HEVC (H.265)
The successor to H.264: the same picture at up to half the bitrate. Your iPhone records it by default, but only some browsers play it.
HEVC, or H.265, is a 2013 video codec that needs up to half the bitrate of H.264 for the same quality. It is the recording format of the iPhone and 4K Blu-ray, but browser support is partial, so web video is delivered in H.264 or AV1 instead.
What is HEVC?
HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) is a video compression standard published in 2013 by the ITU and the ISO/IEC MPEG group. The ITU calls it H.265; MPEG calls it MPEG-H Part 2. It was built as the successor to H.264CodecThe algorithm that compresses and decompresses video — H.264, H.265 (HEVC) and AV1 are the most common in modern streaming.Open definition → with one goal: keep the picture while sending much less data.
It gets there with larger, more flexible coding blocks and better prediction between frames. The price is heavier encoding and decoding than H.264.
Where you meet HEVC
Even if you never choose it, you probably work with HEVC files. iPhones have recorded in HEVC by default since iOS 11, under the camera's “High Efficiency” setting. 4K Blu-ray, many cameras and drones, and parts of digital TV use it too. That is why a phone video can play fine on the computer that made it and fail in a student's or a customer's browser.
HEVC vs H.264 vs AV1
| H.264 (AVC) | HEVC (H.265) | AV1 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2003 | 2013 | 2018 |
| Bitrate for the same quality | Baseline | Up to half | Similar to HEVC or lower |
| Licensing | Patent licensing | Several patent pools | Royalty-free |
| Browsers | All | Safari; Chrome and Edge with hardware support; Firefox limited | Chrome, Edge, Firefox; Safari with hardware support |
| Where it dominates | Web and streaming | iPhone, 4K Blu-ray, cameras, TV | Large-scale web streaming |
Savings depend on the content and encoder settings, and grow at 4K4K (2160p)Ultra HD at 3840×2160 — four times the pixels of Full HD, and the point where codec choice starts paying for itself.Open definition → and with detailed images.
Why HEVC did not win the web
H.264 is licensed through one patent pool with known terms. HEVC ended up split across several pools and independent holders, with fees that add up. That legal risk held the browser makers back: Google, Mozilla and Microsoft backed a royalty-free codec instead and co-founded the Alliance for Open Media, which produced AV1. So HEVC is common for recording and storing video, and rare for delivering it on the web.
When to use HEVC
Up to half the size of H.264 at the same quality — useful on phones, cameras and for master files.
Safari, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV decode it in hardware.
If the video plays in all kinds of browsers, deliver H.264 or AV1. A video platform handles that with transcodingTranscodingRe-encoding a source video into multiple resolutions and bitrates so a player can switch between quality levels on the fly.Open definition →.
Further reading
- ITU-T H.265 — the official recommendation.
- Codec — what a codec is and how it differs from a container.
