

Which of these you choose will depend largely on your individual circumstances, but for the most part, CBR and VBR are best used for these purposes.īlu-ray, the standard for high quality home cinema, has generally adhered to a maximum bit rate of about 40Mbits/s for 1080P movies. YouTube or Vimeo), VBR only spikes its bit rate when necessary. Best used for progressive and direct downloads (e.g. While this is less universally easy to play back, it provides significantly higher video quality than CBR with a much lower file size. VBR features a dynamic bit rate that changes depending on the level of detail needed in a given moment (usually moments of motion). Unfortunately, CBR will produce a larger file size, so it can be restricting for some output formats. This is best used for cloud-based streaming services where the video is constantly being downloaded, and is subject to stutter with bit rate spikes. Constant Bit RateĬBR maintains a set bit rate throughout the entire video, making it easy to play back and quick to load. There are two types of bit rate encoding: Constant Bit Rate and Variable Bit Rate 1. Higher bit rates provide higher quality at the expense of file size. For instance, a bit rate of 30 megabits per second, or 30Mbit/s means that 30,000,000 bits are being processed every second in order to play video and audio. However, you can benefit significantly from understanding which bit rates are appropriate for different purposes.Ī bit rate is the number of bits (a bit is a zero or one, and is the basis of all computing) processed in a given amount of time. When adjusting your export settings, it can be easy to choose a random bit rate or simply match that of your source footage.

Next time you’re exporting video, use these helpful tips to figure out which bit rate is best for you.
