Let’s say both the livestream and the video are viewed in 480p. How much data would be consumed in 1 hour for each?
In: 263
I assume by “normal video” you mean something like regular YouTube or Netflix.
*At the same perceived video quality, all else being equal*, a Netflix stream would consume less than a YouTube video, and a livestream would consume significantly more.
The reason is that at Netflix, the same video is watched a lot, so they can afford to put a huge amount of compute power into compressing the video in the best way possible.
A live stream, on the other hand, needs to be compressed in real time, no time to do it well.
However, in reality, the chosen video quality will differ a lot. So Netflix may not actually use less data – but it may look significantly better than the same content would look like if it were livestreamed.
The content itself also matters a lot. A quiet meditative view of a sunset with barely anything moving will be much smaller than a fast paced video game stream (again, assuming the same quality – you can make the game stream just as small but it’ll look like crap).
So: in theory, yes, in practice, the other factors will be more important. A 720p Twitch live stream looks better than a 720p YouTube live stream of the exact same game, but will likely also use much more data.
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