Selecting Bit Rates
For files that will be streamed over a network, you must consider carefully what
bit rates you should use. Under most circumstances you can add the bit rates of
all of the streams in a file together to get a general idea of the available bandwidth
required to stream the file. However, a certain amount of overhead is also required
for each stream. This overhead is summarized in the following table:
|
Bit Rate Range (Kbps)
|
Additional Bandwidth Required for overhead (Kbps)
|
|
10 - 16
|
3
|
|
17 - 30
|
4
|
|
31 - 45
|
5
|
|
46 - 70
|
6
|
|
71 - 225
|
7
|
|
> 225
|
9
|
You must also consider that the theoretical maximum bandwidth available over a network
connection is not a practical target bit rate. The average available bandwidth for
any given connection falls well short of the bandwidth capacity of the connection,
because of network traffic and many other factors.
|