H264 or H265

Which is the best format to upload H264 or H265 or should I upload the same footage in both ?
Thanks

@ DJGreg If you upload 4K footage P5 makes an HD copy for download in H264.

Hi Jason, thanks for your reply, I’m new to this stock footage, so it sounds like I should upload my 4K footage in H265 and a HD copy will be made in H264. Its only that I’ve read that H265 is not as common and I was thinking it may not be picked up !!

What are the disadvantages of H.265?

In my observation of h265, larger macroblocks lead to jittering/fuzzy details in complex scenes, as seen in clips I was horrified to find this in from the Hero7, Mavic 2 Pro, and Phantom 4 Pro. Changed to use h264 and the problems went away in the same scenes/scenarios.

Have not tried to encode to it.

A "real pro" would not upload either of these codecs, but I am doing it of late as my internet is too slow to support ProresHQ 4K. Someday perhaps I will update all my h264 files with their ProresHQ masters. Not sure if this affects sales or not. I'm sure some buyers may strongly prefer a true intermediate codec, and all else being equal, would choose the ProRes clip over the h264/h265 clip. But things are seldom equal like that, say, two clips of ducks on a pond, same pond, same camera, same light, same shooting style, same action, same price.

That said, I still see reports of people having trouble with slower computers and h265. By "slower" I mean "not screaming fast with powerful GPU". So in general, h264 would win out over h265 in that regard.

Looks like H264 is the option to go for out of the two. Is ProRes only available as a monthly payment or can you get a one off option ?

ProRes is now part of Premiere Pro CC if that is what you are asking. For many if your camera captures original in 100 bit rate then h264 is fine. No need to artificially increase bit rate by using ProRes HQ. If your camera captures in 500 bit rate or higher then ProRes makes more sense in preserving more data instead of reducing it down to 100. Does not make sense if your camera captures in h264 like many do to do anything other than that for final output.

Actually, Rekindle, that's a misleading oversimplification. It's not about "increasing bit rate". It's that if your camera captures in h264 (or whatever) and IF you do anything at all to the video in the editing process, unless you upload either straight from the camera, or do a 1:1 no-resample output using Streamclip or other program that can process your edits (and strip the audio) without re-compressing ("rendering") your video, you are actually reducing the actual bit rate through a sad reality called "compression" and by introducing generation loss with a codec that was never designed for delivery to an editor.

If you do any colour work, or even if not, but you do, at any time, "render" the video, you "should" render to an intermediate codec, say, like Prores.

Many do not, and they are just fine for small time stock. The suit in the boardroom doing corporate vids or a no-budget youtube video editor really doesn't know or care, and in fact, will prefer the smaller download. These may make up most of your buyers anyway. But you should at least understand why some people would prefer Prores (or similar) as an option.

Try it. Take a clip out of camera, render it again to h264. Then import it into your timeline with some other clips (or even by itself) do a little colour work and render it out. Look at the difference between the clip you started with and the clip you ended up with. MAtch them frame to frame if you can. Can you see it? Zoom in on it a little. Can you see it now?

OK, now do the same thing but instead of rendering to h264 from your camera source clip, render it out as ProresHQ. Stick THAT in your timeline again and render it out as your final. Compare those clips now. Did you, by any chance, actually notice that you had a bit more leeway "latitude" when you were messing with colours and contrast, etc. with the Prores clip? Notice how your computer played it back easier? Does it look any different than the previous experiment? Notice that perhaps the colours are a bit less vibrant with the h264?

I have done these experiments ad nauseum, and it does really make a huge difference.

Love to see people who do experiment deep till finding the truth. Will try the ProresHQ thing. Never did it before but, one question: How do I know the bitrate my camera is recording at? It is Sony A7RII by the way. Can I control the bitrate on the camera´s menu?

Thanks!

Bitrate of each mode will be different. Bit rate is important, but also overblown hyped. It also changes depending on what you shoot. A max bit rate limit (as well as colour depth) will show up as blotchy ugly or generally unpleasant blur, noise, banding, etc.) various things that make it look digital or ugly. Then you get bummed and go buy a bigger better camera. : ) And no, I'm not saying you need to now, (we have one of those here and it shoots lovely images and video, but yes, the compressed lower bitrate causes issues sometimes) but when you start seeing those artifacts and things you start wondering why they happen, and while it's not necessarily the camera, it is often what you shoot and how you shoot it. Really is a rabbit hole. Lower bit rate and compression issues show up in delicate gradients and lots of detail, generally combined with loss of motion. It is especially this stuff you really should not recompress as HEVC (h264/365) unless it is to deliver as a finished product (and even then)

Import the file into your editor or a player, and generally there is an info pane somewhere depending on your software that will report actual bit rate of video, audio, and summed.

Overall, don't worry too overmuch about it, but be conscious of it. It has been proven time and time again that it is first content (what you shoot) and then technique/framing, etc. (how you shoot) and finally gear/processing/codec (what you shoot it on and how you render it) as far as importance with regard to sales.