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Using Girls’ Generation’s “I Got A Boy”, I wanted to test the new h.265 compression vs. good old AVC, but in relatively low bitrates. I used Hybrid to encode both HEVC and AVC at 4000kbps in one-pass, resulting in a filesize of about 150 MB. If I had done 2-pass I could’ve probably squeezed a bit more image quality out of the encodes. I made some screenshots with VLC – pardon the not-so-accurate screencaps.
Let’s take a look at 2 shots in a bit more detail. First up is Im YoonA near the beginning of the clip. Click on the images for full screen.
![snsd-igab-test-master-full]()
Master
![snsd-igab-test-hevc-full]()
HEVC@4000kbps
![snsd-igab-test-avc-full]()
AVC@4000kbps
![snsd-igab-test-composite-01]()
Detail comparison
When we take a look at this shot, we can see that obviously the 3GB Master file provides impeccable, beyond-Bluray detail.
The HEVC, at the reasonably low 4000kbps bitrate (this is YouTube 1080p territory) retains a good amount of detail. Ultimate grain and detail is lost, but note that the details in hair and eyebrows are relatively well retained. The jawline and neckline are a bit more blurry, but still well defined.
The AVC@4000kbps suffers a lot more. Because it doesn’t use the newer Coding Tree Unit as a basis but good old macroblocks – we can see them quite clearly here. The hair is completely blurred out, there is artifacting on the eyelid and her eyebrow is a blurry brown blotch. Highlights (the reflection in her eye) are somewhat retained but the rest is severely compressed.
Second scene features my bias <3 Tiffany ^_^
![snsd-igab-test-master-full-02]()
Master
![snsd-igab-test-hevc-full-02]()
HEVC@4000kbps
![snsd-igab-test-avc-full-02]()
AVC@4000kbps
Looking at the overall image both HEVC and AVC hold up very well. This is a scene with less movement than the first and with a lot of juicy, sharp, contrasty highlights (her eyes, eyelashes, hair…sigh she is perfect ^_^). But if we go into detail we’ll see that AVC is the clear lesser performer.
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Detail comparison – 1
Here the difference is subtler – this is the static part of the scene with a lot of detail and highlights. The hair, eye and eyelash are all preserved quite well in both HEVC and AVC. Looking closer does reveal some differences though. The finest detail (glittery details around her eyes, skin detail) is a bit lost in the HEVC, but the loss is not as bad as in the AVC version. Furthermore, her hair is blotched more in the AVC version, and her eyebrow loses all detail.
![snsd-igab-test-composite-03]()
Detail comparison – 2
In this part the differences are profound, especially for AVC. The HEVC file essentially retains almost all detail. Only the out-of-focus hair in the back is a bit blotched – but the jawline, detail in lips and teeth, and the moving hand of the gentleman are all still very sharp. The AVC file however is full of macroblocks, loss of detail and artifacting.
Final thoughts and conclusion
I encoded using my i7/GT640 (Vaio S13P) laptop and encoding HEVC took a very, very, very long time. Maybe I didn’t set it up right, but it encoded at 0.5 fps. It took about 4 hours to make this 5 minute clip. Playback on mobile devices is impossible, and even my older laptop (Core2Duo/GT230) couldn’t properly play the video. Encoders and decoders will continue to evolve however – and the profound image quality increase at lower bitrates qualifies switching to h.265. Without scrutinizing the videos frame-by-frame, a 200mb HEVC from a good source looks like a 500mb GOM/Melon AVC. So this seems to confirm what’s been said about HEVC: it provides the same image quality for half the filesize – at the cost of heavier computational demands.
Full videos available in the following 2 links!
SNSD – I Got A Boy – X265/HEVC – 4000kbps
SNSD – I Got A Boy – X264/AVC – 4000kbps
![SNSD - Gee 1ST Tour.m2ts_thumbs_[2014.01.24_17.23.43]](http://4sashi.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SNSD-Gee-1ST-Tour.m2ts_thumbs_2014.01.24_17.23.43.jpg)
