<p>I am not sure the bit rate you mean is the bit rate for the compressed video. If so, for a good video quality, the bit-rate, compression ratio, frame rate and SNR are critical. The bigger the bit-rate the better the video quality provided that the others parameters are constant. For example, if you record a video for 1080p 30fps, the video quality of a 20Mbps bit rate is better than 5Mbps.<br>
On the other hand the smaller bit rate has a better compression ratio. So this is a question of balance between video quality and compression ratio.<br>
If you want to be serious about the video codec, you may need to read the video standards (eg. H.264, MPEG4, VC1, DIVX, etc. for what is macro-blocks, motion vectors) or you can search over website for "Introduction to video codec".<br>
Hope it can help.</p>