Quote:
Originally Posted by jamt
Do you have any sense for whether it's safe to use MVC codec levels above 4.1 on typical devices these days?
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Full-SBS and Full-TAB require level 5 or above, due to the buffer necessary to hold the double image, and possibly also to the high bitrate. Levels 5 and greater are not compatible with most Full-HD TV, but should be compatible with all UHD players.
Level 4.0 to 4.2 are sufficient for Half-SBS and Half-TAB. The advantage is that level 4.1 is fully compatible with all 3D TVs.
But as videofan3d wrote, the encoder may use the level provided via the command line only to write it in the header, regardless of the real level. It doesn't enforce the corresponding maximum bitrate and buffer sizes. (It's the case at least of the regular branch of x264. Not sure for FRIM.) However, x264 writes the correct level based of the actual max bitrate and buffer size if you DO NOT explicitly provide it. So, IMO, unless you want to encode with a very high bitrate, near the maximum supported by your equipment or a specific level, you should leave the encoder free to write the level it has really used due to the other encoding parameters.