NDI HX Bitrate Calculator
NewTek / Vizrt · Raw and stream bitrate for one NDI HX signal.
- Raw bitrate
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- Stream bitrate (NDI HX)
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- Compression ratio
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- Streams on 1 GbE
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- Streams on 10 GbE
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- Recommended link
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- Endpoint power
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Supports up to 420 · 8-bit. H.264/H.265-based, low bitrate.
About NDI HX
NDI HX is the compressed NDI variant built on H.264/H.265, trading some latency and colour for a much lower bitrate — ideal for Wi-Fi, WAN and large channel counts.
NDI HX keeps NDI’s auto-discovery and routing but encodes with H.264/H.265 (4:2:0, 8-bit), so a 1080p stream drops to a few Mbps instead of tens. It is the choice when bandwidth, not absolute quality, is the constraint.
The bitrate is the raw signal divided by the codec ratio (≈120:1 here). A 1080p30 4:2:0 source is about 746 Mbps raw and roughly 6 Mbps on the wire — hundreds of streams can share a single 1 GbE link.
Worked example
A 1080p30 4:2:0 signal is 746.5 Mbps raw; NDI HX compresses it about 120:1, so the stream is about 6.2 Mbps. That is why NDI HX scales to Wi-Fi and WAN.
Frequently asked questions
Is NDI HX lower quality than NDI?
Yes — it uses 4:2:0 H.264/H.265, so it has less colour detail and slightly higher latency than Full Bandwidth NDI.
When should I use NDI HX?
When bandwidth is limited (Wi-Fi, VPN, many simultaneous channels) and a little latency/quality loss is acceptable.
Does NDI HX work on 1 GbE?
Easily — at ~6 Mbps per 1080p stream, one 1 GbE link carries a very large number of streams.
What is the difference between raw and stream bitrate?
Raw is the uncompressed signal (width × height × frame rate × bits per pixel); stream is what the codec actually puts on the wire after compression. The compression ratio is raw ÷ stream.
What do 4:4:4, 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 mean?
They describe chroma subsampling — how much colour detail is kept relative to brightness. 4:4:4 keeps full colour (3× bit depth per pixel), 4:2:2 keeps two-thirds, and 4:2:0 keeps half (1.5×).
Related calculators
- NDI Full Bandwidth Bitrate Calculator
- Q-SYS MediaCast Bitrate Calculator
- H.264 / AVC Bitrate Calculator
- IP Video Bitrate Calculator — compare every codec side by side.
- Switch Configurator — size the switch for these streams.
Disclaimer: bitrates are planning estimates. Confirm final figures with your codec and switch vendor.