AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH is greater than BANDWIDTH
A variant claims its average bitrate is higher than its peak, which cannot be true and misleads ABR.
What it means
BANDWIDTH is the peak segment bitrate; AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH is the mean across the rendition. The average cannot exceed the peak, so one of the two values is wrong.
Why it matters
Players use both figures to estimate whether a rendition will fit the connection. Contradictory values make that estimate meaningless, and some players reject the variant outright. It usually indicates hand-edited or stale metadata, which means the other numbers are suspect too.
How to fix it
- Recompute both from the actual segments rather than editing the playlist by hand.
- BANDWIDTH must be the maximum bitrate of any segment; AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH the mean over the whole rendition.
- Use the segment probe on this site to see what the media actually contains.
Check your own stream
The free HLS analyzer runs this check on every analysis and links each finding straight back here.
Open the HLS analyzer →Frequently asked questions
- What does "AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH is greater than BANDWIDTH" mean?
- BANDWIDTH is the peak segment bitrate; AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH is the mean across the rendition. The average cannot exceed the peak, so one of the two values is wrong.
- Why does it matter?
- Players use both figures to estimate whether a rendition will fit the connection. Contradictory values make that estimate meaningless, and some players reject the variant outright. It usually indicates hand-edited or stale metadata, which means the other numbers are suspect too.
- How do I fix it?
- 1. Recompute both from the actual segments rather than editing the playlist by hand. 2. BANDWIDTH must be the maximum bitrate of any segment; AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH the mean over the whole rendition. 3. Use the segment probe on this site to see what the media actually contains.
- How do I check an HLS playlist for this automatically?
- Paste the master or media playlist URL into the free HLS analyzer. It runs this check on every analysis alongside the ladder, timing and live-edge audits, and links each finding back to the page that explains it.
- What is the first thing to try?
- Recompute both from the actual segments rather than editing the playlist by hand.
Related HLS checks
- HLS ladder has a bitrate inversionA lower-resolution variant is allocated more bandwidth than a higher-resolution one, so adaptive switching picks the wrong rendition.
- HLS variant is missing the CODECS attributeWithout CODECS, players must download a segment before they can tell whether they can play the rendition at all.
- HLS variant references an undeclared rendition groupA variant points at an AUDIO or SUBTITLES group that has no matching EXT-X-MEDIA entry, which breaks playback on strict players.
- HLS segment is longer than EXT-X-TARGETDURATIONA segment rounds to more than the declared target duration, which violates the HLS specification.
- HLS live window is shorter than three target durationsThe playlist holds too little content, so any player that falls slightly behind runs off the end of the window.
- HLS playlist has no EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIMEWithout program date-time the stream cannot be mapped to wall-clock time, which breaks DVR seeking and multi-stream alignment.