Halving a Video Library with H.265: Archive Practice
The drive is full again. A decade of footage you will rarely touch again is the perfect HEVC target - if you convert the right files with the right settings.
What converts well and what must not
Good targets: finished edits, family footage you only rewatch, recorded lectures and streams. Their job is storage and playback, which is exactly where HEVC savings land.
Keep your hands off camera originals and anything still headed for the edit bay. Re-encoding is a lossy copy, and burning one into footage you will process again is pure quality debt. The rule: raw sources stay untouched, finished pieces enter the archive flow.
Settings that make sense
CRF logic carries over: lower is better quality and larger files. Start at 26 for general archiving, use 24 for anything quality-sensitive, and 28 is fine for utility footage like screen recordings. Note that HEVC CRF values do not map one-to-one to H.264 - a 26 HEVC encode typically looks better than a 26 H.264 one.
Choose medium speed: slower than veryfast, better per byte. Archiving is a one-time cost, so paying compute for long-term savings is the right trade. Keep resolution unchanged - downscaling is irreversible and defeats the point of an archive.
The compatibility reality
HEVC playback support trails H.264: old TVs, boxes, and some computers need decoder help. A practical pattern is HEVC for storage plus on-demand H.264 copies for devices that cannot play it - or a two-tier shelf with HEVC masters and H.264 copies for frequently watched titles.
One phone note: shooting in High Efficiency mode already records HEVC - that is why iPhone footage saves so much space and why it will not open on older machines. Same coin, two sides. Decide where these files will be watched before you commit the archive.