I recently started building a movie/show collection again on my home NAS.
I know that generally H.265 files can be 25-50% less bitrate than H.264 and be the same or better quality. But what’s the golden zone for both types? 10 Mbps for a 1080p H.264 movie? And would it be like 5 Mbps for H.265 1080p to be on par with H.264? What about 4K?
For file size: would it be 25GB for a 2 hour 1080p movie to be near or at original Blu-Ray/digital quality?
I know that this is a non-answer, but the best thing to do is reencode a few files at multiple bitrates and see where the line is for you.
Try to get a few dark scenes, since that’s where compression artifacts tent to be most noticeable.
“Same as original” is not possible
18-21
Interestingly, In starting to look into doing some re-encodes of some of my media to reduce disk space. Ran into an interesting one as I was doing some test files where the h265 file ended up being 30% bigger than the originating h264 (1.8GB to 2.4GB, Handbrake 1080p h265 fast RF 20). All my other test files were about a 50% reduction.
That is to say, there is no one singular set of settings that are perfect.
If you really want original quality, you can just remux your discs. 1080p will already be H.264 and 4K will be H.265. I don’t really see a reason to re-encode if you’re going to end up with a 25GB 1080p video.