Video bitrate calculator: bitrate, file size & ABR ladder

For 1080p at 30 fps in H.264, around 4–6 Mbps is a good starting point for films and series. Sports and other high-motion content at 60 fps can need 8–10 Mbps. HEVC needs roughly 40% less and AV1 roughly 50% less for similar quality.

4K at 30 fps in H.264 needs around 13–20 Mbps. Most 4K streaming uses HEVC or AV1 instead, which brings it down to roughly 8–12 Mbps. High frame rate or HDR sports can need more.

1440p, often called 2K or QHD in streaming, works well around 7–11 Mbps in H.264 at 30 fps, or about 4.5–6.5 Mbps in HEVC. In cinema, '2K' means 2048×1080, which is close to 1080p bitrates.

File size in megabytes = total bitrate in Mbps × duration in seconds ÷ 8. A 60-minute video at 5 Mbps video plus 128 kbps audio is about 5.128 × 3,600 ÷ 8 ≈ 2,300 MB, or 2.3 GB.

An adaptive bitrate (ABR) ladder is the set of renditions a video is encoded into, from low to high resolution. HLS and DASH players switch between them as the viewer's connection changes, so playback keeps going without buffering.

Bits per pixel (bpp) is bitrate divided by width × height × frame rate. It shows how much data each pixel gets. For H.264, roughly 0.07–0.1 bpp suits typical streaming; newer codecs need less.