Safe to consider than these encodes would be decoded by even 10 years old hardware?

Hi, Is it safe to consider that beyond PC that can decode anything, pretty much every hardware up to 10 years old (Smart TV, media box like Nvidia Shield or Amazon Fire Stick, smartphones and tablet (maybe just the "recent" (5 years old) ones for the entry level category), Plex etc. can decode without any problems anime BRs (1080p) that would be encoded in MKV with: >>> HEVC >>> Bframes 12 >>> ref 6 (i've read that for anime it makes a difference vs ref 5, but not sure if it's about quality, compression efficiency or how easy it would be to be decoded) >>> Level 5.0 (main10) as to use ref 6 (which I've read is godo for anime vs 5) I need at least level 5.0, if I set 4.1 it encodes with ref 5 only) >>> rc-lookahead 100 (don't know how much more ram is needed to decode vs 60 nor if it really makes a difference) >>> Bitrate/buff size up to 20Mb/s >>> FLAC audio tracks I've read here and there that bframes, ref, rc-lookahead etc. can maybe make decoding difficult for some hardware What would be the type of CPU and amount of ram hardware would need to decode that without struggling?

Absolutely not. HEVC was only released in 2013 and hardware decoders did not show up for quite some time afterwards due to licensing. Hardware decoding for HEVC didn't show up in most devices till 2016-2017. Only flagship and a select few industrial devices had it prior. If you want encodes that will work 100% on decade old systems, you are looking at H264 in an MP4 container with hardcoded subs. If you want something that can decode that, it has to be relatively modern. Anything within the last 5 years should be able to do it. As for PC, Intel added HEVC decode in Skylake, so basically any CPU newer than that should be able to handle it without a problem, with 4 gigs of ram.

Level 5.0 is the bigger compatibility concern, as a lot of early mobile devices only supported HEVC up to level 4.0. 24p anime is going to look totally fine using Profile 4.0 limits. The only parameters that impact compatibility and level compliance you list are refs (5 at 1080p) and bitrate/bufsize, which is limited to 15 Mbps in Profile 4.0. You should be using --crf instead of --bitrate in any case. If losing the reference frame is a big concern, you could up bframes to 16, which is probably more valuable with anime. FLAC support in .mp4 also isn't universal. Lossless audio is a very bitrate-expensive placebo compared to AAC or EAC3 at a quarter the bitrate.

"up to 4.0" but did they also support "high profile"? On wikipedia it's said that 4.0 max rate is 12 Mbps not 15 (I guess i'd b fine with 15 but not 12 for some of the anime I really like). For main tier. I prefer to avoid high tier coz I guess it's even less supported. I use CRF but thought we could use both CRF and limit the maxrate at the same time as far as the max rate is never what would have been reached by the CRF we set (like if with CRF15 i get max 1618Mb/s for the most challenging anime, I thought it was no problem to set a fixed level + it's fixed vbv-maxrate associated as it will not reach thr 20Mbps or 25Mbps of that profile anyway. i just cared about ref 6 coz I saw on a guide that it's beneficial for anime :D. But if ref 6 is not that important and bframes 16 compensate for that and doesn't impact compatibility and doesn't require much more decoding power (has to be playable on an nvidia shield that I plan to buy in a few months, and it's limited to 2gb ram on the normal one et 3gb ram on the pro shield) for the hardware it would be played on, I'm fine with bframes 16 (used 12 until now)

I took the advises about no-sao no-intra-smoothing etc. from that guide (it's from 2019) so you would advise --selective-sao 2 --limit-sao + intra-smoothing at default would be the way to go nowadays ? --sao-non-deblock enabled or disabled? What would be the scenario where you'd use "no-sao"? The problem with forcing level and/or tier, is that it either say "you need to specify a vbv-maxrate and vbv-buffsize because you've set a level" BUT if I do that it says "blablabla non determinism" + the documentation says that if I set vbv, it will force an agressive denoising (that I don't want) My problem is actually with "different scenarios". I'm actually (and unfortunately) an overthinker. My PC can read anything and is 2 meters from the TV, I might not even buy a shield (I think I would but not sure) nor use kodi, plex etc. my smartphone and tablet can play hevc 5.0 main (what i tested with for anime) with no problem even my 5 years old OLED TV can play those hevc profile 5 main file (not the pgs or sup subs though) just fine but I'm like "what if tomorrow my PC break and all I have left is my TV to play my files and can't afford a new decent PC" "what if my tablet breaks and I can only afford an entry level one" "what if my smartphone break and I can only afford a used 5 years old one" etc. That sounds silly? Well welcome in the head of overthinkers haha