We’ve covered how to set up recording and
streaming profiles in previous videos, but
let’s focus for a bit on just bitrate considerations
in this video.
What should you pick for your bitrate and
why?
What even is bitrate?
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works, if you get confused.
A word that gets frequently thrown around
when discussing video recording and editing
is “bitrate.”
What does that mean?
This phrase refers to the data rate of your
video recording or stream.
Usually referred to some amount of bits per
second.
Don’t confuse this with bytes – we normally
measure files in bytes, megabytes and gigabytes,
but bits are different.
Size-wise, bits are one eighth of the size
of a byte.
This actually makes it easier to talk about
when it comes to streaming, as if you run
an internet speed test, it measures this in
megabits instead of megabytes.
A higher bitrate equals more bits per second
which generally means higher quality.
But depending on your upload speed, computer
specs and so on – you may not be able to
use a higher bitrate.
Or, if you set it absurdly high, eventually
any quality increase might be insignificant
especially compared to the cost of the high
file size that will be created by such high
bitrates.
There’s a few things you need to consider
when choosing a bitrate for streaming or recording.
Let’s take a look at streaming first.
With streaming, you must primarily take your
internet connection into consideration.
As I’ve mentioned before, due to packet
loss, interference, and other issues, the
most reliable upstream connection will be
through a wired internet connection – not
over a wireless signal.
Go to openspeedtest.com or speedtest.net and
test your upload speed.
For live streaming, the highest recommended
bitrate is roughly equal to 75% of your total
upload speed.
Regardless of your upload speed – be it
300, 30, or 5 megabits per second – you
can’t push the whole speed all the time.
Other things run on your network and require
the bandwidth, and if you’re playing games
they’ll need some room or it will be a laggy
mess, too.
This bitrate includes audio, too.
So if your upload speed is 5 megabits per
second, the most I’d recommend your total
bitrate for a stream be is 3.75 megabits per
second, with roughly 200 being allocated for
the audio.
Of course, as with anything, you’ll need
to do some test streams to make sure your
connection can actually handle pushing that
many bits for hours on end and that you aren’t
dropping frames or not pushing data enough.
OBS Studio now shows color indication for
your stream health – which shows how well
your connection is maintaining the stream
settings.
With Twitch, you’ll also want to keep your
viewers in mind.
Generally speaking, transcoding – the process
of providing converted versions of a stream
broadcast at lower qualities so it’s easier
to watch – was something only reserved for
Twitch partners.
They’ve made great strides since then in
making transcoding available to more people.
To see if you have this available, once you’ve
begun streaming, sneakily pull up your stream
page (muted, of course, so your viewers don’t
hear an echo) and click the gear icon and
see if you can change the quality from “Source”
to High, Medium, Low, and so on.
If so – you’re good to go.
If not, then your viewers are stuck with only
the option to view the quality you are streaming.
That means that if their internet connection
can’t handle downloading that kind of bitrate,
then their stream view will just keep buffering
and they will leave.
This leads many streamers to only stream at
a maximum of 2 megabits per second (or 2000
in the bitrate box) so that just about anyone
can view it.
If you don’t seem to be getting transcoding
when you start streaming, you might want to
consider doing this too – especially if
you’re a new streamer and need to attract
new viewers.
Otherwise, if you have transcoding, you can
stream at the full 6 megabits per second that
Twitch allows – or whatever your internet
connection can support, if below that.
YouTube doesn’t have such limitations, so
run free if you stream to there.
Just keep in mind that it is hard for any
internet connection – no matter the speed
– to seriously maintain higher than like
10 megabits per second upstream consistently
for multiple hours on end.
On the other side of the coin, recording bitrates
work a little differently.
See, when you stream, you can really only
use super low bitrates – the quality is
acceptable for streaming, but isn’t super
great for final videos.
Those bitrates are just child’s play compared
to what you can record at.
Your hard drive can handle way higher data
rates than your internet upload speed.
But, depending on if you’re recording on
a desktop or a laptop, and if you have a secondary
hard drive available – you may not be able
to totally max out on recordings.
If you’re on a laptop and only able to record
to the main C:\
hard drive – your recording data stream
has to compete with your operating system
reading and writing constantly, any programs
running, as well as any games running on your
computer.
This means that it may struggle with recordings.
Modern hard drives can maintain high speeds
of data transfer, but bouncing back and forth
between far away parts of the disk platter
is not the strong suit of mechanical drives.
SSDs, on the other hand, can handle this way
better.
Ideally, you’ll want to record to a second
hard drive – either inside your computer,
or a USB 3.0 or faster drive hooked up to
a USB 3 port.
Those can usually sustain recording bitrates
– but USB 2.0 ones cannot.
Choosing a recording bitrate is all about
balancing video quality with file size.
More bits equals more quality, but also equals
bigger files.
Now here’s the kicker – you can always
compress your video later to make it smaller,
either in a compression program or when you
render your video edit, but you cannot add
more quality back in.
Record at too low of a bitrate and your video
file will remain crappy quality forever.
Record at a really high bitrate and you can
compress it smaller when you edit and render
so it’s easier to upload.
For easy reference – these are the recommended
upload bitrates for YouTube videos.
For 1080p, YouTube recommends between 8 and
12 megabits per second, depending on your
frame rate.
For 4K, that number goes up to 35 to 68 megabits
per second.
However, keep in mind that this is the recommended
bitrate that you upload your final files at
– generally you want to record higher than
you render at.
Again, you can always compress your video
more in editing and rendering, but you can’t
add more quality back into a video.
As far as my personal recommendation goes,
for 720p or lower, I recommend recording around
8 to 10 megabits per second, higher if you’re
doing any major editing.
For 1080p recording, I recommend 25 megabits
to 40 megabits per second.
For 1440p or higher, I definitely recommend
recording at 45 megabits per second or higher.
For 4K, you’ll wanna go 50 megabits per
second or higher, but I recommend 100 megabits
per second or more if your computer can handle
it.
At that point you absolutely should be using
Nvenc or AMD VCE encoding instead of x264.
If you’re doing a strictly recording profile,
your audio bitrates should all be set to 320
kbps.
Having top audio quality is important, and
there’s no reason to record at a lower bitrate.
Again, the ultimate rule with changing any
settings is to perform multiple lengthy recording
tests before starting a real recording session.
You want to make absolutely certain that your
settings are solid and reliable before committing
to a proper session.
One last factor to consider is how long you
plan on recording.
See, my normal recording profile for videos
involves recording at massive bitrates – 200
or more megabits per second – but when I
started live streaming, I couldn’t use my
overkill bitrates anymore, as my multiple-hour-long
live streams were generating files that were
hundreds of gigabytes.
Kinda hard to maintain that on a 3x weekly
schedule if you want to maintain the VODs.
So my stream recording profile is set to 30
megabits per second.
This maintains a good balance of quality to
file size for my stream VODs – and is about
the maximum bitrate supported by the original
Elgato Game Capture HD, so the file sizes
are competitive enough for just cutting out
quick stream highlights and is still way better
quality than the original stream was.
Hopefully this helps you make a solid decision
when it comes to choosing a bitrate for your
recording or stream in OBS Studio.
For other videos on setting up recording or
streaming profiles, we cover this more in-depth
in other videos in the course.
I hope this episode of my OBS Studio tutorial
course has been helpful for you.
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Until next time, I’m EposVox, Happy Streaming!
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