What's a good bitrate?

[Guest TylerDurdenK]

I have been encoding a few films to MP4 for playback through my Vega, and have selected to have the output files match the vega's width of 1024 pixels (the height dimension varies with aspect ratio)

What I would like to know is what would an acceptable bit rate be for a file like this, to give good quality but a smallish file size.

Thanks

[Guest warriorscot]

It's really in the eye of the beholder. I tend to actually adjust it till I get it to the exact file size I want rather than fuss with the quality so it varies for me but around 1000kbps is usually the minimum and definitely not less than 650. A lot of it depends on the source as well. The better the source quality the better the output at the end of conversion so better quality source means you can get a way with lower bitrates and vice versa with higher bitrates and poor sources.