HEVC-X265 Video, Handbrake and Plex - Help Needed.

[Formaleins]

OK, hopefully someone on here might be able to help me out with this one. I have some video that has been packaged in the HEVC x 265 Format, there is a few Gig's in total. I can view the video no problem using Win 10 (I have their HEVC CODEC) or watch it in VLC. The problem I have is when I want to run it on my TV, using PLEX. None of this format of video even shows up in the PLEX App. Menu on the TV, it seems PLEX is not capable of running this format just yet (TV Is running the PLEX app. and using my main PC as the PLEX Media Encoder)

 

In an attempt to get the video available to watch on the TV I fired up Handbrake and used my usual high speed 1080 x264 to try and encode it so it will work on PLEX. I managed to get it to work fine as far as audio video goes, and it runs on the PLEX Media server fine. The problem I have is the encoding -

 

Normally when I use this preset, x264 with nothing else added other than a 10dB Audio Gain boost, it will take the original video file, usually MKV x 264 or even AVI or MP4 and re encode it around 1000FPS, so it takes very little time to stick a load of movies in a queue and run them through mainly for an audio boost for plex.

 

When running this HEVC, x265 which I believe is in in 10BIT Video format, then it is a different matter. Handbrake takes over the PC to the point where it is almost unusable during the recode, and the Handbrake Frame rate can be anything from 60FPS all the way down to 10FPS (original I believe is 30FPS)

 

So as you can see converting a few gigs of movies takes ages and hogs the PC. So what I am hoping is that someone knows a smart way to simply get this HEVC format into something reasonable that will run on PLEX, it does not need to be fantastic quality, it just needs to be reasonable, but if possible, to be recoded with a boost to the audio (as PLEX is garbage with audio, way too quiet)

 

I have looked online and read loads of junk, most of which describes the opposite of what I need, i.e. there are hundreds of tutorials on creating HEVC, but not a lot on downconverting to another format.

 

Any pointers in the right direction would be appreciated, thanks.

[Daffy D]

I download lots of movies and TV programs that I then put on Thumb drive to watch on the TV.

 

Some of the movies that play on VLC Player won't play on the TV "File type not Recognized" these I convert with the free Vid Coder program:- http://vidcoder.net/

 

I just leave most of the settings as default and that works just fine for me. The only settings I sometimes change if the video is big reduce the target size.

 

[Formaleins]

5 minutes ago, Daffy D said:

I download lots of movies and TV programs that I then put on Thumb drive to watch on the TV.

 

Some of the movies that play on VLC Player won't play on the TV "File type not Recognized" these I convert with the free Vid Coder program:- http://vidcoder.net/

 

I just leave most of the settings as default and that works just fine for me. The only settings I sometimes change if the video is big reduce the target size.

 

Cheers,

I have used a lot of encoders with varying success over the years and have found Handbrake and TMPEG to the best for what I need. The problem I have is the type of encoding that is the quickest / easiest that uses the least resources to convert HEVC x 265. All of the other formats are straight forward and my current software handles it no problem.

HEVC is quite new and not all decoders and encoders are capable of handling it just yet, plus, most people seem to be looking at encoding into HEVC rather than what I want, which is to re encode into a different format.

I have never used HEVC or 10 BIT video before so it is a learning curve for me.

[Daffy D]

I'm sure you now exactly what you want, but just as an example just the other day I converted this movie:- 

Soldier Blue 1970 10bit hevc-d3g

Soldier Blue 1970 BluRay 10Bit 1080p DD5.1 H265-d3g

That was 2.45Gb with 4 language subs to 703Mb with just English subs.

 

I didn't take notice of how long the conversion took but you have to remember that a two hour movie will take some time. I just minimized the VidCoder window and got on with other stuff on the computer.

 

[Formaleins]

8 hours ago, Daffy D said:

I'm sure you now exactly what you want, but just as an example just the other day I converted this movie:- 

Soldier Blue 1970 10bit hevc-d3g

Soldier Blue 1970 BluRay 10Bit 1080p DD5.1 H265-d3g

That was 2.45Gb with 4 language subs to 703Mb with just English subs.

 

I didn't take notice of how long the conversion took but you have to remember that a two hour movie will take some time. I just minimized the VidCoder window and got on with other stuff on the computer.

 

That is interesting (So was that movie by the way - I will have to go dig that out again - I was just watching Ryan's daughter from the same era)

What I have since found out about the HEVC format is that you can actually stream it directly to the Smart TV using Windows Media Player as the media server. I found this surprising given that the HEVC titles will not even show up as video format in Plex.

I always simply assumed that Plex was the most up to date player and that Media Player was actually an almost obsolete piece of software.

 

That software you are using actually looks very similar to Handbrake, with just some modifications on the skins, I will probably take a look at that later today, if it is able to boost audio levels (which a lot of encoders cannot do) I will give it a go - thanks for passing on the info.

 

I am going to keep on messing around to see if I can get the encoders to do what I want them to do, but given that Media Player streams exactly what I want, at least I have a way to watch the movies without any hassle.

I did download another Media Player that is supposed to be ideal for my TV - It is Smartshare by LG, what a crock of junk! It is incapable of even loading up a video library directory correctly. Must be one of the absolutely best examples of how not to write a piece of software, absolute rubbish.

[Daffy D]

2 hours ago, Formaleins said:

if it is able to boost audio levels (which a lot of encoders cannot do) I will give it a go

Yes it can - Look under the Audio Encoding tab.

 

2 hours ago, Formaleins said:

That software you are using actually looks very similar to Handbrake, with just some modifications on the skins,

Yep! somewhere in the blurb it mentions that the program is in fact based on Handbrake.

I found Handbrake to complicated for just converting a video - too many options 

[SpaceKadet]

I use StaxRip for all my encodes. It really is just a front end GUI and some smart scripts to the latest console based audio and video encoder libraries.

Although I use mostly HEVC (H.265) encodes, I recently had a need to encode back to AVC (H.264). I have used Handbrake in the past, but find it difficult to control the encode.

 

StaxRip comes with NVenc library that will use the Nvidia hardware encoder. I just did a test. The Avatar encode from HEVC to AVC using GTX1080Ti took just over 14 minutes at 250fps producing a file of 7.2GB, slightly smaller than the original AVC of over 10GB. Software encode would take over 4 hours at 14fps.

In the test, I just encoded Video, and copied the audio from the original.

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by SpaceKadet
Deleted extra pic.