You need universal compatibility. H.264 is the Tim Bradford of codecs—old, reliable, and works everywhere. HEVC (H.265) is the Jackson West—new, efficient, but not supported by legacy hardware.
Want to watch Season 2 at 1.5x speed without the chipmunk audio? the rookie s02 ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i phone_video.mov -c:v libx264 -preset fast -crf 23 -c:a aac police_friendly.mp4 Remember when they had to isolate the background noise from a ransom video to find the location? You don't need the video; you need the audio spectrum. You need universal compatibility
To convert your fancy 4K phone video into something the evidence room can read: the rookie s02 ffmpeg
If you are like me, your weekend consists of two guilty pleasures: binge-watching The Rookie and wrestling with command-line video tools.