File size, syncing & available space on the iPad

[bobtomay]

A couple of good things to save space on the iPad.

Music: All of mine are 256kbps minimum and much of it over 800kbps. There is a new option on the General tab for syncing to the iPad to convert higher bit rate songs to 128kbps AAC. My guess for the approx 1,000 songs I loaded, roughly 25 GB were reduced to 3.5 GB. Warning, it takes a long time - as in over 2 hours. Your audiobooks are not converted - at least not the audible books I loaded.

Pictures: Loaded up 225 pics shot in RAW and Lg jpeg and in my Aperture 2 library. It optimizes on the fly for the iPad. Almost 1.2 GB became only 162 MB. This went relatively quick and I actually think they look better on the iPad than they do on my MBP.

Of course the two, yes count 'em - 2 - movies I put on there are a whopping 6.7 GB.

Total of 36 apps about 6 magazines and a half dozen of our Kindle books installed eat up another 1.1 GB.

I've synced a couple of times today doing a little experimenting and still am sitting at 46.27 free of 59.17 GB shown available.



For those still trying to decide what size iPad might be right for them:

16 GB: Not the size for you if you're planning on loading several movies at a time. For everyone else, this size is doable with some planning as you go.

32 GB: This is probably the size for most folks. You shouldn't need to do a whole lot of planning. You'll be able to have a larger selection of your music library and carry 3-4 HD movies or a whole season of a SD TV show around with you.

64 GB: You want to carry several thousand songs and audio books or you don't want to compress them down to 128kbps, don't want to worry about planning pretty much at all, have a boatload of stuff you just absolutely must have with you at all times, or just happen to have the extra cash at the right time, this is the size for you.

 

[the8thark]

This should be stickied. As it'd really help people choose which ipad is right for them. I'm undecided between 32 and 64 but your post is helping me somewhat to make that decision.

 

[Voony]

Bob, thanks for these tips.

About the music, is the sound quality the same when you convert them to128kpbs?

I couldn't find on iTunes info about how much gigs a TV show represent? HD or not HD....does anyone know that? Would be helpful....

And I suppose to soon we will be able to convert other videos we have to upload them onto iTunes and then iPad...

 

[Zoolook]

It largely depends on whether you're going to use it as a giant iPod. I have about 60% of my music on my 32gb iPhone along with about 3 tv episodes and maybe a movie. I'm going to use the iPad more for documents as well as tv shows. I'll always have my iPhone with me so really won't bother putting music on here. 32GB seems enough.

@voony

TV shows in SD come in around 12MBs a minute give or take. So a 45 minute show will be around half a gig.

 

[Voony]

It largely depends on whether you're going to use it as a giant iPod. I have about 60% of my music on my 32gb iPhone along with about 3 tv episodes and maybe a movie. I'm going to use the iPad more for documents as well as tv shows. I'll always have my iPhone with me so really won't bother putting music on here. 32GB seems enough.

@voony

TV shows in SD come in around 12MBs a minute give or take. So a 45 minute show will be around half a gig.

Geez...thanks for the info!

 

[bobtomay]

Size of iTunes purchased content in general:

SD movie at 2 hours: 1.3 GB
HD movie at 2 hours: <4 GB

Hour long TV shows (~40 min):
475-650 MB in SD
1.3-1.5 GB in HD

Since I made the decision to go with Windows for my HTPC, I don't have any video_ts movies that I've converted for play back in iTunes. Maybe we can get our resident expert with Handbrake to provide some info about approx file sizes.

I have not determined yet if there is a way to select moving the SD version over to the iPad when you have both versions available.

 

[funkdabeat]

20 minuits h.264 codec, aac audio, 1280x720 is around 800mb in MP4 format (apple tv format)

I have The dark knight, Batman which is a 2:32 hour movie in 1280x720 Apple Tv format in dolby digital 5.1 is 3.35GB.

I will convert the 20min movie into iPad format using iTunes and post up how latge the file size is.

 

[rfe959]

Great info!

 

[Voony]

Well I suppose that I won't need to store 10 movies at a time on my iPad lol

 

[Zoolook]

Well I suppose that I won't need to store 10 movies at a time on my iPad lol

No you won't.

It's easy to work out the file sizes accurately if you need to. An SD show will be 1,500 kilo bits per second for video + 128 Kbps audio.

So 1,628 kbps in total. Divide that by 8 to find kilo BYTES per second, which is 203.5 KBps.

Multiply that by 60 for minutes then 60 again for one hour, which equals 12,210KBs and 732,600KBs respectively.

Then divide by 1024 to get MBs for an hour to and you get 715 MBs for an hour show.

One little thing is that Apple now measure a MB as being 1,000 KBs and a GB as being 1,000 MBs (as opposed to 1,024) but the figures don't change enourmously at this level.

HD shows are more or less 4,500 kbps plus 160kbps audio, so:

1 hour = 2GBs give or take.

Same figures as Bobtomay more or less, but this is how they're calculated.

/geek

 

[Voony]

No you won't.

It's easy to work out the file sizes accurately if you need to. An SD show will be 1,500 kilo bits per second for video + 128 Kbps audio.

So 1,628 kbps in total. Divide that by 8 to find kilo BYTES per second, which is 203.5 KBps.

Multiply that by 60 for minutes then 60 again for one hour, which equals 12,210KBs and 732,600KBs respectively.

Then divide by 1024 to get MBs for an hour to and you get 715 MBs for an hour show.

One little thing is that Apple now measure a MB as being 1,000 KBs and a GB as being 1,000 MBs (as opposed to 1,024) but the figures don't change enourmously at this level.

HD shows are more or less 4,500 kbps plus 160kbps audio, so:

1 hour = 2GBs give or take.

Same figures as Bobtomay more or less, but this is how they're calculated.

/geek

Thanks a lot for your answer and the maths

I might go for a 16GO 3G iPad now that you guys helped me sort out the problem of space on it. As of today, my iTunes library (only music) is 17Go, and I won't put all my music on it and, as bob explained, it's possible to compress the music. Sweet!

 

[bobtomay]

Another thing of note, it appears the iPad is using Base 2 instead of Base 10 as in Snow Leopard. So there's another hitch.

 

[Zoolook]

Another thing of note, it appears the iPad is using Base 2 instead of Base 10 as in Snow Leopard. So there's another hitch.

Exactly it is, the difference in the math is at the end you don't divide by 1024, but instead divide by 1,000.

 

[DigitalKnight]

With netflix, pandora and other steaming apps I find the 16Gb to be more then enough and I even have a few digital copies of some of my BR movies on it.

 

[Voony]

With netflix, pandora and other steaming apps I find the 16Gb to be more then enough and I even have a few digital copies of some of my BR movies on it.

That is my thought too.

Does anyone know how big (MB wise) a book is? Depends of what book of course but was wondering...

Same question for magazines....how many MB does one issue represent?

 

[bobtomay]

Just for an average, a 300-350 page book is around 500 KB or less, at least on the Amazon store. The typical Danielle Steel book is about 420 KB. My wife has a bunch of those.

Which means it'll take approximately 2,000 books to take 1 GB of space.

So, even with the 16 GB, you'll be able to put some 20,000 books on there and still have some space for a little music and a movie or two.

I have about 25 books on mine, some in full color, and is taking up 13.9 MB currently.

 

[Voony]

Just for an average, a 300-350 page book is around 500 KB or less, at least on the Amazon store. The typical Danielle Steel book is about 420 KB. My wife has a bunch of those.

Which means it'll take approximately 2,000 books to take 1 GB of space.

So, even with the 16 GB, you'll be able to put some 20,000 books on there and still have some space for a little music and a movie or two.

I have about 25 books on mine, some in full color, and is taking up 13.9 MB currently.

Well that's pretty good thanks Bob! I am more interested in magazines. Are you using Zinio and if yes, how is it and how much space does one magazine take?

 

[iggibar]

Another thing of note, it appears the iPad is using Base 2 instead of Base 10 as in Snow Leopard. So there's another hitch.

2 things. Is there an advantage or disadvantage to using base 2 over base 10on the ipad?
And, what does "AAC" mean at the end of 128kbps AAC? I've seen this option many times on itunes, but never took the time to figure it out…till now.

 

[bobtomay]

No advantage or disadvantage. Every operating system made to date (until Snow Leopard) has used and does use Base 2. So it's exactly the same we have all come to know and love.

AAC - new standard designed to take the place of mp3. Read all about it here.
Advanced Audio Coding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is the standard for Apple, Sony and a few others devices now.

 

[iggibar]

Cool! Thanks for the quick reply!