Your viewers don't care about all the nitty-gritty nuances happening behind the scenes of your livestream—they just care about buffer-free high-quality streaming. We tend to attribute performance mostly to video resolution and frame rate, but video bitrate plays an important role, too.
Not familiar with video bitrate and its influence on your video quality? We've got you covered.
Below, we explore all things bitrate, including what it is, why it matters, bandwidth limits, recommended video bitrates, and more.
What Is Video Bitrate?
Video bitrate is a measurement of the amount of video data being transferred at any given moment (usually per second). It refers to both the uploading and downloading sides of data transmission:
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Uploading: Data transferred from your device to the web.
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Downloading: Data transferred from the web to your users' devices.
We tend to measure bitrate in terms of bits per second. However, video files tend to exceed this measurement, so you'll more commonly see video bitrate expressed in megabits per second (Mbps).
Higher video bitrate leads to better quality video, but it also places more demands on your systems and users' devices. High bitrates lead to larger file sizes, and that can cause problems if your viewers have bandwidth limitations.
Fortunately, many online video platforms use adaptive streaming to encode videos into varying formats for high-quality playback across devices, locations, and bandwidths. However, you can't produce a higher video bitrate than the source, so you need a top-performing streaming connection to ensure performance for all your viewers.
What's a Good Bitrate for Video?
Ideally, you want a bitrate that's high enough for top performance but doesn't unnecessarily strain your network or users' networks. This is a delicate balancing act that'll vary depending on your network speed and the type of content you produce.
For example, if you're producing talking-head educational videos, you won't need to invest as high of a video bitrate. However, if you're a streamer producing gaming content, you'll need a video bitrate that can support 1080p streaming at 60 frames per second.
Here are a few recommended bitrates for streaming buffer-free high-quality video:
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1080p Resolution With 60fps: 6,000 kbps
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1080p Resolution With 30fps: 5,000 kbps
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720p Resolution With 60fps: 4,000 kbps
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720p Resolution With 30fps: 3,000 kbps
How Does Bitrate Affect Video Quality?
Higher bitrate leads to improved video quality. The higher your bitrate, the better your image quality will be since you'll be able to record and transmit at better resolutions.
When you have a lower bitrate, your live-streaming solution must compress the video files to transmit them, resulting in decreased video quality.
Too high of a bitrate will mean that you transmit maximum resolutions and fps, but it could put a heavier strain on your viewers' networks. Fortunately, adaptive streaming helps dynamically adjust the quality of your content so that viewers find the perfect balance between visual quality and performance.
Other Factors That Affect Video Quality
Bitrate isn't the only thing that determines your video quality. There are a handful of other factors that play a role, and they all work together with video bitrate for a collective outcome:
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Resolution: Increased resolution demands more pixels to create the video image. Higher resolutions lead to higher video quality, but you'll need a higher video bitrate to transmit increased resolutions. You'll typically see broadcast resolutions at 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 4K.
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Video Frame Rate: Your frame rate determines how many frames are used to create a second's worth of video. Standards rates start at 24fps and go up to 30, but you'll want to increase your range above 30 when live streaming content like sports, music events, and gaming.
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Equipment: Your video and audio equipment determines the maximum resolution and frame rate you can record. Before modern-day technology, you had to purchase expensive purpose-built cameras and gear to achieve high resolution and frame rates. Now, your average consumer iPhone can record in 4K resolution with high frame rates up to 60fps.
You're ultimately searching for the right balance between resolution, frame rate, and video bitrate. You want top-notch quality, but you don't want to sacrifice performance, and that's where a bit of tinkering and experimentation comes into play.
Bitrate and Bandwidth Limits and Recommendations
Broadcasting software usually provides minimum and recommended video bitrates for uploading and downloading content. If your bandwidth isn't sufficient for the required bitrate, your video content will experience delays and potential streaming crashes.
Your internet provider decides how much bandwidth you can consume over their network. More expensive plans usually provide higher bandwidths, but your upload and download speeds aren't usually the same. Many providers offer high download speeds (for consuming content), but you might have to pay extra for higher uploading speeds (for delivering content).
How to Improve Your Upload Speed for Live Streaming
Looking to maximize your video bitrate to improve your live-streaming quality and performance? We've compiled a few tips and best practices to help you get the most out of your setup:
1. Record in High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) or H.265
HEVC (also known as H.265) video codecs are specialized video compression standards. It lets you deliver high-quality video without compromising performance by intelligently compressing video files for better transmission. The H.265 codec does this by smartly identifying duplicative frames that can be deleted, decreasing the amount of data required for transit.
2. Use an Online Video Platform With Adaptive Bitrate Streaming
Ensure first-rate performance for every viewer by using a video streaming platform with adaptive bitrate streaming. Adaptive bitrate streaming dynamically adjusts the quality of the content depending on your viewer's bandwidth limitations. If they have faster downloading speeds, they can watch your content at the maximum quality—if they have slow download speeds, they can watch your content in real-time at a lower resolution and frame rate.
3. Opt for the Wired Internet Connection
Wired internet connections tend to be more stable than Wi-Fi, ensuring consistent uploading speed without interruption. Fewer disruptions (and maximum transmission quality) ensure your livestream pulls all the available bandwidth for providing top-quality content.
4. Close Other Bandwidth-Consuming Applications
Your live streaming software might not be the only application (or device) consuming your bandwidth. Close other internet-connected applications, mobile apps, and even internet of things (IoT) devices that use your limited bandwidth. Keep only the essential applications open to ensure you get access to the juice you need for a top-notch live streaming performance.
5. Choose the Best Video Bitrate
Choose the best video bitrate for the content you're streaming. You don't need maximum 4K resolution with 60fps if you're recording a religious sermon or a live lecture. Instead, 1080p (or even 720p) with 30fps would do quite nicely. Changing these settings impacts how much video bitrate you need to stream effectively.
6. Test and Experiment
Test your systems before you go live to see how the content performs for viewers. Experiment with different video bitrates, resolutions, and frame rates to find the perfect balance between quality and performance. Collect feedback and make adjustments in real time (or in the future) to continue improving the quality of your live streams.
7. Upgrade Your Internet Plan
Talk to your provider and see if you can upgrade to an internet package with higher upload speeds. Don't settle for sub-par speed and poor video quality. While it might cost a premium to get adequate bandwidth, it's an investment—and live-streaming content is worth it.
8. Check Your Internet Speed
Use a free service like speedtest.net to get a fairly accurate estimate of your upload and download speed. Knowing this number gives you a control to check against as you adjust other settings, like connecting via an ethernet cable or disconnecting bandwidth-hogging IoT devices from your internet.
Make High-Quality Video a Top Priority
You can negotiate some elements when it comes to live streaming, but quality and performance aren't to be bargained with. High-quality streaming with no delays or buffering needs to be your top priority.
It doesn't matter how great or valuable your content is—if it's not delivered in tip-top shape, viewers won't sit around and watch it.
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