This video that Hikvision Support put out last week includes a section on bitrate which should help you understand the basics of bitrate and the effect it has on your stream. (Tip number 1 in the video - starts at 0:41)
Another thing to remember when setting bitrate is that for Hikvision cameras there are 2 types of bitrate, Constant Bitrate (CBR) or Maximum Bitrate (MBR - Hikvision call it variable bitrate but it is not truly variable)
CBR means the camera is set to a fixed bitrate which it will try to stay fixed to but this comes at the cost of the video resolution/quality as the image will get better/worse to increase/decrease the bitrate so it stays at that set value.
MBR does the opposite as the bitrate is allowed to vary whilst maintaining a fixed resolution/video quality. (e.g. if you had an 8MP camera recording a scene that suddenly becomes very busy with people the bitrate would increase to maintain that 8MP image) The difference between MBR and VBR (variable bitrate) is that MBR is capped with a maximum bitrate that it cannot exceed.