Blue Iris 6 added the ability to send H.265 video through its web server via both direct-to-wire and transcoding.
Compatibility
As of 2026-01-03, only the web interface UI3 can consume H.265 streams. The Android and iOS apps have not yet been updated to support it and there is no ETA I'm aware of for that.
There is an H.265 compatibility negotiation mechanism which prevents H.265 video from being sent to clients that have not implemented support yet, regardless of what you configure.
UI3 has a general
compatibility table here for UI3 H.265 support, but compatibility is a bit spottier than suggested by this table. I have certain cameras whose H.265 streams via direct-to-wire fail to play in UI3 where most other H.265 streams work fine. If you encounter such a camera, I recommend changing that camera to use H.264 or otherwise you can disable direct-to-wire on a per-camera basis in its Blue Iris > Camera Settings > Webcast tab.
Web server H.265 streaming is not enabled by default in Blue Iris. There are two ways to use it: (1) via Direct-to-wire, or (2) via transcoding.
H.265 via Direct-to-wire
To use H.265 via direct-to-wire, just enable direct-to-wire in the relevant streaming encoder profile(s). The same setting that enables direct-to-wire for H.264 also enables it for H.265. If you already enabled it before, it'll still be enabled after you upgrade to Blue Iris 6, and it will just begin working for H.265 too.
I recommend using UI3's own Streaming Quality profile editor to create a dedicated "direct-to-wire" profile (
UI3 Main Menu >
Streaming Profiles), and enable direct-to-wire only within that profile; that way you don't lose the ability to easily control resolution and bit rate when desired via UI3's default profiles.
If you'd rather enable direct-to-wire for all profiles, you can do so in Blue Iris's Streaming 0 profile (
Blue Iris Settings >
Webserver >
Advanced >
Streaming 0 >
Configure).
As a reminder, direct-to-wire only works with single-camera live streams. Not for multi-camera streams or recordings. Currently there is no straightforward way to know if direct-to-wire is being used, aside from using UI3's "Stats for nerds" panel to look at the codec, bit rate, and/or resolution.
H.265 via transcoding
Blue Iris can also transcode video to H.265 now. I strongly recommend
not using this capability outside of testing purposes because it raises the CPU cost of transcoding with little to no benefit versus H.264.
To enable H.265 transcoding, select it as the codec either individually in UI3's Streaming Profiles or globally in Blue Iris's "Streaming 0" profile. This step is
not necessary to use H.265 via direct-to-wire.
