# x264

11 Hacker News commenters recommended x264 and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free H.264 video encoder that people praise for better quality at the same bitrate and efficient compression. Its most common caveat is heavy CPU use, which costs time and power.

## Why people recommend it

- Better quality at same bitrate (4 comments): "I usually use x264 as mkv which is CPU bound because it produces a much better looking video vs using h264." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49618811)) "Good H.264 encoders like x264 is capable of producing excellent FullHD video at just 2-3 mbps" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49368720)) "x264 that seemed to just put out substantially better quality video for the same bitrate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296960))
- Clever techniques, very good compression (2 comments): "it was and still is sort of magic how many smart techniques are baked into something" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293621)) "produces very good compression for raw emulator captures of retro game footage" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657322))
- Low latency, used for remote desktop (2 comments): "x264 was handling the encoding side with sub-frame latency 15 years ago" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47420153)) "They should try and look at xrdp with x264 as a start." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46371316))

## What people warn about

- Heavy CPU, power and time cost (3 comments): "x264 (and x265!) beat the pants off of them if one can spare the time and electricity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300270)) "When we switched from x264 to hardware based encoders it saved something like 90% on our customers' power and cooling bills." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466661)) "the compute cost of all the encoding on CPU is crazy high" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46370896))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [DivX](https://hackerapproved.com/p/divx.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "x264", https://hackerapproved.com/p/x264/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).