How to estimate video bandwidth

January 19, 2023

Calculating how much bandwidth you'll need to deliver video to your audience depends on a variety of factors, including the quality and length of your videos, the number of viewers you have, and the size of your content library. Here are some general steps you can take to estimate your bandwidth requirements:

  1. Determine the total size of your content library: The size of your library is the total amount of data you have stored in it. You can measure this in gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB). If you're a Streamable customer, you can view your library usage in settings.

  2. Determine the average video file size of your content: The average file size of your video will impact the amount of bandwidth you need to deliver it. You can calculate this by dividing the total size of your library by the number of videos in it.

  3. Estimate the number of viewers who will access your video: You need to consider how many people will view a video and how frequently they will watch it.

  4. Calculate the total bandwidth needed: To calculate the total bandwidth needed, multiply the average video file size by the number of times each video will be accessed in a month, and then multiply that by the number of users.

For example, let's say you have 1000 Patreon subscribers and they watch 3 videos per month on average. Your videos are in 1080p and 60 minute episodes, so the average file size of your videos is 3.6GB. The total bandwidth needed would be:

3.6GB(File Size) x 1,000 viewers x 3 views/month = 10,800 Gbps (or 10.8TB)

Why do video hosts charge for bandwidth?

In short, it's because streaming video costs money to deliver to your audience. When viewers stream video, they consume bandwidth from the company's network. To provide a high-quality and reliable stream, video hosts need to support infrastructure (e.g. servers, data centers) and maintain network connections to transfer the video. Hosts like YouTube offer their services for free because they cover these costs with advertising or revenue-sharing with video creators.