Skoal: I'd be very interested in hearing what specific examples you have seen to show that H.265 is superior to H.264. Perhaps you have a link or have made your own encodes?

As per your inquiry for the cropping: Jurassic Park needs to be cropped. It was filmed in the academy aspect ratio (1.33), filling up the total usable film frame but leaving room for the sound track. This was done with the intention for it to be shown in theaters cropped in the middle to 1.85, but leaving enough information on the top and bottom to make a fullscreen conversion to home video a lot easier. (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_matte)

However, shots that use CGI are automatically cropped to the theatrical ratio. This was done because the price of storage was much higher then than it is now and this was done to save time and money. (Just a side note: even photochemical sfx shots were cropped since they originated from higher resolution film formats like VistaVision or 70mm and their aspect ratios are wider than 1.33)

Anyway, while the live action shots have a lot of information on the top and bottom, this was really never meant to be seen and you can see boom mikes, C-stands, missing ceilings, etc. So, -1 have to go through and see what the best framing would be.