H.264, HEVC and HDR: what your destinations will accept
Live delivery is H.264. HEVC would use fewer bits for the same picture, but major live destinations reject it outright, and HDR is only admitted when paired with HEVC — so HDR is not available on this path today.
Codec discussions get theoretical quickly. The practical version is short, because the decision is not really yours: it is made by the platforms you are sending to, and they have settled somewhere more conservative than the technology allows.
H.264 is the format that works everywhere
It is old, it is not the most efficient thing available, and it is decoded in hardware by every phone, television, laptop and set-top box that anybody watching you owns. For live contribution and live delivery that universality beats efficiency, and it is why it remains the default.
Practically, this means budget the uplink for H.264 rates. Budget about 9 Mbps for a 1080p60 programme; a newer codec would carry the same picture in fewer bits, and you cannot use one.
What HEVC would buy, and why you cannot spend it
HEVC delivers comparable quality at meaningfully fewer bits, which is exactly what high-motion, high-contrast material such as a stage under a lighting chase wants most.
The obstacle is admission. Send HEVC to several of the largest live destinations and the format is refused outright — not degraded, refused. So the saving is not available to you regardless of what an encoder is capable of, and a plan that assumes it is a plan that fails at go-live rather than at design time.
HDR is gated behind HEVC, which closes the loop
Where HDR is accepted at all, it is accepted paired with HEVC. An HDR programme offered as H.264 is rejected on the grounds of the codec rather than the colour.
Put the two constraints together and the position is simple: because delivery is H.264, HDR is not on the table for live output today. If you are grading or lighting a show, grade for SDR and set the monitors accordingly rather than treating it as an open question to revisit on the day.
What this means for your camera choices
It does not mean buy worse cameras. A camera with more sensor resolution and better dynamic range than the output format still produces a visibly better 1080p SDR picture, because downscaling averages away noise and a wider latitude gives you a usable image in difficult light.
The thing to avoid is a purchase justified by a delivery capability that does not exist on this path. Buy the camera for the picture it gives you today, not for a format the destination will not accept.
Put it to work on a real show
The content type that would benefit most from HEVC, and therefore the one where budgeting the full H.264 rate matters most.
Where the HDR question comes up in procurement conversations and deserves a straight answer before kit is bought.
Related guides
For 1080p30, about 6 Mbps. For 1080p60, about 9. For 720p30, about 3, and 720p60, about 4.5. Frame rate drives the number far harder than resolution does, and your upload has to sustain it, not peak at it.
Because one encode has to satisfy every destination at once, the programme is clamped to the least capable one enabled. Switch on a service that caps live contribution at 720p and everything else receives 720p too.