Why are Video Bit Rates Important?
Users sometimes upload videos with far higher video bit rates than can actually be displayed on their digital signage system. This means that excess bandwidth is consumed, storage on both the server and the player is depleted. And the end user sees nothing different than if more optimised videos had been used. Also, media players use excessive CPU potentially slowing down the device while attempting to render videos of far higher quality than can actually be displayed on the screen.
Users should endeavour to keep video quality data bit rate between 1Mbps to 3Mbps to maintain the reasonable file size. For more information on the definition of bit rate, please read here.
Bit rate is basically a measure of the quality of an audio or video file. However, above a certain threshold, any improvements will be indistinguishable to the end viewer. The screen itself simply wouldn’t have the resolution, definition or colour separation to display above a certain level of quality nor would the end user’s eye be able to detect any additional improvement.
What Video Bit Rates Should I Aim For?
As a guide, here are some expected file sizes for good digital signage display:
| Output size | Bitrate | Filesize |
| 320×240 pixels | 400 kbps | 3MB / minute |
| 480×270 pixels | 700 kbps | 5MB / minute |
| 1024 x 576 pixels | 1500 kbps | 11MB / minute |
| 1280×720 pixels | 2500 kbps | 19MB / minute |
| 1920×1080 pixels | 4000 kbps | 30MB / minute |
The SignCloud system will show a warning if the video format is not compatible with the system. This can be solved by using re-encode features which users can see when mouse cursor is hover to the item. When using the re-encode option, SignCloud will automatically re-encode the video at the optimal bit rate and using standard H.264 format.
