Bitrate / Compression

Watch as an animation →

In plain words

The amount of data used per second. If it's too low, dark areas, gradients, and fine ripples turn to mush.

When to use it

Final export, previews, and upload files.

Example videos

Why Snow and Confetti Ruin YouTube Video Quality — Explainer: See how a picture with lots of change, like snow or confetti, breaks up when the bitrate is too low.
Bit rate explained for beginners — Explainer: Explains from the basics how bitrate affects quality and file size.
Beat the Compression! How to Get Better YouTube Uploads — Explainer: See where an encoder spends more data on the picture, and the recommended bitrates.

In AI video, like this

Export the final using a constant-quality method. YouTube's recommended bitrates are 8 Mbps for 1080p 24–30 fps SDR and 12 Mbps for 48–60 fps. YouTube compresses again, so upload with more headroom than that. YouTube recommends putting the moov atom at the front of the file, but the settings above don't have -movflags +faststart, so add it for upload. The Seedance 1080p original is 10-bit HEVC (about 15.6 Mbps), so don't compress intermediate files too low.

One-click prompt

Export the final video with quality-based compression instead of a fixed bitrate, and put the metadata first so it starts playing quickly: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 17 -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:a aac -b:a 192k -movflags +faststart out.mp4. Lower the crf number for more quality.

See it in real films and ads

FFmpeg Wiki — H.264 encoding guide (CRF and preset)

AI-made examples

Not verified

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