro. Handbrake has several options of which I'm using "H.265 MKV 1080p30" and changing container to MP4 and video framerate to the appropriate setting (mostly 23.976).

1. Will iOS 11 be able to playback current h.265 encoded files from Handbrake or should I wait?
2. When will h.265 playback become available on iOS 11 beta? Or is it a "later this year" feature?

I tried adding an h.265 movie to my iPad via iTunes on my Mac mini and iTunes stated the movie was not copied because it could not be played on the iPad.
 
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I have converted a movie into H.265 with handbrake and Quicktime on macOS can‘t play it.

So my suggestion: Wait for final release of iOS11 und macOS High Sierra
 
amro said:
I'm wanting to use Handbrake to convert my mkv movies to h.265 in order to use on my 10.5 iPad Pro. Handbrake has several options of which I'm using "H.265 MKV 1080p30" and changing container to MP4 and video framerate to the appropriate setting (mostly 23.976).

1. Will iOS 11 be able to playback current h.265 encoded files from Handbrake or should I wait?
2. When will h.265 playback become available on iOS 11 beta? Or is it a "later this year" feature?

I tried adding an h.265 movie to my iPad via iTunes on my Mac mini and iTunes stated the movie was not copied because it could not be played on the iPad.
Click to expand...

I wanted to offer some advice.

You shouldn't convert existing h.264 files into h.265. You are going to lose quality since you're taking video that's already been compressed, and compressing it again.

Just accept that your h.264 videos are a bit larger. Storage is getting cheaper all the time, so this will matter less as time goes on. Acquire your new content in h.265, leave your h.264 content be.
 
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zorinlynx said:
I wanted to offer some advice.

You shouldn't convert existing h.264 files into h.265. You are going to lose quality since you're taking video that's already been compressed, and compressing it again.

Just accept that your h.264 videos are a bit larger. Storage is getting cheaper all the time, so this will matter less as time goes on. Acquire your new content in h.265, leave your h.264 content be.
Click to expand...

These are MKV's from my Blu-ray rips. They're much bigger than that. I used Handbrake to make h.264 files out of them, but I'm nowhere near what my library has. I have around 185 movies so far. I would like to get them on my new iPad Pro. I travel quite a bit and would like a lot of choice. So, I don't mind starting over with h.265. I add a bunch to the queue and let Handbrake go to town for weeks. No biggie to me.
[doublepost=1500949439][/doublepost]
CptSky said:
I've seen pull requests to make Handbrake generate proper H.265 files. You can always try nightly builds of Handbrake to see if it works with iOS 11 / macOS 10.13.

They are available at: https://handbrake.fr/nightly.php
Click to expand...

I guess that's my question. What is "proper H.265" mean? Is the default H.265 on Handbrake not playable on Apple devices? Or am I missing something about Apple's support of H.265?
 
amro said:
These are MKV's from my Blu-ray rips. They're much bigger than that. I used Handbrake to make h.264 files out of them, but I'm nowhere near what my library has. I have around 185 movies so far. I would like to get them on my new iPad Pro. I travel quite a bit and would like a lot of choice. So, I don't mind starting over with h.265. I add a bunch to the queue and let Handbrake go to town for weeks. No biggie to me.
[doublepost=1500949439][/doublepost]

I guess that's my question. What is "proper H.265" mean? Is the default H.265 on Handbrake not playable on Apple devices? Or am I missing something about Apple's support of H.265?
Click to expand...

Apple's H.265 codec tag is hvc1 while Handbrake currently generates hev1.
Quicktime on macOS High Sierra cannot play hev1 H.265 files.

The following commit to Handbrake will now create hvc1 when converting to H.265:
https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/commit/67dfaca7ac3ec56cc4ab3c7f9f60ab3b7c43a0db
 
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It‘s by default on „hvc1“.

I have tried to play the file on the „old“ macOS Sierra an QuickTime played the file.

In the afternoon I try to play the file on a iOS10 device.

I will convert all my videos to H.265. Yes I will loose I little bit of quality, but it‘s not noticable. But the decrease of filesize is massive.
 
zorinlynx said:
Is the format actually different or can you transcode between them without re-encoding?
Click to expand...


no, its just.. lets say muxing. open your x265 video with text editor and search for hev1 and replace it with hvc1.
on my three test files there was just one entry with hev1. after that I can play all three video on my iPad Air 2 with ios11.

next step: making a bash script

EDIT:
[doublepost=1501017035][/doublepost]this command doesn't work on Macs. ubuntu or debian. I run it on my raspberry where all my videos are stored.

find /yourvideopath/ -name '*.mp4' -print -exec sed -i 's/hev1/hvc1/g' {} \;
Click to expand...

it is recursive and change the codec tag form hev1 to hvc1 of mp4 files.

I think my pi has a lot work this night ;)
 
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odoy said:
Is this a joke? I encode HEVC since threes years and now apple want change existing things?
Fuko!
Click to expand...

hvc1 and hev1 are subtly different, but clients should support both. Apple's not really changing things, here, as both tags are valid if the stream is properly tagged. You can expect some playback glitches if a stream is mis-recognized though. So I see a couple possibilities here:

1) Apple supports both steam formats, but doesn't recognize the tag. In which case it's a bug in Apple's decoder, and a minor one.
2) Apple doesn't support the hev1 stream format, but does support hvc1. In which case, Handbrake may be mis-tagging the stream if the playback is actually flawless.
3) Apple doesn't support the hev1 stream format, and Handbrake isn't mis-tagging the stream, in which case, I'd expect some playback issues.

Considering how new this stuff is, hev1 vs hvc1 tagging differences have been an issue with the existing encoders and decoders. VLC even has had teething problems on hev1 tagged 265 content.

If Apple doesn't support hev1 streams in its decoder, they probably should. If they decide not to, it is probably because they expect most HEVC content to be coming through the iTunes store, sadly.

EDIT: Peeking at the Pull Request in Handbrake, it looks like #2 is definitely not it. The change includes tweaks to produce a proper hvc1 stream vs the hev1 stream it was producing previously. So I guess the question is: how's playback of files modified in this way?
 
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So, I reran a Handbrake on a movie and it looks like it may work. I have a Mac mini, so it struggles to play the movie. The only stinker is that iTunes can't see my iPad after upgrading both highSierra and ios 11 today.
 
There are two way to store HEVC in mp4 (both defined by the HEVC in mp4 standard), one that puts all the configuration data in the mp4 (hvc1), and the other can leave the configuration info inside the actual video data (hev1).

Some open source softwares used hev1 by default because it's easier to do, you don't have to scan the whole video data for configuration data. Either way, both are defined in the standard. "hvc1" is the most mp4-like way.

Just for reference, there are at least four different ways to store h.264 in mp4, and Apple supports only one (avc1).
 
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Krevnik said:
hvc1 and hev1 are subtly different, but clients should support both. Apple's not really changing things, here, as both tags are valid if the stream is properly tagged. You can expect some playback glitches if a stream is mis-recognized though. So I see a couple possibilities here:

1) Apple supports both steam formats, but doesn't recognize the tag. In which case it's a bug in Apple's decoder, and a minor one.
2) Apple doesn't support the hev1 stream format, but does support hvc1. In which case, Handbrake may be mis-tagging the stream if the playback is actually flawless.
3) Apple doesn't support the hev1 stream format, and Handbrake isn't mis-tagging the stream, in which case, I'd expect some playback issues.

Considering how new this stuff is, hev1 vs hvc1 tagging differences have been an issue with the existing encoders and decoders. VLC even has had teething problems on hev1 tagged 265 content.

If Apple doesn't support hev1 streams in its decoder, they probably should. If they decide not to, it is probably because they expect most HEVC content to be coming through the iTunes store, sadly.

EDIT: Peeking at the Pull Request in Handbrake, it looks like #2 is definitely not it. The change includes tweaks to produce a proper hvc1 stream vs the hev1 stream it was producing previously. So I guess the question is: how's playback of files modified in this way?
Click to expand...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/getting-ready-for-h-265.2058059/#post-24833485
thats my solution. can't find any issues during playback
 
Still rocking a 2011 Imac with an I5 so i won't be encoding in H265 anytime soon as it takes way to long, as everyone said Storage is cheap
 
odoy said:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/getting-ready-for-h-265.2058059/#post-24833485
thats my solution. can't find any issues during playback
Click to expand...

Yeah, I read it, although hev1 is not identical to hvc1. If anything, it's more a fluke that it works without glitches. By flagging it as hvc1, you are signaling to clients that there is data present in the hvcc atom that isn't actually there. QT may handle this content, but other players might not be so tolerant to this sort of hack.
 
Krevnik said:
Yeah, I read it, although hev1 is not identical to hvc1. If anything, it's more a fluke that it works without glitches. By flagging it as hvc1, you are signaling to clients that there is data present in the hvcc atom that isn't actually there. QT may handle this content, but other players might not be so tolerant to this sort of hack.
Click to expand...

"hev1" doesn't mean that there is no data in the hvcc atom, it means that there could be some data outside the hvcc atom. So if you are lucky and all the data is already in the hvcc it will work.

If you want to be sure, you can use mp4box to remux the file.
 
Ritsuka said:
"hev1" doesn't mean that there is no data in the hvcc atom, it means that there could be some data outside the hvcc atom. So if you are lucky and all the data is already in the hvcc it will work.

If you want to be sure, you can use mp4box to remux the file.
Click to expand...


Fair. The key I was going by was the change made to handbrake to populate the hvcc atom differently when switching to the hvc1 tag.
 
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