How much bandwith is required to stream 1080p?

I am wondering how much bandwith is required to stream a 1080p movie from for example Youtube. I am aware that there may be things such as compression that come in play here, but can anyone provide a good answer for this anyways?

Solution 1:

Compressing using x264, a "typical" file ends up somewhere around 8GB for 100 minutes of movie. To stream this without problems, you need a speed of 8GB/100 minutes ~= 1.3MB/s ~= 10Mb/s.

It is directly dependent on compression rate (and more correctly: bitrate), though. Youtube compresses material quite strongly. Try downloading a 1080p Youtube video with some of the (many) available services and divide by length to get an average bitrate (or check the bitrate directly with some tool - your connection simply needs to be able to handle the audio+video bitrate).

Solution 2:

I was able to calculate the bandwidth and storage for a 1080P video (with additional parameters) on this website:

http://stardot.com/bandwidth-and-storage-calculator

• H.264 compressed 1080P HD @ 30 FPS
• "High Video Quality" (not sure what that means)
• Average Frame Size: 50KB
• Bandwidth Required Per Camera: 12.0 Mbps
• Estimated Storage (24 hours per day * 31 days): 4 TB