What Bitrate and Resolution are Best?
The higher the resolution and bitrate, the higher the video quality - right? Not exactly.
What happens if you’re watching a video online and it starts buffering? You probably close the window. So there’s nothing stopping someone from doing the same thing to you if your video quality is poor.
You get a choppy video when you stream at too high of a bitrate for your network. This means if your network speed is slow, you should use a smaller bitrate!
When you are live streaming, you need to take three main things into account:
Bitrate
Resolution
Framerate
Just make sure your network speed can handle whatever you set for the three variables.
Resolution is the number of pixels spread across your screen like 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 4k. But if you set a high resolution, you better set a bitrate fast enough to support it!
A bitrate is defined as “the amount of data required to encode a single second of video.” Bitrates are measured in Mbps, or megabits per second.
Resolution and bitrate influence each other a lot. Let’s say Streamer X is streaming 1080p at 5Mbps, but his internet speed only 3Mbps. His video will be choppy. To fix this, he could lower is resolution and bitrate to change the amount of data that his network would have to support.
Framerate isn’t as big of a deal. You usually see 30 fps (frames per second) or 60 fps. Just keep in mind that you need a higher bitrate to support a higher frame rate.
If you’re using Ethernet or have a really strong internet connection, then you can set a higher bitrate and not have to worry too much about choppy video. If you’re streaming a sports game or moving around a lot, then set a lower bitrate just to be safe.
You also have to pay attention to the requirements of the platform you’re streaming to.
For example, YouTube supports 240p to 1080p resolutions. Facebook only supports resolutions up to 720p. There’s no need to stream at a higher resolution than your destination will accept, because it will just get re-encoded anyway!
Here’s a general suggestion if what your resolution and bitrate should be at 30fps (information from Speedify.com).
1080p: 4Mbps to 6Mbps
720p: 2Mbps to 4Mbps
480p: 1Mbps to 2Mbps
360p: 400kbps to 1.5Mbps
240p: 300kbps to 700kbps