We just started producing HD video. Coming from SD video. In today’s web age can’t most people in the U.S. view 720p video on the internet?

Our company produces instructional videos that get delivered to the clients by DVD but we also have moved forward to viewing online. My problem is I’m not sure how to approach my web guy about HD video over the web. I would say most of our clients have a fast connection. He is asking for all the old SD videos and me to convert them to .webm/.ogm/.mp4 so he’s doing HTML5. How does this work with HD so the client can have that as an option? He is asking for 400 kbps for our current SD videos and gets worried when a video is like 60MB so that worries me that he doesn’t know much about video.

How does bitrate work with HD video? How should we provide it?

Are you running a streaming server or are you trying to run HTTP Streaming?

There are a heap of different options available to you depending on which way you're trying to 'stream', or whether you're allowing downloads. It also depends on which player you're trying to run, my favourite two being JWplayer and Flowplayer being my favourites.

In today’s web age can’t most people in the U.S. view 720p video on the internet?

Anybody with a computer from 2009 onwards should be able to playback 720p24 web video. It is the current standard.


I’m not sure how to approach my web guy about HD video over the web. I would say most of our clients have a fast connection. He is asking for all the old SD videos and me to convert them to .webm/.ogm/.mp4 so he’s doing HTML5. How does this work with HD so the client can have that as an option?

Doesn't change a thing, except SD will have to resampled to HD (720p) with deinterlacing, and the bit rate (and possibly frame rate) will change. No big deal.


He is asking for 400 kbps for our current SD videos and gets worried when a video is like 60MB so that worries me that he doesn’t know much about video.

How does bitrate work with HD video? How should we provide it?

Try the Vimeo settings for starters: https://vimeo.com/help/compression HD videos are large, even when compressed to H.264. It is a major commitment!

Hope this helps.

He is asking for 400 kbps for our current SD videos and gets worried when a video is like 60MB so that worries me that he doesn’t know much about video.

How does bitrate work with HD video? How should we provide it?

At 400kbps a 60MB file is about 20 minutes of video. Usable HD bitrates range from 1500 to about 3800kbps. HD video should be delivered using a distributed global content delivery network such as Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, CacheFly, EdgeCast or Limelight. My guess is about half of US homes with broadband internet do not have sufficient bandwidth to stream HD video. Thus, it is important to always have an SD option.

Thanks. This was my web guy's response (below). Our current videos (SD) are around 450kbps. I'm testing out exporting an H.264 720p (8 mins long) at 1.3 Mbps and the file size is only about double and looks pretty good. What's the lowest have you guys heard of going at 720p? Most of these videos display in a set player on our webpages ((like youtube players look) and not view full screen i would guess. his response below...


Using the HD option will eat our servers alive.

HD is typically delivered on blueray, not dvd, and your talking about 25 gigs on a blueray dvd… The web servers use more expensive hard drives to where the amount of space needed and cost would triple the hosting that we use.
With increased file size comes with increased bandwidth. Again, we use around 500-750GB a month during the busy season , if the video is 10 times the size, we will use 10 times the amount of bandwidth.

In all reality, we pay about $500 a month for our current hosting environment. If we wanted to upgrade to an environment that we can stream hd video, we’d be looking at no less than $2000-3000 a month, maybe more.

Would it not make more sense to get a Vimeo Plus or Vimeo Pro account and use them for the HD video hosting? Is there a good reason why you need to host it on your own servers?

I only ask because we do all our own web hosting at work, but video goes elsewhere (Youtube, in our case).

Hmmm, the Vimeo pro option seems interesting. So when you upload to Vimeo, if the end user does not have the connection to play HD will vimeo offer a SD option with lower bitrate? like how youtube does?

In all reality, we pay about $500 a month for our current hosting environment. If we wanted to upgrade to an environment that we can stream hd video, we’d be looking at no less than $2000-3000 a month, maybe more.

I think 720p HD video is usually 3x the bandwidth of SD video. Anyway, this is what your experiment shows where a rate of 1.3mbps was sufficient for HD. Note that 2250GB per month costs $300 per month on Amazon Cloudfront. Even though Amazon uses a regressive pricing scheme where small companies pay 5x as much as large ones, this may still be affordable. I assumed your needs required something more flexible than a Vimeo Pro account. If not, then Vimeo Pro might be better.

Your web guy is correct in that changing to HD will increase the storage space on the server for all the videos and the bandwidth required for all those views. At the quoted price, it sounds like you are paying for a service that provides streaming of the videos

Using a service such as Vimeo eliminates all that cost for bandwidth and storage space. When you upload a 720p video to VImeo, it generates the smaller 480p and mobile friendly versions of the file. You want at least a Vimeo Pro account so you get compression time without waiting in a queue.

When Vimeo has completed processing a video, it can then be embedded in your website (just like it is here on DVInfo). Your web guy will know how to use the embed code. Vimeo Pro also gives you some controls over who can see the video and on what sites it can be embedded.

But, when Vimeo has a problem, you have a problem. Caveat Emptor.

Are you selling these videos?

If so, does Vimeo offer you the ability to secure your content?

There are systems available that allow you to upload your videos and handle the charging for them too.

If you're not selling them, go YouTube. Thats probably where your audience is.