IPod Touch 4G Video and Music capacity

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This must be my undeveloped mind, but browsing through Apple's iPod Touch website, I could not find the capacity (in time) for video and audio recordings on the 8GB and 32GB models (not in Features neither in Tech Specs).

I am debating which one to keep after buying the two at a discounted price. Have not opened it yet, so I can return one of them.

So, can someone point me to the place of this top-secret information?

UPDATE: To clarify the question – I am interested in the HD video recorded with the built-in camera. The intention is to replace the old P&S camera with this device. Thought that, if not Apple, maybe current users comment on that. A rough estimate is enough. Don't need a detailed to-the-last-byte calculation.

Best Answer

Time is based more on the size of the files versus a limit on the device. As in, You can only put (less than, due to OS and formatting, etc) 8 or 32GB (On a 8GB, usually you have a little over 6GB to play with, on 32 I think more like 29GB or so).

The 'time' capacity was just done using an average file size and the capacity. The same would be for 'songs' or 'videos' it can hold, like how iPod Classics were 20000 songs in your pocket.

Some quick notes found from a random site while searching:

(For Audio)

Well first of all with addressing overheads , indexing etc actual storage space is more like 7.95Gb 15Gb and 29Gb respectively .Generally speaking , the number of songs which can be stored on your device depends on the filesize of each song.No two songs are the same size usually , a number of factors can affect this. The two main factors affecting the size of an audio file arequality( Bitrate and bitdepth) and time ( how long the song is). Therefore to predict the number of songs your 8,32 or 16Gb Ipod Touch can hold , a few assumptions will be made based on the average user's mp3 listening practice. Here we will assume each song is Cd quality (44.1KHz sample rate) 128Kbps bitrate and 4 minutes long i.e 3.75Mb per song. An 8Gb can hold about 2,120 mp3's songs A 16Gb drive could store about 4,240 mp3's On a 32Gb drive you could store about 8,480 mp3's

(For Video)

Typically you can get a DVD movie at 700mb when you download it. This gives On an 8Gb drive you could store about 10 movies On a 16Gb drive you could store about 21 movies On a 32Gb drive you could store about 44movies You can compress the movie down to a much smaller filesize and it will still look good on the small screen , allowing you to cram many more movies in there. Apple claims the Ipod Touch can hold up to 10 hours , 20 hours or 40 hours of video with the right factors.Their claim is based on H.264 1.5-Mbps video at 640-by-480 resolution combined with 128-Kbps audio.

As you can see, its not really an exact science of capacity of time. Same goes for CDR and DVDR's - the times are just estimations due to usual encoding and such.

I think Apple dropped this type of information from its advertising/tech specs because especially with the newer devices (which may need more space for OS) it would look like the storage capacity went down (as in, used to be x number of songs at y GB's, now x minus some number of songs at the same y GB's). The only one I see it on anymore is the iPod Classic, and if you have one with that large of a drive, you probably aren't counting much anymore either.

In your case I would probably keep the larger one (unless you need the money), because its never to bad to have extra space.

Update: Do to the updated question (wondering about HD video recording), according to this site, one hour of HD video is about 4.73GB. So with the 8GB you would get maybe less than an hour and a half, and with the 32GB about 4 hours.

Another site has even more information on calculations.

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