h.265 for internet viewing?

[Rag and Bone]

Ignoring the long encoding times for the producer, does H.265 offer any advantages for the viewer when watching videos over a service like Vimeo?

[Averdahl]

I would say no to that question.

I have bought Blu-ray movies that are encoded as MPEG2 while the vast majority of them are encoded as MPEG4 and for me, the viewer, it does not matter since both variants looks fabulous and none of the formats give me any advantages, or disadvantages.

[Rag and Bone]

Thanks for that.

[Stan Jones]

I agree with Averdahl, although part of the issue is whether Vimeo is going to convert your video anyway. They certainly do to provide various playback options.Will they leave your preferred target alone if it meets the criteria?

See their discussion of compression guidelines. They support both H.264 and H.265.

https://vimeo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360056550451-Video-and-audio-compression-guidelines

I see that PR export has presets under H.264 for various services, including Vimeo. There are none for H.265. Not an answer to your question...

Stan

[Rag and Bone]

I believe they do leave the video as uploaded. One advantage is that H.265 is smaller, so it would help conserve my quota.

[Stan Jones]

That is a good point!

[Media Editor]

I use wetransfer.com to send my files.  You can send up to 2 gigabytes for free.  We Transfer does not reincode the videos.  For every transfer you send, you can choose up to 3 recipients to receive your transfer and you will receive an upload confirmation email informing you that these transfers have reached their recipient. Also, when they download your files, you will receive a notification by email about this. 

[Rag and Bone]

Thanks Michael:

My use of Vimeo is to allow viewers to watch the content on Vimeo, rather than download it.

I guess I was wondering if the smaller file size of H.265 would help with limited bandwidth on the viewers end.

[Averdahl · Accepted solution]

I guess I was wondering if the smaller file size of H.265 would help with limited bandwidth on the viewers end.

By @Rag and Bone

Contact Vimeo customer support for that, but all media uploaded to YouTube etc are re-encoded to a format of their choice so all viewers has the same user experience that are independent of the format/size of the uploaded file. I am sure that Vimeo does the same thing.

For example, you can upload Apple ProRes but that do not mean that the very file you uploaded are streamed out to each viewer. Apple ProRes files are large. It will thus be re-encoded to a codec of their choice. 

How to best conserve your quota i urge you to contact their customer support that will give you precise answers.

[Rag and Bone]

Yes, I think you're right...Vimeo is the place to ask.

[Rag and Bone]

Just to follow up:

Vimeo support got back to me. They support H.265 for uploading, but, with some exceptions, they re-encode to H.264 for delivery. So, no end-user advantage.

[Averdahl]

Thanks for the follow up! 🙂