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HRN ‘Buffering’ Test

HRN ‘Buffering’ Test

I (Gary K4AAQ) learned a lesson. RTFM. Well, there is no manual, but there is no end of help files on YouTube streaming.

I had been looking at ways to improve the video from Premiere Pro, my editing software. I had been rendering files for YouTube at 4 or 5 Mbps (megabits per second), with a few other encoder settings that I always saw, but didn’t know anything about. So I looked them up, set better options, and increased the bit rate to 8 Mbps, which indeed result in better video.

So of course I applied that to YouTube. Big mistake.

I stream at 720p30 (720 vertical lines, progressive scan, 30 frames per second). That’s a very conservative setting, fine for our mostly ‘talking head’ video. I had been encoding that at 4 Mbps, but based on my experimenting with Premiere Pro, I decided to increase the bit rate to 8 Mbps.

Let the buffering begin.

In the middle of the night last night, I connected the dots. *Increaseed bit rate* — *Shows begin buffering*

They don’t call me a genioujs for nothing.

I looked it up and found a table of YouTube designated max bir rates for various video resolutions. 720p30’s highest rate is 4 Mbps. Sigh.

So this is a test, back at 4 Mbps.