H.265 (also called HEVC) compresses video approximately twice as efficiently as the older H.264 standard at the same image quality. H.265+ goes further by analysing each scene and only encoding the parts of the frame that changed between frames – on a static scene, this can cut bandwidth by 70% compared to H.264.
For surveillance deployments, this means 4K cameras can run on network infrastructure originally sized for 1080p, and storage costs for the same number of cameras drop significantly.
- H.265 / HEVC – the open standard, ~50% better compression than H.264
- H.265+ / Smart Codec – manufacturer-enhanced version, further 50-70% reduction in static scenes
- Bitrate range – adjustable from 16 Kbps (low detail) to 16 Mbps (high detail)
- CBR / VBR – constant or variable bitrate, VBR uses less storage on quiet scenes
- Compatibility – requires NVR or VMS that supports H.265 decoding; not all older systems do