I recently started building a movie/show collection again on my home NAS.
I know that generally H.265 files can be 25-50% less bitrate than H.264 and be the same or better quality. But what’s the golden zone for both types? 10 Mbps for a 1080p H.264 movie? And would it be like 5 Mbps for H.265 1080p to be on par with H.264? What about 4K?
For file size: would it be 25GB for a 2 hour 1080p movie to be near or at original Blu-Ray/digital quality?
People really get confused when they see 50% reduction and exactly the same as X and think they’ll just crank down the bitrate and be good. As others have said you really should try a few options although instead of bitrate you could try using crf values and find what works on your setup.
Also while screenshots can help, it really is something you should look at in motion. Sometimes you can think ‘this looks horrible’ but in motion it’s fine and you never see it. But it also works the other way too.
There’s a science and an art to getting good encodes. Hell even the encoders update and update little things behind the scenes that can effect the outcome as well.