I will now keep two copies of each video, a single 480p x264 for streaming to my tablet, and a 1080p or higher copy in x265 for my desktops. It did take a lot longer to convert than I'm used to but maybe now I can reclaim some space on my BTRFS RAID 10 NFS. Reducing this to 25%-50% means that not only will these files be able to fit more easily onto your mobile devices, but they will be able to stream there a lot more quickly and cheaply, although we will probably just increase resolutions instead. As it stands, 1 out of every 3 bits flowing on the internet is video, mostly in the form of Netflix and Porn. This could already be having a massive effect on internet based video.

H265 can produce amazingly small filesizes with a little reduction in quality, or halve the filesize with no detectable change in quality. installffmpegubuntu.sh This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. Sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-libde265 -y

Sudo apt-add-repository ppa:strukturag/libde265 -y To install avconv you need to install the libav-tools package: sudo apt-get install libav-tools avconv is very similar to ffmpeg, but they also have some differences in syntax. We will need to run these commands to be able to play any h265 videos. Unfortunately, the default VLC for Ubuntu 14.04 (2.1.5 Rincewind), does not appear to have h265 support. One can specify settings to override the defaults for improving speed/compression/quality, but that is beyond the scope of this post.

Ubuntu 14.04 install ffmpeg