I will now keep two copies of each video, a single 480p x264 for streaming to my tablet, and a 1080p or higher copy in x265 for my desktops. It did take a lot longer to convert than I'm used to but maybe now I can reclaim some space on my BTRFS RAID 10 NFS. Conversely, given a fixed bitrate, HEVC will almost always give more quality than an AVC version would.
Reducing this to 25%-50% means that not only will these files be able to fit more easily onto your mobile devices, but they will be able to stream there a lot more quickly and cheaply, although we will probably just increase resolutions instead. As it stands, 1 out of every 3 bits flowing on the internet is video, mostly in the form of Netflix and Porn.
You can also download a static build, all of which bundle libx265. The Compilation Guides show you how to do that. This could already be having a massive effect on internet based video. ffmpeg needs to be built with the -enable-gpl-enable-libx265 configuration flags and requires x265 to be installed on your system. H265 can produce amazingly small filesizes with a little reduction in quality, or halve the filesize with no detectable change in quality. Sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-libde265 -y In FFmpeg you can pass the parameter like this: ffmpeg -i INPUT.mkv -c:v libx265 -preset ultrafast -x265-params lossless1 OUTPUT. Sudo apt-add-repository ppa:strukturag/libde265 -y We will need to run these commands to be able to play any h265 videos. The following command reads file input.mp4 and transcodes it to two different H.264 videos at various output resolutions and bit rates. Unfortunately, the default VLC for Ubuntu 14.04 (2.1.5 Rincewind), does not appear to have h265 support. One can specify settings to override the defaults for improving speed/compression/quality, but that is beyond the scope of this post.