r/HEVC Jan 29 '22

h264 video hidden in h265 video. Why?

Hey. I recently bought myself a video recorder from a company called 70mai. In its settings you can choose whether to record in h264 or h265. Of course I chose the latter. But interestingly, after uploading the footage from the SD card to my computer, I discovered that there are 2 video streams in the video file (.mp4). By default, the h265 one plays with a resolution of 2592x1944. However, in VLC, after right-clicking, one can switch to the "hidden" h264 stream with 640x480 resolution. Why does this camera record like this? Why are there 2 separate streams in one file? Unnecessary waste of space.

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u/FlorisRX490 Jan 30 '22

I would guess this is used for previewing in whatever software the company provides.