What is H264Layer profile and level?

2
votes

I am not familiar with video encoding, so this could be a silly question:

What does the H264 layer "profile" and "level" means?

To be exact, I am trying to use Azure Media service to encode some videos, and I noticed these settings in its configure. In its own page, https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/mt269962.aspx, it doesn't really explain anything. For example, for "profile", it simply says "Auto, Baseline, Main, High".

My goal is to encode the video in a way that can be played back on most platforms (Windows, iOS, Android), so I want to see if I can find some settings that work for all of them - from Azure's own document, https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/mt269960.aspx, it hints that for different platforms, I'd better encode / generate different output files. Is that the case? (does YouTube have different video files for different platforms, for the same input content file?)

Thanks!

1
androidiosyoutubevideo-encodingazure-media-services
This, This & this will be helpful – NSNoob
Thanks! It is very helpful! -- And about the last question: anyone has some good recommended values that work for most devices/browsers? – jjw2015

1 Answers

0
votes

I think I figured it out: looks like profile baseline or main, level 3.1, is a good bet that fits most devices. Of course, I may need different bitrates.