Video Bitrate Calculator

ProRes is designed as an editing-friendly intermediate format that prioritizes preserving quality and minimizing generation loss through multiple edits, which means it uses far less aggressive compression — roughly eight times the bits per pixel of H.264 in this calculator's model. H.264 and H.265 are instead designed as delivery codecs, using sophisticated compression techniques to shrink file size dramatically while keeping visual quality acceptable for final viewing.

H.265/HEVC's more advanced compression techniques achieve similar visual quality to H.264 at a meaningfully lower bitrate, which translates directly into smaller file sizes and lower bandwidth requirements for streaming or delivery. The tradeoff is that H.265 encoding and decoding demands more computing power and isn't as universally supported by older devices and software, which is why H.264 remains the safer choice when broad compatibility matters more than file size.

Real-world network connections rarely sustain their rated maximum throughput continuously — overhead, network congestion, and normal variability all eat into available bandwidth. Adding 50% headroom above the raw encode bitrate gives enough buffer that momentary dips in actual throughput don't immediately cause buffering or dropped frames during a live stream.

It's a solid planning estimate rather than an exact prediction, since actual bitrate for a specific real encode also depends on scene complexity, amount of motion, and the specific encoder settings and quality target used — a static talking-head video compresses more efficiently than fast-motion action footage even at identical resolution, frame rate, and codec. Use this figure to budget storage and bandwidth with reasonable confidence, but expect some variance from any single real-world export.