How Much Storage do I need for Silent Recording and other media (photos/videos/sounds)?

Overview

Every media file captured in the field (photo/video/sound) is uploaded to your account Storage Space. You can think of it like a virtual hard drive attached to your account, where all the media files are uploaded to. Your account comes with a free 20MB Storage Space which is perfect for running small tests to pilot out Silent Recordings and photo capturing. Once you are ready to start enabling silent recordings for your projects (or capturing photos), you will need to upgrade your account Storage Space to a bigger size to enable the recordings to upload without running out of space. 

How is the Storage Space Upgrade activated?

 The Storage Upgrades are paid for on a monthly basis and size and once activated you can start uploading silent recordings and other media that was captured in the field. As the Storage Space is like a virtual hard-drive, you can actually download (archive) your files from there and free up the space to use in future projects. So, in fact you do not need to keep upgrading the space as you grow since as long as you archive your attachments you can keep re-using the Storage Space for future projects.

So, how much space will my project require? What plans is right for me? (1GB/5GB/11GB/20GB)

Great question! while most customers are usually fine with either the 1GB or 5GB plan, ultimately this will all depend on the following 3 factors:

1. How long will your silent recordings be? (5 minutes? 25 minutes?) - this is up to you of course.
2. How many interviews will the project have? this will determine how many recordings there will be.
3. What specific devices you will use? different devices have different default quality affecting how big each 1-minute recording will be. 

In general, each minute of recording will take ~100KB-1MB of size. The actual size depends on the actual device used since Dooblo utilizes the default quality settings that the device manufacturer specifies as "medium" quality. These differences can range and ultimately generate differences in how much size each 1-minute recording will take up. 

Total Size (Audio-efficient devices) 

For devices that generate smaller audio sizes, here is the breakdown of how much total space you will need for a typical 500 interviews project with various amounts of recorded minutes. You can use this table a guideline for the storage requirements although we urge you to run the test on your end as well as your device might be different: 

#Interviews	~Minutes to record	MB per Interview*	Total Storage*
500	5	0.5MB	240MB
500	10	1MB	480MB
500	20	1.95MB	1GB
500	30	2.93MB	1.43GB

* Actual MB per interview might vary based on the specific device and default recorder configuration set by the device manufacturer. Dooblo utilizes the default recorder configuration for quality. 

Total Size (Audio inefficient devices) 

For devices that generate very large audio sizes, here is the breakdown of how much total space you will need for a typical 500 interviews project with various amounts of recorded minutes. You can use this table a guideline for the storage requirements for these devices although we urge you to run the test on your end as well as your device might be different:

#Interviews	~Minutes to record	MB per Interview*	Total Storage*
500	5	5MB	2.4GB
500	10	10MB	4.9GB
500	20	20MB	9.8GB
500	30	30MB	14GB

* Actual MB per interview might vary based on the specific device and default recorder configuration set by the device manufacturer. Dooblo utilizes the default recorder configuration for quality. 

What about photos and videos?

Photos require anywhere from 40KB to 500KB per photo, depending on your camera settings. You can limit the size of the photo attachment in the SurveyToGo app settings on the tablet and then SurveyToGo will scale the image to make sure the size limitation is met. Videos highly depend on the quality of the video and so this is beyond the scope of this article since there are so many camera models and devices out there. It is best for video to simply run a few tests on your specific devices to figure out the correct size in your specific scenario.

Can I upgrade my Storage Space later if I need to? Can I downgrade? Can I cancel the Storage? 

Yes, you can switch to a different plan whenever you need. The new plan is then charged on a pro-rated basis and you are immediately switched to the new plan. You can also cancel the storage upgrade - in which case no new payments will appear and your storage will switch back to 20MB at the end of your current payment cycle.

How do I see the interview attachments?

This is done from the Operations Console, where you can open an interview and interact with its data and attachments. 

Where do I see my Storage Space Usage?

SurveyToGo includes a detailed drill-down report that shows you exactly which projects are utilizing your account Storage Space to allow you to better manage your Storage Space. 

What if I run 2 projects one after the other? Do I need 2x the Space?

No, since your account Storage Space is like a virtual hard-drive, once you are done with one project and you have no more use for the attachments, you can Archive the attachments to your local computer which will free up the space for the next project.