@lord_rel, I think AV1 is worth mentioning… it’s an exciting codec on the horizon. There were plenty of speakers talking about it at the latest 2018 Developers Days VLC Conference.
I’ve heard YouTube even accepts AV1, but the encoding hasn’t gotten to the point where it’s practical on regular computers for real work yet.
I’ve done about 10 video uploads encoded in x265 now and haven’t had anymore problems. The most extreme video encode, quality wise, was a 15 min video with lots of cuts & scenes.
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx265 -preset medium -tune grain -crf 18 -pix_fmt yuv422p -c:a pcm_s16le -movflags faststart A:\RENDERS_BIN\output.mov
This video was encoded at -preset medium, -CRF 18 with the -tune grain profile. The encode was about 20% slower with grain, but I’ve read this is really the best setting for high quality encoding if you don’t care about the file size. YouTube had no problem processing this beefy 7.8 GB video file… it was up to 1080p in 30 mins!
Over on the Doom9 x265 encoding thread many say -tune grain should be re-named to -tune quality or high quality.
These settings will be my new gold standard for awesome 4k videos… especially footage with lots of image detail.
These are my refined command line rendering presets after lots of research. These were created for the best quality YouTube uploads within the limits of my cable internet upload speed and Ryzen 1700X.
Improved Grain
The improved grain is good for footage with lots of detail in the background… this has a higher bit rate and slightly slower encoding time. I got these settings from Boulder on the Doom9 Forum.
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx265 -preset medium -tune grain -crf 18 -pix_fmt yuv422p -x265-params limit-tu=3:rskip=1:tu-inter-depth=4:tu-intra-depth=4:max-merge=4:refine-intra=4:dynamic-refine -c:a pcm_s16le -movflags faststart A:\RENDERS_BIN\output.mov
General x265
This uses CRF 18 and incorporates the new dynamic refine HEVC feature.
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx265 -preset medium -crf 18 -pix_fmt yuv422p -x265-params refine-intra=4:dynamic-refine -c:a pcm_s16le -movflags faststart A:\RENDERS_BIN\output.mov
Preview Renders
This is for quick renders internally. For example, I upload 1080p previews for the boss to review .
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx265 -preset fast -crf 23 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a pcm_s16le -movflags faststart A:\RENDERS_BIN\output.mov
These are using windows with a recently nightly FFmpeg build. Also, the 422 pix format is usual. For me it has to do with my uncompressed output from Davinci Resolve. 420 pix format will make more sense for most people.