At the same general quality, HEVC produces smaller files than H.264.įor constant-quality encoding, Handbrake can't use hardware acceleration, so it's stuck doing the math in software. Basically, the higher the bitrate, the better your video looks, and the bigger the resulting file is.Īt the same bitrate and file size, HEVC looks better than H.264. This results in smaller final file sizes - but while it looked pretty good to my untrained eye, the resulting picture quality might not match that of your second option.Īverage bitrate keeps the amount of compression within a much smaller range, hovering around a target you set. Then it adjusts how much compression it applies scene-by-scene to hit that quality mark. Constant quality asks you how close to the original, uncompressed file you want the compressed version to look.
To make a very, very long story short, you have two options when compressing a video with H.264 or HEVC.
(Big thanks to transcoding wizard Don Melton for his expertise on this next part.) HandBrake 1.2.0 and later enables Apple's VideoToolbox technology to dramatically speed up H.264 (and, for users of post-2017 Macs, HEVC) encoding … but there's a slight catch. Again, the trade-off here boils down fairly simply: a longer wait for smaller files, or a much shorter wait for somewhat larger ones. Once you've picked an algorithm, you need to decide how you're going to apply it to your video. They're generally considered comparable in quality to H.264 and HEVC, respectively. (Note that on some newer, faster computers, HandBrake will also offer Google's VP8 and VP9 encoders. And both held up no matter what I threw at them, from animated movies to black-and-white classics to films with lots of fast action and bright colors.
Condense video tv#
In my tests, both H.264 and HEVC looked remarkably close to the original, even on a big TV screen. Older Macs can play HEVC files just fine, but only the newest models have chips fast enough to encode HEVC decently.
Condense video mac#
If you don't have a Mac made from 2017 onward, stick with H.264. H.265 or HEVC makes files even smaller - but requires hefty processing power to crunch the necessary numbers. Tried-and-true H.264 converts relatively quickly, and it can squeeze a high-def Blu-ray file onto a DVD's worth of space or less. The first two aren't worth considering with the latter two available. HandBrake offers a choice of four compression algorithms: MPEG-2 (oldest, relatively lousy), MPEG-4 (still old, not great), H.264 (old, faster, pretty good), and HEVC/H.265 (new, slower, even better). HEVC: Which compression algorithm is best? Let's discuss a couple of the choices you'll need to weigh before you start putting your videos through the wringer. But with the right settings, it'll look close enough that you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference. Compressed video won't ever look quite as good or detailed as the uncompressed original. You'll need to experiment with compression settings and methods to figure out which balance of quality and file size works best for you. Throttle up your compression settings too high, and the machine gets sloppy, making the picture look blocky or less detailed (known as artifacting) or smushing a wide gradient of colors into an obvious, rainbow-y pixel smear (known as color banding.) The more compression you apply, the smaller your file, but the worse these problems get. By merely making a note of the pixels that stay the same, and recording only the pixels that change, video compression algorithms help fit the same video into a smaller amount of total data.īut computers, like humans, aren't perfect. Compression uses clever math to compare each frame to the next one, looking for areas of the picture that don't change.
Condense video series#
Videos consist of frames, a series of still pictures played in quick succession to create the illusion of motion.
Condense video free#
Happily, you can, with a little help from HandBrake – a free app that helps you compress video without sacrificing (much of) its quality.īefore we get into how you can use HandBrake, we'll quickly review how it works its magic, and which options might best help you shrink down your videos to your satisfaction. Whether you're ripping your Blu-ray collection to an external hard drive, or just trying to e-mail Grandma a high-quality video of your vacation, sooner or later you'll wish you could fit all those pixels into a smaller file. In this age of HD and 4K, videos seem to keep getting bigger, but our hard drives and Internet bandwidth don't always follow suit.
0 kommentar(er)
