RTMP Stream Bitrate alternatives

Question

Which bit rates would you assign as normal and high based on a HD-H.264 RTMP stream considering exclusively broadband connections (using a progressive stream fallback for slower connections) ?

EDIT :

Lacking of answers I realize my question is just far too vague. The "answer" was not meant to be a solution in itself - which is just not possible because it all depends of the market to target (location, demography), the context, the requirements in terms of quality, etc.

I just thought it would be interesting to do a quick pool about the matter in order to share different points of view. There may possibly be some relevant opinions and factors to consider.

Quick Example:

For the current project. On one hand I require a high quality stream (for full-screen). And of course, on the other it also has to be fast. The problem to solve is to balance it up to satisfy the most...

For the "high" option I would prioritize modern broadband with the around 2.5-3Mbits, to be able to deliver an almost perfect stream for the lucky ones having a > 4Mbits broadband connection (e.g. very common in Europe) without abusing the CDNs bandwidth.

For the "normal" option I would prioritize the slower broadband connections with something close to 1.2Mbits stream. If I go below 1Mbits the quality is just too poor and I'd rather use a progressive stream to make sure everybody is watching the video with a correct quality.

So that's my plan for this particular case ... Any clever way to balance it up on an other way ? Any interesting (from your POV) user case ? An other perspective / way of thinking ? Any points to consider ? Opinions in general ? etc.

Answer 1

I would try 512Kbps for normal and 1Mbps for High.

Answer 2

Do you mean RTSP ? Here in France we have a provider that is providing tv channels in RTSP, so that you can view it on a computer using VLC. I think the compression is MPEG-2, and the stream is around 3.5 / 4 MBs

Some channels are also available in HD, but I did not try it. Be careful that people might have a good connection, but it can become quite loosy if they use Wifi.

You can google for RTSP + multiposte + freebox +bandwith and see if you can find some more information

Edit : I don't think the protocol matters that much. I guess with H264 you can target lower rate than MPEG2. With an MP4 encoder doing live encoding (1 frame latency) What I consider medium quality was achieved at 1 Mbps on a Full-D1 video source. What do you mean by HD exactly ?

The question is not very clear yet, because there is two aspects : What are the encoding sources and condition, what are the decoding resources. This will give you a scale of bitrate vs visuals quality.

And then you have the problem of target audience and bandwidth and the quality of service you need.

Where is your bottleneck ?

Answer 3

No answers : (