Video bitrate calculator
Bitrate on its own means nothing without the resolution and frame rate behind it. Ten megabits is generous for 1080p30 and starves 4K60 completely. Thinking in bits per pixel per frame makes it portable: around 0.1 for streaming, 0.15 for good quality, 0.25 or more for a master. That single figure travels across resolutions in a way a megabit number never does.
File sizes here count in binary units, the way an operating system reports a file: MB means 1,048,576 bytes and GB means 1,073,741,824. A disk maker counting in decimal millions would give the same file a larger-looking number.
Video bitrate is width × height × frame rate × bits per pixel. At 1080p30 and a streaming setting of 0.1 bits per pixel that is 6.22 Mbps, which fills 444.9 MB in ten minutes and 2.61 GB in an hour.
How to choose a bitrate
The arithmetic is exact and the inputs are estimates, so treat the answer as a bracket rather than a target. Everything hangs on the bits-per-pixel figure behind the quality menu: 0.05 for low, 0.1 for streaming, 0.15 for high and 0.25 for a master. Multiply that by the pixels in a frame and the frames in a second and you have the bitrate.
What the megabytes here actually count
Sizes here are counted in binary units. Ten minutes at 6.22 Mbps is 466,560,000 bytes, and the panel reports that as 444.9 MB because it divides by 1,048,576. Divide by a million instead, as a drive manufacturer does, and the same file is 466.6 MB. Neither number is wrong and they describe the same bytes; an operating system will show you the smaller one, an upload progress bar may well show you the larger, and the gap between them is about 5 per cent at megabytes and 7 per cent by the time you reach gigabytes.
What YouTube actually asks for
YouTube publishes recommended upload bitrates for SDR video, and they are a useful reality check on the model here. It asks for 8 Mbps at 1080p and 24 to 30 frames, 12 Mbps at 1080p60, 16 Mbps at 1440p30, and 35 to 45 Mbps at 4K30.
Turn those back into bits per pixel and they run from about 0.10 to 0.18, so the streaming setting on this page sits at the bottom of YouTube's own range and the high setting in its upper half. The one place the model and the recommendation part company is 4K: 0.1 bits per pixel gives 24.9 Mbps at 4K30, where YouTube wants at least 35. Detail per pixel does not fall away as fast as a fixed bits-per-pixel rule assumes, so an upload sized by a constant that works at 1080p will look soft at 2160p. Uploading above the recommendation is generally worth it in any case, since the platform re-encodes everything it receives and a generous source gives that pass more to work with.
Where a real encoder disagrees
Three things move the true number away from the arithmetic. The codec is the largest: these figures assume something H.264-shaped, and HEVC reaches comparable quality at roughly half the bitrate, with AV1 better again at the cost of far more encoding time and patchier hardware decode. The content is the second: a static talking head against a plain wall compresses to a fraction of what handheld footage of foliage needs, and film grain is close to worst case because it is noise, which is exactly what a codec cannot predict. The third is the encoder's own mode.
That last one is why a target bitrate is usually the wrong control for a file. Constant-quality encoding, the CRF setting in x264 and x265, holds the visual quality steady and lets the bitrate move with the difficulty of each scene, which spends bits where they show and saves them where they do not. A fixed bitrate is the right choice only when something downstream requires it: a live stream into a fixed pipe, a disc format, or a delivery specification written by someone else. Use the number here to size the disk and to sanity-check what an encoder gives you, rather than as the setting to type in.
What people use it for
- Setting an export bitrate
- Sizing storage for a shoot or an archive
- Choosing a live streaming bitrate against an upload limit
- Estimating how long an upload will take
- Checking whether a delivery spec is generous or tight
- Working out whether a memory card will hold a shoot
Questions
YouTube asks for 8 Mbps at 24 to 30 fps and 12 Mbps at 60. Anywhere from 6 to 12 Mbps is reasonable for H.264 delivery, and higher for a master.
YouTube asks 35 to 45 Mbps at 30 fps and 53 to 68 at 60. A flat bits-per-pixel rule under-calls this, so do not simply scale the 1080p figure by four.
In the arithmetic here, yes, exactly. In practice a little less, because consecutive frames at 60 fps are more alike than at 30 and the codec has more redundancy to exploit.
It reaches similar quality at roughly half the bitrate. It costs more encoding time, has patchier hardware support and carries licensing that AV1 does not.
For live streaming into a fixed connection, yes. For a file, constant quality gives a better result at the same average size.
Audio, container overhead and the encoder overshooting on hard scenes. The audio row here assumes 192 kbps stereo; multichannel or a higher setting adds more.
Because the size rows use binary megabytes. 444.9 MB here and 466.6 MB counted in decimal millions are the same 466,560,000 bytes.
Above the platform recommendation rather than at it. Everything gets re-encoded on arrival, and a source with headroom survives that pass better than one encoded to the minimum.
Around 0.1 for streaming delivery, 0.15 for a good-quality file and 0.25 or more for a master. It travels across resolutions in a way a megabit figure does not.
Bitrate, past a point. A well-encoded 1080p file beats a starved 4K one, because too few bits over more pixels shows up as blocking and smearing on every frame.