7 ms·

> Decent quality starts at several 10s of Mbps, and high quality 1080p is in the 200-400Mbps range. What? No. 10 Mbps is already plenty for high quality 1080p

by magila 5y ago

> Decent quality starts at several 10s of Mbps, and high quality 1080p is in the 200-400Mbps range. What? No. 10 Mbps is already plenty for high quality 1080p with the latest codecs. Even 1080p Blurays only run 20-40 Mbps and they're typically very conservatively compressed.

wyager 5y ago
BR is different because the encoder doesn’t have to be real-time. It’s also just medium quality. 1080p60 264 or 265 encoded at 200+Mbps is what you get out of decent video cameras.
- fomine3 5y ago
  I believe such high bitrate for 1080p is I-frame only. It's useful for video editing, but not suitable for this context.
  - wyager 5y ago
    Many mid range video cameras support “long GOP” which means P-frames. They still spit out however many hundreds of Mbps you ask for.
- gsich 5y ago
  You can be conservative and assume that a live-encoding will require double the bitrate for the same quality. So for very high quality 15 Mbps you need 30.
- topranks 5y ago
  60fps looks disgusting though.
  - wyager 5y ago
    I agree it looks weird for cinema, but I prefer it for video chats. It feels more authentic.
toofy 5y ago
I think a lot of people might take issue with the statement “plenty high”. This type of statement comes across as similar to when we constantly heard ISPs decrying “25 down is plenty! it’s only pirates who need more than this!” and this was only a few years ago when ISPs were spouting this insanity. Using your numbers — and we’ll pretend we haven’t already sailed past 1080p as a standard — if we expect better than garbage zoom tier quality, at 20-40 for one stream, most of our isp connections are currently woefully slow for uploads. Many many many people have others who live in their households, whether they’re roommates, partners, or kids. So if you have 3 people on video chat, suddenly if we want high quality streams, that need goes from 20 and shoots up to 60+. If you have 3 kids on a video chat or streaming for school or play and a parent or two working from home, suddenly you’re up to 100+ upload. And that’s ignoring that 1080p is becoming old world. I haven’t looked recently, but when buying my last monitor set a year ago, 4k seemed to be by far the most commonly available. this whole x amount of bandwidth “is plenty” almost always seems to ignore a) real life situations of most families/roommates and b) forward moving technologies.
- crazygringo 5y ago
  Where are you coming up with these numbers 20-40 Mbps for a single video stream? That's insane. Like I mentioned in another comment, high-quality rips of 1080p movies tend to be 5 Mbps, and that's generally with a lot more detail and motion than what your camera is filming at home. There's really no point in 1080p streaming video above Zoom's 3.8 Mbps. Even that's already overkill which is why almost nobody uses it. While the "20 mbps" you're talking about is beyond the threshold of lossless for human perception, and 40 is beyond that. And beyond it? There's virtually no use for 4K video in personal communications, nobody wants to see the pores in your nose. It's not about technological limitation, it's about use cases. And a 20 mbps uplink handles the real life situations of most families and roommates just fine, when you use actual real numbers and not the ones you're just making up.
  - wyager 5y ago
    If you’re can’t tell the difference between 20Mbps and 200Mbps you need glasses. This isn’t even some audiophile-tier argument about an extra 60kbps in MP3 or whatever; there are obvious compression artifacts in 20Mbps real-time-encoded CBR video, especially on any kind of remotely high-entropy scene. > high-quality rips of 1080p movies tend to be 5 Mbps This is nonsense. A decent 20-30GB BRRip will be at least 25-30Mbps. Also, it’s not a fair comparison because it’s not real time encoding. If you can afford to encode in 5% real-time speed you can get much better compression ratios.
reassembled 5y ago
I don’t understand why everyone is supposing that an entire household should be fine with the ability to send at most a single video stream out. What if both my wife and I have separate calls we need to be on? Or my kids want to play Fortnite while I’m uploading data for work? 10mbps up is 1990s-era tech.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  I don't think anyone suggests that. But if we compare a "modern" asymmetrical connection such as a 250/50 or a 500/100 or a 600/300 or a 1000/100 then the "one HD stream is sub 5mbps" still means an asymmetric connection fits lots of these streams! Obviously a 100/10 or 25/5 connection isn't going to cut it. I think really the gist of the article is "You need enough bandwidth in both directions". That's it. If you have a 100mbit, 200mbit or 500mbit or 1000mbit down with a 100+ mbit up, that's less important. "Symmetry" doesn't matter, it's enough bandwidth in both directions that matters. The fact that "enough in both directions" and "symmetric" have been conflated is that because for a part of history, only symmetric connections did have enough upload bandwidth. With the gigabit and multi-gigabit down bandwidths, there is less need for symmetry so long as you have a fast upload.
  - topranks 5y ago
    On a technical level most of the asymmetric techniques just carve up the spectrum/bandwidth (in Mhz) to give more of it to downstream. Or timeslots or whatever. I fully agree with the EFF that you need a decent upload, to support the applications of today and next few years. But to go fully symmetric actually means to lower the download in favour of upload, allocating exactly half of the spectrum to each. So absolutely, once you reach a certain threshold I think most users are going to opt to carve up the spectrum in a way that favours download, just based on typical needs.
    - novok 5y ago
      A dynamically allocating bandwidth allotment from a fixed budget would probably be a great improvement. 5 seperate zoom call time? More upload! Netflix time? More download, less upload! 3am backup upload time, mostly upload!

by magila 5y ago

wyager 5y ago

BR is different because the encoder doesn’t have to be real-time. It’s also just medium quality. 1080p60 264 or 265 encoded at 200+Mbps is what you get out of decent video cameras.

fomine3 5y ago
I believe such high bitrate for 1080p is I-frame only. It's useful for video editing, but not suitable for this context.
- wyager 5y ago
  Many mid range video cameras support “long GOP” which means P-frames. They still spit out however many hundreds of Mbps you ask for.
gsich 5y ago
You can be conservative and assume that a live-encoding will require double the bitrate for the same quality. So for very high quality 15 Mbps you need 30.
topranks 5y ago
60fps looks disgusting though.
- wyager 5y ago
  I agree it looks weird for cinema, but I prefer it for video chats. It feels more authentic.

toofy 5y ago

I think a lot of people might take issue with the statement “plenty high”. This type of statement comes across as similar to when we constantly heard ISPs decrying “25 down is plenty! it’s only pirates who need more than this!” and this was only a few years ago when ISPs were spouting this insanity. Using your numbers — and we’ll pretend we haven’t already sailed past 1080p as a standard — if we expect better than garbage zoom tier quality, at 20-40 for one stream, most of our isp connections are currently woefully slow for uploads. Many many many people have others who live in their households, whether they’re roommates, partners, or kids. So if you have 3 people on video chat, suddenly if we want high quality streams, that need goes from 20 and shoots up to 60+. If you have 3 kids on a video chat or streaming for school or play and a parent or two working from home, suddenly you’re up to 100+ upload. And that’s ignoring that 1080p is becoming old world. I haven’t looked recently, but when buying my last monitor set a year ago, 4k seemed to be by far the most commonly available. this whole x amount of bandwidth “is plenty” almost always seems to ignore a) real life situations of most families/roommates and b) forward moving technologies.

crazygringo 5y ago
Where are you coming up with these numbers 20-40 Mbps for a single video stream? That's insane. Like I mentioned in another comment, high-quality rips of 1080p movies tend to be 5 Mbps, and that's generally with a lot more detail and motion than what your camera is filming at home. There's really no point in 1080p streaming video above Zoom's 3.8 Mbps. Even that's already overkill which is why almost nobody uses it. While the "20 mbps" you're talking about is beyond the threshold of lossless for human perception, and 40 is beyond that. And beyond it? There's virtually no use for 4K video in personal communications, nobody wants to see the pores in your nose. It's not about technological limitation, it's about use cases. And a 20 mbps uplink handles the real life situations of most families and roommates just fine, when you use actual real numbers and not the ones you're just making up.
- wyager 5y ago
  If you’re can’t tell the difference between 20Mbps and 200Mbps you need glasses. This isn’t even some audiophile-tier argument about an extra 60kbps in MP3 or whatever; there are obvious compression artifacts in 20Mbps real-time-encoded CBR video, especially on any kind of remotely high-entropy scene. > high-quality rips of 1080p movies tend to be 5 Mbps This is nonsense. A decent 20-30GB BRRip will be at least 25-30Mbps. Also, it’s not a fair comparison because it’s not real time encoding. If you can afford to encode in 5% real-time speed you can get much better compression ratios.

reassembled 5y ago

I don’t understand why everyone is supposing that an entire household should be fine with the ability to send at most a single video stream out. What if both my wife and I have separate calls we need to be on? Or my kids want to play Fortnite while I’m uploading data for work? 10mbps up is 1990s-era tech.

alkonaut 5y ago
I don't think anyone suggests that. But if we compare a "modern" asymmetrical connection such as a 250/50 or a 500/100 or a 600/300 or a 1000/100 then the "one HD stream is sub 5mbps" still means an asymmetric connection fits lots of these streams! Obviously a 100/10 or 25/5 connection isn't going to cut it. I think really the gist of the article is "You need enough bandwidth in both directions". That's it. If you have a 100mbit, 200mbit or 500mbit or 1000mbit down with a 100+ mbit up, that's less important. "Symmetry" doesn't matter, it's enough bandwidth in both directions that matters. The fact that "enough in both directions" and "symmetric" have been conflated is that because for a part of history, only symmetric connections did have enough upload bandwidth. With the gigabit and multi-gigabit down bandwidths, there is less need for symmetry so long as you have a fast upload.
- topranks 5y ago
  On a technical level most of the asymmetric techniques just carve up the spectrum/bandwidth (in Mhz) to give more of it to downstream. Or timeslots or whatever. I fully agree with the EFF that you need a decent upload, to support the applications of today and next few years. But to go fully symmetric actually means to lower the download in favour of upload, allocating exactly half of the spectrum to each. So absolutely, once you reach a certain threshold I think most users are going to opt to carve up the spectrum in a way that favours download, just based on typical needs.
  - novok 5y ago
    A dynamically allocating bandwidth allotment from a fixed budget would probably be a great improvement. 5 seperate zoom call time? More upload! Netflix time? More download, less upload! 3am backup upload time, mostly upload!