[x264-devel] default level

[Loren Merritt]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Loren Merritt wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Mathieu Monnier wrote:
>
>>> (The part that's not acceptable is actually implementing all the
>>> restrictions or enabling VBV by default.)
>> 
>> What you presented the last time (level chosen solely on frame
>> resolution, frame rate and DPB size) still sounds good to me, and would
>> be better than to set 4.1 by default.
>
> Here you go.

Notes: It still ignores all the minor constraints that x264 has never 
checked. It also has to wildly guess a max bitrate if you haven't enabled 
VBV. It would be possible to derive a more precise estimate in 2pass mode, 
but I'm not volunteering to write that.

Everyone who objected last time:
You have a few days to find me a real-world instance of your objection, 
or I'll commit as-is. In particular, a valid objection must be a decoder 
which is not specifically written to be perverse, which fails to play 
streams whose level underestimates their required bitrate, but can play 
the same stream if it's labeled level 5.1. And furthermore convince me 
that this decoder you've found is or will be more important than the 
existing, widespread case where person A who doesn't care about hardware 
compatibility encodes something without specifying a level, and person B 
wants to play it on a device that checks levels.

--Loren Merritt