Exporting
What Bitrate Should I Export At?
There is no single right number, but there is a right way to arrive at one. It depends on resolution, frame rate, how much movement is in the shot, and where the file is going.
2 min read · Published 3 September 2026
Bitrate is how much data each second of video is allowed. Too little and the picture falls apart in the difficult moments. Too much and you have a file that takes an age to upload and looks no better for it.
The number that is right depends on four things, and only one of them is resolution.
What actually decides it
| Factor | Effect |
|---|---|
| Resolution | More pixels need more data, roughly in proportion |
| Frame rate | 60 fps needs noticeably more than 30, though not double |
| Movement | The largest factor of all, and the one usually ignored |
| Codec | H.265 and AV1 achieve the same quality on less than H.264 |
Movement deserves the emphasis. A static talking head at 1080p is comfortable on a fraction of what a handheld shot of moving water needs, because compression works by describing what changed between frames, and in one of those almost nothing changed.
This is why a single recommended number is always wrong for something. Any table of bitrates assumes an average amount of movement, and your footage is not average in either direction.
Starting points for H.264
| Resolution | 30 fps | 60 fps |
|---|---|---|
| 720p | 5 Mbps | 7.5 Mbps |
| 1080p | 8 Mbps | 12 Mbps |
| 1440p | 16 Mbps | 24 Mbps |
| 4K | 35 Mbps | 50 Mbps |
Treat these as a middle, not a rule. Mostly static content is fine below them. Sport, gaming and anything handheld wants more, and the difference is not small: the same 1080p60 export can be genuinely fine at 8 Mbps or visibly breaking up at 12, depending entirely on what is in the frame.
If you are uploading
Export above what the platform will serve. Whatever you upload is re-encoded, and a second encoder cannot distinguish your compression artefacts from real detail, so it spends its budget preserving your mistakes. Giving it a clean source is the one thing under your control.
This is not wasted. The upload bandwidth is spent once; the quality of every version served afterwards depends on what it had to work from.
If the file size is the constraint
When something has to fit a limit, the arithmetic runs the other way: the duration and the target size decide the bitrate rather than the other way round. That is what the calculators here are for, and doing it before the export saves finding out afterwards that the file is a third too large.
One habit worth having: subtract the audio first. It is easy to forget that a 192 kbps audio track over an hour is most of a hundred and fifty megabytes, and a plan that ignores it comes out over every time.
Common questions
What bitrate should I use for 1080p?
Around 8 Mbps at 30 fps and 12 at 60 as a starting point with H.264, then adjust for movement. A static talking head is comfortable well below that; handheld footage or fast motion needs more, and the difference between those two cases is larger than the difference between resolutions.
Is a higher bitrate always better?
Only up to the point where the encoder no longer needs the data. Beyond that the file grows and looks identical. The waste is real: longer uploads, more storage, no visible gain.
Does H.265 let me use a lower bitrate?
Yes, roughly half of H.264 for comparable quality, and AV1 does better still. The trade is compatibility and encoding time, so it is worth checking that everything meant to play the file actually supports the codec before committing to it.
Should I use CBR or VBR?
VBR for almost everything, because it spends data where the picture needs it and saves it where nothing is moving. CBR exists for live streaming, where the connection needs a predictable rate more than the picture needs the flexibility.