Problem Solver - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 643

What Are the Best Bit Rates to Aim For?

For broadband, choose 350-500 Kbps and for modem, 28-56 Kbaud should support a pay-
load of 20 to 40 Kbps. Mobile phones are capable of 64 Kbps. Table A-1 summarizes typi-
cal bit rates across a variety of different transport types:

A-1 Bit Rates for Different Transport Types

Format Bit rate

Broadband 350-500 Kbps

Modem 28-56 Kbaud

Broadcast TV 3-5 Mbps

SDTV video with MPEG-2 4.5 Mbps

SDTV video with H.264 2 Mbps

HDTV video with H.264 5-6 Mbps

Uncompressed SDTV video 25 Mbps

Edit-quality DV video 25-50 Mbps

What Are the Best Formats for Different Devices?

Table A-2 lists a selection of settings that are appropriate for some standard ways that the
encoded output must be deployed.

A-2 Example Compression Settings

Format Settings

Low bit-rate mobile format 64 Kbps, QCIF or smaller image,

and 15 fps frame rate.

PDA format 160 160 pixels, 65K colors, and compressed

using Kinoma.

×

Streaming format 320 240, 18 fps, and compressed with Real,

Windows Media, or H.264.

×

Modem-quality video 56 Kbps, low frame rate, small picture size,

mono audio sampled at 22 KHz.

Broadband video Whatever you can squeeze in at 500 Kbps.

With H.264, this could be near TV sized.

Broadcast format 720 579 or 480, coded with MPEG-2 at

4 Mbps or H.264 at 2 Mbps.

×

Store and forward format TV resolution, full frame rate, high-quality

H.264 at 3 Mbps.