Return to Video Glossary

Bit Rate

Bit Rate: Bitrate measures the quantity of data in a given unit of time (usually measured in seconds). In general, the greater the bitrate is the higher the quality will be, however, the greater bitrate will also yield a larger data footprint. Bitrate measurement of digital audio is based on the following equation and is usually expressed in kbits/second:

Bit rate = (bit depth) x (sampling rate) x (number of channels).

Bitrate measurement for digital video is dependent on pixel resolution, frames per second, the color mode, and the color depth. [ Audio Glossary ] [ Video Glossary ]

Permanent link to this article: https://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/gettingstarted/glossary/videoglossary/bit-rate/