Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not really sure why this is so unbelievable No one is saying that. Everyone knows H265 is better than H264. Just saying your number is meaningless without either fixing the bitrate or the quality.
Sure. Don't believe some random dude from the internet. But if you're not going to go through the hassle of running the tests on your own, your "meaningless" claims are meaningless. Have you spent time in your career as a compressionist? Have you encoded hundred of hours in various codecs looking at the best tweaks to get the highest visual quality for the smallest file sizes? The test files that I produced resulted…
All you have is literally one datapoint, 970kbps h264 has "no visible difference" compared with 800kbps h265, and I believe that. But maybe 800kbps h264 also doesn't have visible difference from it. Maybe there is just not much difference to notice from 500 to 1200kbps, for your specific video.
Again, my point is your experiment has too few samples (literally 1 pair). Using that to conclude anything is the exact opposite of "scientific" method. I never say "h265 isn't better than h264" or "your result is wrong"; just your result doesn't prove the former.
If you insist to use just one sample, you could at least use the same bitrate (2-pass if you want to have better rate control) and say "hey, the h265 one is visibly better!", and that would be more convincing.