Now go forth and reclaim your terabytes—one intelligently shrunk frame at a time.
If you are achieving smaller than that without denoising, your eyes are missing artifacts. Shrinking x265 is a legitimate skill—one that preserves your hard drive space and bandwidth. But it demands respect. The difference between a "transparent" encode (looks identical to source) and a "trash" encode (blocky, waxy, banded) is just a few CRF points or a single misconfigured psy-rd flag. shrinking x265
Whether you are trying to fit a 60GB 4K remux onto a 32GB USB drive, or you want to store an entire TV series on a tablet for a flight, the goal is the same: further. However, squeezing an already efficient codec is a tightrope walk. Push too hard, and you introduce "banding," "blocking," or the dreaded "smearing" in dark scenes. Now go forth and reclaim your terabytes—one intelligently
Stick to software (CPU) x265 if file size is your priority. After analyzing hundreds of encodes on forums like Doom9 and Reddit/r/x265, here are realistic expectations: But it demands respect