Best bitrate for streaming flash videos?

I stream flash videos and to get good quality it seems that I need a bitrate of around 2mb.
However I worry this will use a lot of bandwidth and cause issues for users with slower connections.
What is the ideal bitrate for streaming flash videos that is suitable for the majority of web users?

What is the size of videos (in pixels) streamed by you?

1920 x 1028 HD - I want to stream at the best quality possible without limiting too many users.

Well gangsta1, it is pretty much, higher the quality higher the bitrate. So, you do not have much chance for lowering the bitrate as your videos are 1920x1028. Sure, you can go as lower as you wish, but then it would be meaningless to create videos at such high res. So I guess you must decide over quality vs accessibility.

The best quality you'll get for an 1080p video is using a bitrate of 8Mbps for MP4. So if yours is a 1080p and 2Mbps, the quality will be bad and you see lot of pixellation. It's better you reduce the resolution(size) of the video to 720p.

How about if I convert the source file to:

1280x720, 2.5 Mbit/s; MP3, 256 Kbit/s, 44.1 kHz, Stereo ?

This lowers the resolution and give 2.5MB Bitrate - Is that suitable for streaming or is it still too high for many users?

gangsta1 said:

How about if I convert the source file to:

1280x720, 2.5 Mbit/s; MP3, 256 Kbit/s, 44.1 kHz, Stereo ?

This lowers the resolution and give 2.5MB Bitrate - Is that suitable for streaming or is it still too high for many users?

Click to expand...

There are lot of scenarios to be considered when you try to balance the quality to bandwidth of the users. The bitrate is nothing but the data which you send it your client. Say if it's 2.5Mbps, you are spreading the data of 2.5Mb in 1280x720 (720p) matrix, so the detail (or quality) is much better than if you spread the same amount of data across a 1920x1080 (1080p) matrix.

I think 2.5 Mbps is still high for many users. You can create videos in different bitrates like 720p with 1/2/2.5 Mbps to check the quality yourself. Also there are some players which is smart enough to pick the right resolution/bitrate depending on the client's bandwidth. So all you need is to place videos with different resolution and bitrates, so that the player takes care of dynamically picking right one for the user(just like how youtube has different options).

Listen to the guy above me. He got it right.