Video Streaming Bandwidth Calculator (VOD)
Quick Bitrate Presets
Video Bitrate (kbps)
Total Viewers
Average Watch Time (minutes)
These figures are estimates based on average VOD viewing patterns and VdoCipher’s optimized encoding and delivery pipeline. Actual bandwidth usage may vary depending on content complexity, viewer behavior, adaptive bitrate switching, device type, and network conditions.
What is a Video Streaming Bandwidth Calculator?
A Video Streaming Bandwidth Calculator (VOD) estimates how much data transfer (egress) your on-demand video will consume based on three core inputs:
- Video bitrate (kbps): average delivered bitrate to viewers (usually ABR average, not the top rendition)
- Total viewers: number of viewers expected for that content (often per month / campaign)
- Average watch time (minutes): average minutes watched per viewer
It outputs:
- Per-viewer data transfer (MB per viewer for the chosen watch time)
- Total bandwidth required (GB) (total egress for all viewers)
This is primarily used for cost estimation, bandwidth planning, and selecting an encoding ladder for VOD delivery.
How does a Video Streaming Bandwidth Calculator Works?
For VOD, bandwidth usage is proportional to:
- how many seconds are watched, and
- how many bits per second you deliver.
Core calculation (VOD egress estimate)
If you input:
- bitrate_kbps (kilobits per second)
- watch_minutes
- viewers
Then:
- Convert watch time to seconds - watch_seconds = watch_minutes × 60
- Compute total bits delivered - total_bits = bitrate_kbps × 1000 × watch_seconds × viewers
- Convert to bytes - total_bytes = total_bits / 8
- Convert to GB - total_GB = total_bytes / 1,000,000,000
Per viewer transfer is the same formula without multiplying by viewers.
Other FAQs
What does “bitrate” mean in VOD streaming?
Bitrate is the amount of video data delivered per second during playback. In VOD, viewers usually receive adaptive bitrate (ABR) streams, so the “average delivered bitrate” is typically lower than the top quality rendition.
Should I enter the max bitrate or the average bitrate?
Use average delivered bitrate if you want realistic cost estimates.
Does this include audio, manifests, and streaming overhead?
Most simple calculators estimate using video bitrate only. Real-world delivery also includes: audio bitrate (e.g., 96–160 kbps), HLS/DASH manifests and segment container overhead, retries/rebuffering and adaptive switches. So actual usage can be a bit higher than the estimate.