bitrateladder

A bitrate ladder is a set of predefined bitrate levels used in video encoding to ensure consistent quality across different video streams. It is commonly used in video streaming services and video encoding software to optimize the balance between video quality and bandwidth usage. The bitrate ladder typically consists of multiple bitrate levels, each corresponding to a specific quality level, such as 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 1440p or 2160p for higher resolutions. Each level is assigned a bitrate range, which determines the amount of data used to encode the video at that quality level. For example, a 720p video might have a bitrate range of 1,500 to 3,000 kbps, while a 1080p video might have a bitrate range of 3,000 to 6,000 kbps. The bitrate ladder helps streamers and encoders to quickly select the appropriate bitrate for a given video quality, ensuring that the video is encoded efficiently and consistently. It is an essential tool in video encoding and streaming, as it allows for the optimization of video quality and bandwidth usage.