Bitrate Specifics to Consider When Evaluating Video Creation Solutions, like OpenReel
You’ve probably heard about the importance video bitrate plays when it comes to creating polished video content — especially when coupled with frame rate and resolution. Given the importance of bitrate in the video creation process, we put together a quick list of considerations to keep top of mind when evaluating video creation solutions to power your organization’s content goals.
What bitrate should video creation technologies use?
Well, it depends on the contents of the video and the device used for filming. Videos recorded on OpenReel do not have the same or even constant bitrate. Instead, the bitrate varies over each recording based on what is happening in the video.
For example, if you have a video that starts out by focusing on a sleeping cat, and then switches to footage of a high-speed car chase, it doesn’t make sense for the entire video to have the same bitrate throughout. If it did have the same bitrate, then you would either be using too much data to show the cat, or not enough data to play back the car chase in order to maintain the same level of video quality. The result would be a poor viewing experience.
Apples-to-Apples compression comparisons
Given these variables, OpenReel’s iOS Remote Capture app adopts the same recommended video compression settings used by Apple for its own native Camera app. These settings are generally considered the “best” for most types of video, maintaining high quality with the smallest possible data size. These settings include an average “target” video bitrate that is used by the compression algorithm to determine how to compress the video while recording.
In videos with average motion, the resulting average bitrate is close to the target value. Consequently, as the amount of motion increases, the resulting average bitrate will be higher than the target value.
For further technical details, below are average bitrates on Apple:
- For 720p @ 30fps h.264, the recommended target average bitrate on an iPhone 6s Plus is ~8 Mbps.
- 720p @ 30fps HEVC on a newer iPhone 12 Pro Max, the recommended target average bitrate is ~4.8 Mbps, illustrating how the same quality can be achieved using almost half of the data for HEVC when compared to h.264.
- For 4K @ 30fps h.264, the recommended target average bitrate is ~45 Mbps, and for HEVC, it is ~22.5 Mbps.
- For 4K @ 60fps HEVC, the recommended target average bitrate is ~48-54 Mbps, depending on the device.
What do video hosting platforms recommend?
YouTube and Vimeo both have recommended video compression settings: YouTube recommends 53-68 Mbps for 4K @ 60fps using h.264, and Vimeo recommends 30-60 Mbps.
If an HEVC bitrate is approximately 2x the quality of the same h.264 bitrate, then the current OpenReel settings are more than adequate for those platforms’ recommendations.
What this means for your video vendor evaluation?
Now that you better understand the importance of video bitrate and how it impacts video quality, you can hopefully take these points into consideration when validating the efficiency of your video creation solution. By allowing for a higher bitrate, corresponding frame rate, and high resolution, you’ll consistently deliver crisp audio and sharp images to your audiences.
Special thanks to our Mobile Engineering Manager and Mobile Architect Stefan Kaczmarek for making this post possible.
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