Recommended Bitrates

Bitrate should be proportional to the resolution you want and it depends on how complex the motion is on the video. For general use case, I would recommend something along 15002000 kbps for 720p, 8001000kbps for 480p and 2500~3000 kbps for 1080p. Most of the video would still look fine, unless the video has high motion movement, which when it does, the video usually has a noticeable artifacts.

For better needs of your business, it's better to do trial and error using some sample videos, preferably with different complexities (e.g.: video with stationary object vs video with fast-paced movement, low-bitrate source vs high-bitrate source, etc.)

MediaConvert includes some built in Templates and Presets which are an excellent place to start out.

Here's a link to some documentation on how to work with them: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/mediaconvert/latest/ug/working-with-job-templates.html

I would recommend starting out with the "System-Ott_Hls_Ts_Avc_Aac" System Template. This will encode an ABR stack with increasing resolutions and bitrates from 270p up to 1080p. You may find you need more or less outputs, or that you want higher or lower bitrates depending on the source content.

For reference, the included "_Ott_Hls_Ts_Avc_Aac_16x9_1920x1080p_30Hz_8500Kbp" preset is 1920x1080 at 30fps and with a 8.5Mb bitrate.