An editing apparatus, and a bit rate control method and program are capable of converting a material bit rate of video material to a desired output bit rate without picture quality deterioration in a short time and simply. According to this invention, a bit rate determination unit 2 compares a material bit rate of entered video material S1 to be edited with an output bit rate. In a case where the output bit rate is larger than the material bit rate, the null data insertion unit 5 adds meaningless data to the material data of the video material to convert the material bit rate to the output bit rate. As a result, the material data of the video material S1 can be output without picture quality deterioration with the material bit rate converted to the output bit rate.