Storage space consumption & calculation

Each Publitio plan available comes with included storage space and monthly bandwidth (data transfer). In this article we will explain how Publitio measures and calculates storage space consumption within an account.

Firstly, there are three types of "storage space" we measure against an account and are shown together under the Storage space used graph on the Dashboard :

1. Files storage space (size of uploaded files like images and videos)
2. Versions storage space (size of derivate versions of original files, like thumbnails, poster images, 360p or 480p video versions, etc.)
3. Watermarks storage space (size of created watermarks images)

Files storage space is the simplest to understand - if you upload 10 images that are 1MB in size each, this will occupy 10 x 1 MB = 10MB of storage space

Version storage space, will take additional storage space, depending of type of files you upload and settings that are applied to your account. For example, if you upload video that is 1 GB in size, and our service creates 3 video versions of it : 360p version of 100MB in size, 480p version of 250MB in size and 720p version 500MB in size), this will be measured against your account as 100MB+250MB+500MB=850MB of extra storage space occupied.  So your final storage space used in this example would be 1 GB of files storage + 850 MB of versions storage = 1.85GB of total storage space used.

HLS (m3u8) video version note

If you have used HLS option for your video, then m3u8 (hls) version has 4 videos packaged in it (360p/480p/720p/1080p and possibly 2K/4K), and file it self is taking up much more space (original + all the versions mentioned)

Can I delete versions to free storage space?

Yes you can, but our service will auto-create the same versions again if requested via URL, and as per our bandwidth calculation this will be calculated again as a transcoding bandwidth (which is counted as regular monthly bandwidth) so please be careful and that you know what you are doing.

How can I turn OFF auto version creation?

It is possible to turn off the automatic creation of file versions, but we do not recommend turning this option off, as it provides the best user experience and it is the whole idea about how media processing solutions like Publitio should work. If you are absolutely positive about and know what you are doing  you can turn OFF auto version creation by turning off Eager Transformation switch under the API Settings page. Please note, Eager Transformation is just starting queue jobs for the creation of all needed versions (like thumbnails, poster images, 360p/380p/720p/1080p and/or m3u8 HLS videos) during upload. Our service will still create those versions on request via URL. To turn off URL-transformation turn off switch for URL-based Transformations on API Settings page as well (be careful with turning this options OFF as your account may start returning black images for thumbnails and Publitio player may not work properly without the right file versions)