ffmpeg versus x265 speed

[burnix]

Hi community.

Since 2 or 3 years i use a 2 pass ffmpeg script to encode my 1080p video in h265 700kbs. I use veryfast profile that give me really good result.

Recently after some search over internet to found a cost effective cpu mainboard to buy to encode my films, i have read, that recent x265 build are more efficcient than ffmpeg.

Can someone confirm that and can someone give me an example of a 2 pass x265 encoding script.

Thanks.

[Ritsuka]

If you are already using x265 with ffmpeg, there won't be any difference in using the stand-alone version.

[RanmaCanada]

If you're using veryfast profile you'd be better off to just buy an Intel Arc GPU and call it a day, as Arc encodes are comparable to x265 medium preset, with astounding speeds.

[burnix]

Thanks for your response. But my goal is to obtain low bitrate (700k video at hd resolution). Do you think i can acheave that with good quality on arc chips ????

[Z2697]

At this point I'd suggest really consider using AV1.

[Asmodian]

But my goal is to obtain low bitrate (700k video at hd resolution). Do you think i can acheave that with good quality on arc chips ????

Yes, better than the veryfast profile, at least.

[benwaggoner]

Yes, better than the veryfast profile, at least.
At likely at least as fast. On reasonably modern mid-tier desktop hardware, there's rarely a material perf difference between veryfast and faster if there's decoding and preprocessing going on; the bottleneck will be in other elements.

[burnix]

Thanks benwaggoner for your response (i've read a lot of your post). But for low bitrate and even on a 13th i5 proc, hardware encoding is still blocky.

i'm not expert enough in hardware encoding and vpp filter so i keep my 2 pass ffmpeg hevc 800k software script but it take very long time (even on xeon).

The reality is that hardware encoders are made to fast transcoding at hight bitrate.

Thanks all for your help and if i dont come here before the end of the year, merry christmas and an happy new year

[benwaggoner]

At this point I'd suggest really consider using AV1.
Not if extremely fast encoding speed is a requirement!

[benwaggoner]

Thanks benwaggoner for your response (i've read a lot of your post). But for low bitrate and even on a 13th i5 proc, hardware encoding is still blocky.

i'm not expert enough in hardware encoding and vpp filter so i keep my 2 pass ffmpeg hevc 800k software script but it take very long time (even on xeon).[QUOTE]
Do you know that the encoder is the bottleneck versus other processing you're doing? Try using incrementally slower, better presets and use the best one that gives you acceptable speed. Veryslow turns off a ton of the features that help HEVC at low bitrates.

The reality is that hardware encoders are made to fast transcoding at hight bitrate.
Yeah, HW encoders are much faster, but given enough time, a well-tuned, slow SW encoder can deliver similar quality at 10-25% lower bitrate, but at >10x the encoding time.

800 Kbps is way too low to expect good quality with typical film/video HEVC at any encoding speed. If you're willing to spend >10x encoding time you can make it less bad, but not good (unless is is clean animation or something easy to encode).

[Z2697]

Not if extremely fast encoding speed is a requirement!

Some svt-av1 presets run faster than x265, but what I meant is low bitrate.

Even for the faster side, svt-av1 is still better at low bitrate.