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As your content's screen size and resolution increase, so do its demands on the server. Determine how you want to use the content and in what context. Are you distributing the content to a wide audience? If so, then you should try to keep the file size to a minimum. Will your audience be using a variety of connection speeds to access the content? If so, you may want to use multiple-bit-rate encoding for your content.
To determine a rough estimate of the bandwidth requirement for each user, divide the file size by the playback time in seconds. For example, a 2 megabyte (MB) digital media file represents about 16,000,000 bits. If the content is about 1 1/2 minutes in length, you have an average bit rate of 180 kilobits per second (Kbps). Most dial-up modems cannot transfer information faster than 56 Kbps, which means a client accessing your stream using a telephone line will either have to wait for the player to buffer the file before it begins to play or will only receive intermittent video and audio.