How do I Transcode to H.265?

[TheDreadPirate]

Depends on the encoder. Intel's QSV does shockingly good low bit rate H264. Even on my old Skylake based J4205 (HD 505 graphics). In their 13th Gen CPUs and Intel ARC GPUs, QSV is pretty much untouchable. Newer NVENCs are getting really good too in 3000+ series cards. AMD's VCN in the RX7000 series has significantly shrunken the gap, but still lags.

You also have to consider that while your CPU might be able to transcode one AV1 stream, if you have multiple devices transcoding you're probably going to have issues. In addition to anything else you might be running in the background.

Stick with accelerated transcoding. The quality difference between good H264 transcoding and H265, or even, AV1 is really not that big.