| ✅ Do shrink with x265 | ❌ Don't shrink with x265 | |------------------------|--------------------------| | Archiving Blu-ray/4K rips | Re-encoding already small YouTube videos | | Storing large TV series collections | Sharing with users on old devices | | Content with grainy film look | Real-time streaming (use x264) | | Plex/Jellyfin with hardware transcoding | If you need fast encoding speed |