Saint Exupery X264 [upd] -

The x264 encoder lives by this mantra. When you transcode a video, you are deleting data. You are looking at a frame of a sunset over the Sahara (or a bustling street in 1940s Paris) and asking the algorithm: What pixels can we remove without the viewer noticing the loss of the soul?

x265 (HEVC) is powerful, but it is complicated. It requires patents, licensing headaches, and high-end CPUs. Saint-Exupéry would have distrusted the bloat. He flew rickety mail planes across the Andes. He valued rugged reliability . saint exupery x264

It sacrifices the superfluous pixels for the essential experience. You might ask: If we are removing the non-essential, why not use the newer, more efficient x265 (HEVC)? The x264 encoder lives by this mantra

High-bitrate video is visible. It is the sharp edge of a cliff, the glitter of a star. But the meaning of the video—the emotional weight of the Prince’s golden hair, the loneliness of the aviator—does not require a 400 Mbps ProRes stream. x265 (HEVC) is powerful, but it is complicated