Digital Video size information website?

[afgoody]

Does anyone have a good website that explains how large (i.e. how many GB or GiB) each of the typical video formats are (e.g. HD, ISO, AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, etc.) based on resolution? I'm trying to research video storage requirements for home networking and can't seem to find this information.

Thanks-

[Aurora]

The reason you can't find this information is because the size of the file depends on the bitrate, not the resolution. You can encode in 720x480 MPEG-2 at 15 Mbps, and it'll take up the same amount of space as a 1920x1080 MPEG-2 at 15 Mbps, which will take the same space as a 1920x1080 MPEG-4 at 15 Mbps. The quality of each will obviously be different, due to differing resolutions and codecs, but each encode will end up the same size (assuming the same content).

Only uncompressed video will necessarily increase in size when the resolution is increased. Uncompressed DVD video (at 30 fps) takes up about 100 GB per hour, so you can imagine how much space uncompressed HD video takes up.

Here are some typical bitates:
Youtube H.264: ~300 Kbps (res: 320x240)
DVD: 5-9 Mbps (720x480p)
HDTV broadcast: 15-19 Mbps (1280x720p, or 1920x1080i)
DVCAM: 25 Mbps (640x480p)
Blu-ray: as low as 13 Mbps for VC-1 (during Warner's HD DVD days), as high as 30+ Mbps for some of the Fox and Sony MPEG-4 encodes (all 1920x1080p, 24 fps)

Are you trying to stream this content? Buy as much storage space as you can afford. You can always add more space later as well. The real concern should be the speed of your network. Streaming HD content requires a fast and reliable internal network, and that's a lot harder to fix than space issues.

[afgoody]

OK, thanks. I'm just researching the costs and requirements of going completely media-free (i.e. no DVDs, Blu-Ray, etc.). I see that Vidabox is getting ready to come out with a new 22TB media server. I think this is where digital content is ultimately going and would like to 'sit out' the current consumer electronic craze - HD discs (namely Blu-Ray now). The technology and value may not be there for at least five years though and I don't know if I want to wait that long. On the other hand, I don't know if I want to bother starting a BD collection with this potential 'around the corner.' What do you all think?

[SickSol]

Originally Posted by afgoody

OK, thanks. I'm just researching the costs and requirements of going completely media-free (i.e. no DVDs, Blu-Ray, etc.). I see that Vidabox is getting ready to come out with a new 22TB media server. I think this is where digital content is ultimately going and would like to 'sit out' the current consumer electronic craze - HD discs (namely Blu-Ray now). The technology and value may not be there for at least five years though and I don't know if I want to wait that long. On the other hand, I don't know if I want to bother starting a BD collection with this potential 'around the corner.' What do you all think?

I still like to have my physical media.