H.264H or H.265 - Which is preferred?

[Rob and Bill]

I received the Camect around May 22.  It easily discovered the  6 - Amcrest IP8M-T2499E IP POE Cameras.  I first set up the six cameras and experimented running 3 at 3840x2160 - 8K bit rate and 3 at 1920 x1080 - I think ~2K.  All 15 FPS.  That worked fairly well. 

Subsequently I added the Amcrest AD110 doorbell camera running, I think, at 1920x1080 - I can't tell the bit rate for sure since I only have the RTSP string that grabs the stream.

Now, I changed the six cameras to 3840x2160 - 4K bit rate.  They output at H.264H.  The doorbell stayed the same.  This seems to work very well with very high quality clips.

My question:  In the camera setup for the T2499E's there is an option to select an output stream at H.265 - is it worthwhile to try that - or should I leave it as is at H.264H?  [Quick update - just tried this on one camera and the app couldn't connect to the camera - reset it back to 264 and all is well]

FYI:  I'm experimenting with how to use the app, camera settings for smart IR, etc.  I really like this system - it gives me exactly what I'm looking for.  Still need to set up notifications after I get more familiar with all the settings - and which alerts I really want to be notified about.

[CamectArup]

On most cameras, the "safest" settings are the ones that the camera ships with, because that's what the vast majority of their users are using -- when you change defaults the chance of running into camera bugs increases. 

H.265 is supposed to work, and it does for at least some cameras. We've tried it on a number of Hikvision models, but I'm not sure if we've ever tried it on Amcrest/Dahua. In general, we would not recommend it because using H.265 guarantees that your device will have to transcode the video when you're viewing at full resolution, resulting in a poor viewing experience. 

[Eric Meeson]

I have used H.264H with terrible results, Camect dropped to recording that camera at around 2 FPS. H.264 and H.265 appear to work normally.

I run Dahua/Amcrest and I have most of my cameras set to H.265 and it seems to work perfectly, the retention time is amazing. Playback quality isn't quite as consistent though, as Arup mentioned it has to transcode because browsers never bothered to implement H.265 unfortunately. It's too bad, the protocol is excellent for reducing file size.

[Rob and Bill]

Thanks for the info.

I'm going to try H.265 again - I think I made a mistake the first time i did it.  I had been running at 3840x2160 or 8K MP's - changed it to 2688x1520 (at Arups's recommendation) or 4K MP's - all runs very well with excellent video - still with 264.H.  

Since I use iOS and OS X - H.265 should be native since they use HVEC in videos and photos.

BTW - I did apply the FW update from March 2020 - it went well for all cameras.  And now I can get to the camera interface with video under Safari - my preferred browser.  Before I had to use Chrome with the Amcrest Viewer App.