Written by H.265 (also known as HEVC) can offer 50 -75% more compression efficiency compared to H.264 video, while retaining the same visual quality. This means that a video file encoded with HEVC can occupy half the space of its H.264 equivalent with no noticeable change in quality, or the same amount of space with improved quality. Sounds pretty good, right? Now that we’ve been clear of the great benefits of HEVC-encoded files, it’s time to create them. There are a whole collection of tools and utilities that can encode HEVC, but in this article we’re going to focus on those that are easiest to use and provide the best quality options.
Best 5 Tools to encode H.265
Handbrake
For those people who are looking for a free yet relatively simple to use tool to encode H.265 with splendid quality and also offers the advanced options to optimize the output profile to the specific one that you want, Handbrake is absolutely your best choice. The new 1.0.0 version adds Intel QuickSync Video for H.265/HEVC encoder and also the x265 encoder quality improvements especial using tune grain.
For the detailed guide, please read this article: Handbrake H.265/HEVC encoding
265 UHDcode
UHDcode is a very handy HEVC encoder that you can use to render video frames in real time quickly and reliably. This comes in Windows DirectShow packaging but can handle all HEVC material, including 4K video. It’s a great little download and you may want to consider using it even if you decide to ultimately go with another encoder, as long as the two are compatible.
Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate
It takes too long to encode H.265 with Handbrake. Or the 265 UHDcode is too complicated to operate. No need to worry, here comes Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate, the program is very easy to use with a friendly GUI. The biggest merits of this program lies in that it supports hard-ware encoding acceleration for H.265 codec. If you happen to own a Maxwell (GM206) or Pascal based Graphic cards, you can then utilize your GPU’s dedicated HEVC encoding block to encode videos into HEVC with this program significantly faster than Handbrake. The H.265/HEVC encoding performance can be significantly improved by using Nvidia’s HEVC encoder (NVENC), but this method will come at a cost of quality. Simply put, you’re not going to get as good a quality at the same bitrates using Nvidia’s encoder compared to using Handbrake.
Different from Handbrake that only works with common digital video and home-made DVD disc, Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate can comprehensively handle not only 4K/2K/HD/SD digital video with virtually any file formats but also commercial Blu-ray/DVD disc with complicated copy protection and region code.
Beneficial features and functions to produce best output video quality
– Flexibly adjust output profile parameters such as video codec, resolution, bit rate, frame rate, audio codec, bit rate, sample rate, channels, etc
– Set subtitles during Blu-ray to H.265 codec encoding process to select desired subtitles from internal Blu-ray movies, enable Blu-ray forced subtitles or insert external subtitles to Blu-ray movies
– Edit Blu-ray movies by trimming or cutting video length, crop video black edges, add transparent text watermark, apply special rendering effect, deinterlace interlaced video.
