---
title: 'H264 vs H265 for YouTube: Which Codec to use at 1080p, 1440p & 4K'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=HGHZLZdvqPQ'
video_id: 'HGHZLZdvqPQ'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 609
---

# H264 vs H265 for YouTube: Which Codec to use at 1080p, 1440p & 4K

> Source: [H264 vs H265 for YouTube: Which Codec to use at 1080p, 1440p & 4K](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HGHZLZdvqPQ)

## Summary

This video compares H.264 and H.265 codecs for rendering YouTube videos, analyzing render times and visual quality at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. Tests were conducted using DaVinci Resolve with gaming footage, revealing surprising results especially at 1080p.

### Key Points

- **Codec Comparison Overview** [00:00] — H.265 (HEVC) is superior in compression but may not always yield best quality on YouTube due to resolution dependency.
- **Render Time Factors** [00:45] — Render times depend on hardware: H.264 uses CPU fully, H.265 uses GPU. On a 3900X, H.265 gave marginal improvement; on a 7700K, H.265 was 60-70% faster.
- **HEVC Playback Issue** [03:45] — Windows lacks native HEVC playback; use VLC or install HEVC Video Extensions from Microsoft Store ($1) for DaVinci Resolve.
- **Visual Quality Analysis Method** [04:45] — Used VMAF to compare quality after YouTube re-encode. Tested various bitrates and resolutions.
- **4K Results** [05:41] — H.265 always produces higher visual quality at same bitrate. Can reduce bitrate by ~40 Mbps for same quality as H.264.
- **1440p Results** [06:24] — H.265 superior; gap smaller than 4K. 70 Mbps H.264 ≈ 45 Mbps H.265. Recommend high bitrate for best quality.
- **1080p Results** [07:50] — H.265 performed worse than H.264, with inconsistent quality. Likely due to insufficient data for YouTube's re-encode.
- **Recommendation for 1080p** [09:21] — Avoid H.265 at 1080p; use H.264 instead. Better to upscale to 1440p to leverage VP9 codec.

### Conclusion

For 4K and 1440p, use H.265 for better quality and potential faster renders. For 1080p, stick with H.264 or upscale to 1440p.

## Transcript

h.264 or h.265 which codec should you
use for rendering your videos for
YouTube to answer this question in
today's video we are going to look at
the difference in render times and we're
also going to look at the actual visual
quality of the final product on YouTube
when rendered either in h.264 or h.265
now the outcome of this analysis might
actually surprise you quite a bit
because even though h.265 or hevc is
definitely the superior codec that
produces the same visual quality with a
smaller file size this doesn't always
translate into the best possible quality
on YouTube because this highly depends
on the resolution that you're rendering
in now before diving right into results
for today's video I want to mention that
all of the tests I have performed using
DaVinci Resolve the free version as
since version 17 something something
DaVinci Resolve supports rendering using
h.265 moreover the I'm using for these
tests comes from Modern Warfare version
2 so I've used gaming footage at 60fps
however the results that I'm showing in
this video should hopefully also be
applicable for other type of footage
such as Talking Heads GoPro or Drone
footage and with having said that let's
start with our render times now
generally speaking you would expect the
render times to actually decrease when
going from h.264 to h.265 now while this
is generally true for most people it
also sort of depends on the type of
Hardware that you're using to render
your videos you see when you render
using h.264 you will use 100 of your CPU
or rather all of your threads that you
have available to render that video that
also translates into extremely high
temperatures when for instance you have
a 3900k on the other hand if you render
using h.265 then most of this work is
actually done on the GPU and therefore
your CPU isn't really doing too much but
then again if you have a beastly CPU
like the 3900k with 32 threads then
going from that to rendering on your GPU
isn't actually going to provide you with
much of an improvement in render speeds
so for my system you can see the render
times that I'm getting for a sample one
minute clip without any edits or any
overlays or any effects on this graph
right now now for this video I'm going
to be using these three different
resolutions that you see here 1080P
1440p and 2160p or 4K the orange bars on
this Plot show the render times for a
one minute sample clip of each of these
resolutions in h.264 whereas the blue
bars represent the same clip but
rendered at age 265 as you can see in
this very idealized case I actually do
get Improvement in render speeds when
moving from h264 to h.265 however as I
mentioned before this is a very
idealized case as there are no cuts no
overlays no text no effect Supply to the
clips whatsoever and therefore I also
like to talk about what I'm seeing when
actually rendering a proper clip out and
here results are a little bit varied as
you can see rendering this project here
took roughly 30 seconds longer using
h.265 compared to h.264 then again I
should definitely mention at this point
that these results are highly sensitive
to the type of harder that they're using
and more specifically they're going to
be hugely different if you have a CPU
that has much less threads compared to
the 3900k for example when I repeat the
exact same test on my 7700k you can see
that I'm gaining roughly 60 to 70 speed
improvements by going from h.264 to
h.265
by the way natively it's not possible to
play back hevc videos in Windows a
workaround is to Simply use the VLC
Media planner which then allows you to
actually play back your hevc video clips
however if you're using DaVinci Resolve
to edit your videos you are likely still
not going to be able to play back your
videos as you will get this media
offline warning so to fix this go to the
Microsoft store search for the hevc
video extension pay the one dollar that
this costs and install the extension
after which you'll see that the video
will play back just fine in DaVinci
Resolve now if so far you've found any
value whatsoever from this video then I
would highly appreciate it if you guys
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but let's shift gears now and talk about
the actual visual quality of the video
after you've uploaded it to YouTube so
for this I have performed a bunch of
different render tests using h.264 and
h.265 at various different resolutions
and various different bit rates I
uploaded all of these videos onto
YouTube then re-downloaded them and
analyze them using vmaf or video
multi-method assessment Fusion which
kind of combines different quality
metrics into just one number and it's a
very nice and convenient way to compare
the quality of two different video
sources
so on this graph once again the Orange
Line represents rendering using h.264
and the blue line rendering using h.265
you can see the different rendering
bitrates on the horizontal axis and the
corresponding visual quality on the
vertical axis with a higher value
representing a better visual quality
as expected at 4K h.265 always produces
the higher visual quality when compared
to h.264 rendered at the same bit rate
now quite interestingly you can achieve
the exact same visual quality on YouTube
with h.265 when decreasing your bit rate
by 40 megabits per second of course this
relationship isn't completely linear and
I'd have to kind of extend the graph
both to the left and the right to give
you this information for all different
kinds of bit rates but generally
speaking if you're rendering 4K videos
for YouTube you should definitely always
stick to h.265 both for the better
visual quality on YouTube and
potentially lower render times depending
on your system stepping down the
resolution to 1440p we can see pretty
much the same behavior by the way if you
look at these graphs and think that
these could be very handy in order to
figure out the best possible bit rate to
render your YouTube videos at to get the
highest possible visual quality then you
would be just right and that's actually
something that I've covered in one of my
past videos where I talked about the
best bit rates depending on your
resolution you can check it out Linked
In the card right now and I'm actually
also working on updating that video with
actually better data and that is
actually using 4K footage natively in
order to do my tests so returning to
this plant we can see that once again
h.265 is far superior over h.264 at
1440p and will basically always result
in higher visual quality on YouTube now
the gap between these two curves
slightly decreased compared to 4K we can
see that the visual quality of a 70
megabits render at h.264 is roughly
equivalent to a 45 megabit render at
h.265
so roughly speaking you can decrease
your bit rate by 25 megabits and still
have the same visual quality as it had
with the higher bit rate in h.264
however generally speaking I would
always recommend to increase your bit
rate as far as possible in order to be
able to make use of the much better
looking video quality on YouTube when
rendering at an even higher bit rate
finally let's decrease our resolution
once again to 1080P and here results
look
completely different I was actually
getting this graph and was very confused
till h.265 was far far worse than h.264
by a pretty significant margin actually
so I was a bit skeptical and therefore
decided to re-record a one minute
segment in Warzone 2 once again at 1080p
rendered it at different bit rates in
h264 and h265 uploaded it to YouTube
redownloaded everything and analyzed it
and that's what happened so once again
definitely not what I would have
expected so I re-rendered the h.265 once
again the exact same clip uploaded again
and then it looked like this
so essentially what I'm thinking happens
is that the much more compressed h.265
video Simply doesn't contain enough
information to provide a good h.264
re-encode on YouTube also this isn't
just a random outcome of the vmaf
computation as when I visually compare
the h.264 render to the h.265 render
after downloading the clips from YouTube
you can see that the h.264 is actually
vastly Superior in terms of visual
Clarity compared to the h.265 render now
frankly I find it a bit concerning that
at 1080p it seems to be a little bit
random as to whether you're getting good
or bad quality on YouTube when you
upload your h.265 videos in 1080P so if
having said all of this my conclusion
would be that if you have to render your
videos in 1080P then I would actually
not recommend to use h.265 and use h.264
instead however instead of actually
uploading 1080 footage you should really
consider to upscale your footage to
1440p and render it in that resolution
in order to make sure that you can
actually make use of the vp9 codec on
YouTube now I'll make sure to include
the visual quality that you can expect
when upscaling a 1080p clip to 1440p or
even 4K in this video where I'll talk
about the best possible bitrate to use
when rendering videos for YouTube in
different resolutions so I hope you got
value from this video thank you so much
for watching have a wonderful day and
I'll see you guys in the next video