H.265 HEVC support in High Sierra

Handbrake tags h.265 files as 'hev1', while High Sierra recognizes only 'hvc1'.

If you have ffmpeg installed, you can copy and retag your h.265 files without re-encoding them:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec copy -acodec copy -tag:v hvc1 output.mp4

The latest nightly build of handbrake is said to have fixed this compatibility issue.

Here is some info…

https://www.macrumors.com/guide/hevc-video-macos-high-sierra-ios-11/

One of the commenters said you need at least a Kaby Lake processor for hardware HEVC support. I don't know if that's the case or not.

The Kaby Lake requirement is for hardware encoding; Anything running 10.13 can play back HEVC... as long as it's in a quicktime container (.mov) and not an MPEG-LA container (.mp4).

Quicktime can't even recognize HEVC content created by x265, because x265 exports to an MPEG-4 container, and for some reason Quicktime doesn't like that. Seems like Apple only half-implemented HEVC; they support the codec, but only when it's in their own containers.

I still haven't figured out if you can take an MPEG-4 container and swap it out for Quicktime and make it work; using Video Container Switcher, it's still incompatible with Finder, QuickLook and Quicktime Player.

I am running a MBP Retina mid 2014.

Playback of H265 works fine IF

1. the tag is "hvc1" (as explained already), and

2a. the MOV container contains mp3 audio; or

2b. you use the MP4 container with aac audio.

So , this is how I convert movies to H265 using ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i "input" -map 0 -c:s copy -map_metadata 0 -c:a aac -b:a 128k -f mp4 -codec:v hevc -tag:v hvc1 -preset faster -crf 24 "output.mp4"

Movies created with that play fine in Quicktime and Quickview.

Otherwise , you can always use VLC, which is more tolerant towards different containers, and codecs, and tags.

I really don't know much about HEVC. I'm sure others will reply who may.