Understanding Bitrate: The Secret to File Size
Bitrate controls everything. Learn how manipulating kbps affects your video's visual fidelity.
It's Not Just About Resolution
You can have a 4K video that looks terrible and a 1080p video that looks amazing. The difference is usually Bitrate.
What is Bitrate?
Bitrate is the amount of data used to describe one second of video, usually measured in Kilobits per second (kbps) or Megabits per second (Mbps). Think of it like a water pipe: a wider pipe (higher bitrate) lets more water (quality) through.
- High Bitrate (50 Mbps): Blu-ray quality. Huge file sizes.
- Medium Bitrate (15 Mbps): YouTube 4K standard.
- Low Bitrate (2 Mbps): Zoom call quality. Tiny file sizes.
Variable Bitrate (VBR) vs Constant Bitrate (CBR)
VideoLite uses sophisticated VBR (Variable Bitrate). This means we drop the bitrate during simple scenes (like a black screen or a talking head) and spike it during complex scenes (like an explosion). This allows us to achieve much smaller file sizes than standard "Constant" compression used by older tools.