H.265 has become the new kid on the block, offering better efficiency and compression than ever before. Unfortunately, those who struggle with video playback on older devices may find themselves frustrated. The good news is there’s a solution to converting back to H.264 or older.

Handbrake

Handbrake allows us to convert videos into many different formats available today. This is useful for anything ranging from compressing video to a very manageable size and send to somebody or improving video playback compatibility. Handbrake has become the industry standard in post-video production and it’s free to use.

Installation and Usage

You can download the installation files for Handbrake here. You can also download a portable version without having to install the program.

Upon opening Handbrake, you are prompted to open an existing video file. If you don’t have one already, you can get one off of https://h265.webmfiles.org/ for testing purposes.

You are now taken to the summary part of the video. As you can see, the default preset at the top should be set to a H.264 one, if not feel free to tinker with different ones. The default format is MP4, but you can change it as you see fit.

Click on the Video tab. This is where you can determine the quality of the video and the codec used which is H.264 (x264) by default. In this case, the quality will affect the size of the video. We only want the video to be in H.264, so we can just leave everything as is. Just in case though, I recommend that you change the Framerate (FPS) option to Same as source in the dropdown menu.

When you’re ready, at the top click Start Encode to begin encoding the video. The time it takes to fully encode depends on the settings used, video size, and your computer’s CPU or GPU being used. Your video will be saved at the file path shown at the bottom where it says Save As.

When you are done, go ahead and try it on your favorite video player. If all goes well, the video should be working on your device so long as it supports H.264 encoding.