Let’s not make it recommended then. I’m on my phone now so can’t check, but I got the impression that back when I compiled in x265, I had to recompile FFmpeg for new x265 quite often. Maybe it’s more stable now though so ABI compat isn’t broken that often.
> whatever you think best I'm cool with.
I honestly don't have the slightly clue of how other people use FFmpeg, so take my opinions with a huge grain of salt. Anyway, x265 is crazy slow on my top end Mid-2015 MBP 15'' so if I really need to do H.265 encoding I push it to a server farm where I don't hear the noise of grinding for hours. IMO local H.265 encoding won't be remotely as popular as local H.264 encoding any time soon.
Given how few devices can actually playback 4K HEVC at a reasonable speed, not sure about that. I for one will still be encoding my stuff in H.264 for the foreseeable future.