Methods and systems that help control when and how stereoscopic content should be viewed, based on both geometry of the viewing system and the geometry used to generate the content are shown. One example embodiment utilizes the specifications of the system used to capture the image data to determine the geometry of the image content, and encodes this content geometry along with the stored image data. This content geometry data is then analyzed by display systems to determine appropriate geometries for a viewing system. Data arranged according to one embodiment is a series of digitally stored video frames representing a stereoscopic prospective view of an image or scene. This prospective view was rendered using a specific content geometry, and this geometry is digitally encoded and stored with, or embedded in, the digital image data.