Song Size...Should I Be Concerned?

[ThePaska]

I've been meaning to ask this for a while. I don't know if this has ever been discussed before, but I've sure never seen this asked. Post is a bit long, but I wanted to get my whole thought process across.

Now Harmonix has stated that there will be litterally hundreds of songs to download. Most people wont buy all of them, but if the selections are good I plan to buy a good majority of the songs released. And I plan on getting a 360, which has I think 20GB of memory if I am not mistaken.

My question is how big are these DLC songs going to be, how much memory are they going to take up? Those of you that have downloaded songs for GH II could be especially helpful. Although Rock Band songs will probably be slightly bigger, since the graphics seem a bit better, and have to deal with four instruments instead of 2.

I think I am only concerned with this because as a Wii owner, it has minimal internal memory and a lot of people were filling up their memory with VC games, and had to pick and choose which ones they wanted to have at a time. With this huge amount of promised songs, if I wanted 100s of songs on my Xbox, is that going to take up a huge amount of space or not? Am I going to have to pick and choose which ones I want the most, and delete old ones to make room for new songs I want?

I'm not really familiar with any of this, I don't know how much memory a download like this would take up, which is why I am asking. Anyone have any educated/ well informed guesses? Has this been discussed before? Should I be concerned with this at all?

[Phrank-E]

They got 60 or so songs on a DVD thats 4.7 gig.. I can't imagine the songs being too much bigger than a MP3 is. Double at the most? Is just a guess but 20 gigs is fairly big amount. Get the premium 360 if you are really worried. I hear it is 120 gig.

[karlkaza]

120GB?
yeah for the elite
And I was wondering the excact same thing!
hmmmm......
I'll have to check this thread often then.

[gh2masterwellalmost]

I've been meaning to ask this for a while. I don't know if this has ever been discussed before, but I've sure never seen this asked. Post is a bit long, but I wanted to get my whole thought process across.

Now Harmonix has stated that there will be litterally hundreds of songs to download. Most people wont buy all of them, but if the selections are good I plan to buy a good majority of the songs released. And I plan on getting a 360, which has I think 20GB of memory if I am not mistaken.

My question is how big are these DLC songs going to be, how much memory are they going to take up? Those of you that have downloaded songs for GH II could be especially helpful. Although Rock Band songs will probably be slightly bigger, since the graphics seem a bit better, and have to deal with four instruments instead of 2.

I think I am only concerned with this because as a Wii owner, it has minimal internal memory and a lot of people were filling up their memory with VC games, and had to pick and choose which ones they wanted to have at a time. With this huge amount of promised songs, if I wanted 100s of songs on my Xbox, is that going to take up a huge amount of space or not? Am I going to have to pick and choose which ones I want the most, and delete old ones to make room for new songs I want?

I'm not really familiar with any of this, I don't know how much memory a download like this would take up, which is why I am asking. Anyone have any educated/ well informed guesses? Has this been discussed before? Should I be concerned with this at all?


They got 60 or so songs on a DVD thats 4.7 gig.. I can't imagine the songs being too much bigger than a MP3 is. Double at the most? Is just a guess but 20 gigs is fairly big amount. Get the premium 360 if you are really worried. I hear it is 120 gig.

K... first off. Wheres the RB Wii Version? I know i've said it'll happen, but HMX haven't said anything.

Second: It wont be more than 10 mb a song.

3: to Phrank-E: Just cos premium 360 had a price cut and the HDMI does not mean its coming with a 120gb hardrive. THATS THE ELITE!

[FreQstar]

My question is how big are these DLC songs going to be, how much memory are they going to take up? Those of you that have downloaded songs for GH II could be especially helpful. Although Rock Band songs will probably be slightly bigger, since the graphics seem a bit better, and have to deal with four instruments instead of 2.

The song packs for GH3 so far have been 31 to 44 mb with 3 songs in each.

[Brock_Landers]

Graphics won't factor into dlc size (well it shouldn't do since you've already got all the assets on your game disc), but the extra tracks most likely will.

So assuming that the GH2 dlc songs are comprised of three tracks (lead, bass, rest of song), you'd might want to divide that by three and then multiply it by 5 to a rough idea of RB's size?

Then again, GH2 dlc may already be four tracks depending if you can alter the volume of the vocals?

[karlkaza]

Off topic question: Will the rock band mic fit into a regular mic stand?

I hope DLC isn't more than 10 mb a song.

[Eman311]

10 MB per song sounds about right, so people shouldn't be overly concerned about HD space

[ThePaska]

Ok cool, thats a lot less than I thought it would be, nice, thanks for the info, I guess I'll be free to buy all the songs that come out as DLC!

[guitarnoob]

Ha yeah Ive been wondering about the same, since every demo I download requires uninstallation of another one on the stupidly small 360 Hard Disk.
I'd say 10Mb Max sounds reasonable and feasable.


...especially helpful. Although Rock Band songs will probably be slightly bigger, since the graphics seem a bit better, and have to deal with four instruments instead of 2.
...

Graphics don't matter, they're burnt onto the disc, just data as to maybe which animations to play when and the notechart as far as data-data goes, the rest is the music track-data I suppose.

[Kang_Zircon]

Unless the song files are extremely low bit-rate mp3 format, I doun't think you could get a 10MB file. If they are wav/cda you're probably looking at at least 3MB per min per track. This would match up with the 30-44MB for 3 auido tracks of GHII (for 3-5 min songs) - the rest of the data is pretty negligible. For RB you'll need 5 audio tracks, so the file size will more likely be around 45-75MB. It's a bit more than 10 megs, but you'd be really dissapointed with how that sounded...

[Eman311]

GH also had 5 audio tracks, the only extra stuff in there I can think of is those 2 extra note charts (drums and mic) that gh has. So the average GH song of 10-15 will probably apply here as well, depending on song lenght of course

[Kang_Zircon]

Right - forgot about the practice tracks...

[karlkaza]

I'll have to delete all the sh** I have on my 360 hardrive!
I hope all the DLC fits!

[guitarnoob]

Right - forgot about the practice tracks...
What about that?
I'd guess it's the same data, just interpreted differently by the game

[Bakkster_Man]

Unless the song files are extremely low bit-rate mp3 format, I doun't think you could get a 10MB file. If they are wav/cda you're probably looking at at least 3MB per min per track. This would match up with the 30-44MB for 3 auido tracks of GHII (for 3-5 min songs) - the rest of the data is pretty negligible. For RB you'll need 5 audio tracks, so the file size will more likely be around 45-75MB. It's a bit more than 10 megs, but you'd be really dissapointed with how that sounded...

We might even have more data for the drums, since I've not yet heard whether they will be broken up by hit, or kept together. I assume they're kept together, so you're right on.

[JB4GDI]

10 MB per song sounds about right, so people shouldn't be overly concerned about HD space

Well, people who aren't praying for a Wii version...

I think the Wii has 512 megs internal? Supposing you want a full CD, and let's say there are 12 tracks at 10 megs each, that's already 120 megs, or, almost 1/4 of your entire Wii's memory on that one CD. I already have half my Wii's space taken up with Virtual Console games, so if RockBand comes out for the Wii, adding DLC will either mean that I have to constantly keep deleting things and redownloading things, or I have to find some other storage medium (which Nintendo does not seem to allow right now for DLC).

Unless I got the Wii's internal memory size wrong, I just don't think the Wii's ready for RockBand-sized DLC.

-Jaime

[Kang_Zircon]

What about that?
I'd guess it's the same data, just interpreted differently by the game

The practice tracks are slightly different. I think the pitch is shifted or something(?) So that it doesn't sound totally wierd when you'd play the song on practice modes at slower speeds. I don't know if they had the same bit-rate as the normal tracks though.

[G_tarRoCK3R]

K... first off. Wheres the RB Wii Version? I know i've said it'll happen, but HMX haven't said anything.

Second: It wont be more than 10 mb a song.

3: to Phrank-E: Just cos premium 360 had a price cut and the HDMI does not mean its coming with a 120gb hardrive. THATS THE ELITE!

If you read his post then you would know that he said he was getting a 360 not a Wii....He mearly stated that he HAD a Wii.

10MB sounds kinda right to me being that an MP3 file is around 3-5MB.

Phrank probably meant to say Elite, no need to get all snippy at him for making a mistake

[monlienNH3]

I'd say each song will be around 15-20 mb based on GH2 track packs and adding a little extra for drums and vox being on seperate tracks. So based on songs at 20mb:

You could download around 51 songs per gig. Of course, some songs are longer than others, so it may be closer to 45 songs. Anyway, based on these calculations 5 gigs would give you enough space for 225-255 songs.

The XBOX 360 premium: 13 gigs of useable space
The PS3 60GB system: 47 gigs of useable space.
The XBOX 360 elite: 113 gigs of useable space (might be slightly less).
Don't know for sure but I'm guessing the PS3 80GB gives you 67 gigs of space.

I think whichever system you choose, you'll have plenty of space... unless you like to download demos and videos. I've got the elite and I'd recommend the elite or the PS3 for anyone who wants to buy all the tracks and not have to ever worry about space for other things.

HMX has said they plan on HUNDREDS of songs for download. I don't know if these means 200 or 900. 900 would be over 17 gigs... and A LOT of money. I doubt there will be that much content, but over a few years and a few games it might add up. If you're choosing which system to get, I would advise on the elite if you have the money or even the 60GB PS3 while they last - although I strongly prefer the 360 (I own both). Hope that helps.

[jlc510]

I read something with a developer from HMX who was asked if DLC could be transfered to ipod and what not and the dev said that the music files are not in MP3 format. The files are in some other speacial format that allows them to seperate the all different parts of a song (guitar drums etc.) So they can make the notes for them in the game. If you really want to have somewhat of an idea of the size of the songs you could look at the size of the songs on Frets On Fire or even on the GH1 and GH2 disks on the PS2 if you have the proper reader and program.

[Bakkster_Man]

Well, people who aren't praying for a Wii version...

I think the Wii has 512 megs internal? Supposing you want a full CD, and let's say there are 12 tracks at 10 megs each, that's already 120 megs, or, almost 1/4 of your entire Wii's memory on that one CD. I already have half my Wii's space taken up with Virtual Console games, so if RockBand comes out for the Wii, adding DLC will either mean that I have to constantly keep deleting things and redownloading things, or I have to find some other storage medium (which Nintendo does not seem to allow right now for DLC).

Unless I got the Wii's internal memory size wrong, I just don't think the Wii's ready for RockBand-sized DLC.

-Jaime

Flash memory is cheap. You can get 1GiB for about $10. Get a couple 2Gib or 4Gib (if Wii supports them) and you're fine.


I read something with a developer from HMX who was asked if DLC could be transfered to ipod and what not and the dev said that the music files are not in MP3 format. The files are in some other speacial format that allows them to seperate the all different parts of a song (guitar drums etc.) So they can make the notes for them in the game. If you really want to have somewhat of an idea of the size of the songs you could look at the size of the songs on Frets On Fire or even on the GH1 and GH2 disks on the PS2 if you have the proper reader and program.

Frets of Fire does use MP3, though. The reason MP3 was brought up is it's a standard compression format, similar to (or exactly) what they will be using to compress the audio. This will then just be split into various tracks, but the file size is the important consideration.

Really, though, if you have the money to buy 200+ DLC songs, you have enough money to buy storage media for them. I'm not planning on nearly that many, and I doubt anyone will buy EVERYTHING ;)

[PsycoCheerio]

FoF uses .ogg files as does the Gh games, If you look at the Gh rips on the site most songs come in anywhere from 7-13mb depending on length.

[PinkFloyd]

if you're really worried about HDD-space, get a PS3. You can buy generic laptop-HDDs for it, which gives you 320GB max at this moment. With some handy-work, you can even connect normal PC-drives to it, which makes for drives of over 500GB possible. And if you really want to go crazy, you can hook up external USB-harddrives to your PS3, which go up to 2Terabyte now I believe.

[karlkaza]

Fuk it
I may just buy a 120 GB hard drive

[Eman311]

You shouldn't be worried about lack of space, trust me.
I download like a madman on xbox live and still have over 10GB.

That's with the oblivion expansion (1 GB), 3 arcade games (around 1 GB), and then all my saves,profiles,gh packs, map packs etc. take up another 1GB

[GrayInvisible]

My music folder on my HD has 653 tracks, and it takes up 1.02 gbs. Factor in the notes for each thing (Probably small). And it's about 1.10 (Out of estimation). That's basically 2 wii memory things, and barely makes a dent in the xbox 360 (Assuming it's 20gb, I think it comes with useless stuff in it which makes it 13).

[blue_dragonzero]

Unless the song files are extremely low bit-rate mp3 format, I doun't think you could get a 10MB file. If they are wav/cda you're probably looking at at least 3MB per min per track. This would match up with the 30-44MB for 3 auido tracks of GHII (for 3-5 min songs) - the rest of the data is pretty negligible. For RB you'll need 5 audio tracks, so the file size will more likely be around 45-75MB. It's a bit more than 10 megs, but you'd be really dissapointed with how that sounded...

I don't believe so. Has anyone here made custom gh2 tracks? If you had, you would have known that the size of the file is roughly the size of the mp3. This is because the notecharts are .mid files that use around 100 kb. And with 3 of those plus 3 audio silence tracks, I could see around 14 mb. Now the tech for the mic. will probably be more, as the chart is different. But I believe that with the tech already on the disk, the voice detection should operate like the events track on the .mid; telling it which tech to use where and what to look for. That being said, all of that for the mic. will probably take up around 4-5 mb. of space. Making the total for the track about 20 mb.

[Bakkster_Man]

I don't believe so. Has anyone here made custom gh2 tracks? If you had, you would have known that the size of the file is roughly the size of the mp3. This is because the notecharts are .mid files that use around 100 kb. And with 3 of those plus 3 audio silence tracks, I could see around 14 mb. Now the tech for the mic. will probably be more, as the chart is different. But I believe that with the tech already on the disk, the voice detection should operate like the events track on the .mid; telling it which tech to use where and what to look for. That being said, all of that for the mic. will probably take up around 4-5 mb. of space. Making the total for the track about 20 mb.

Assuming 128kbps bitrate (good quality without being excessive), a 4 minute song (approximately average) and 5 tracks (drum, guitar, bass, vocal, and background) you would end up with 18.75 MiB of audio.
5 * (4 minutes) * (128 (kb / s)) = 18.75 megabytes (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=fGN&q=5*4+minutes*128kb%2Fs+in+MB&btnG=Search)
So, you should be able to fit 50 songs onto one GB of memory.

Again, if you can afford 50 songs at $1+, you can afford a the $10 of flash memory to hold any overflow.

Which brings up another question, will there be a DRM to prevent you from moving songs off/on to/from your console and external memory?

[Gazler]

Hmm, I checked Monkey Wrench and it is 26.6MB However the mid file (which contains the lead and bass tracks) works out at 113KB which works out at ~55KB per track. There are three of those so that is ~150KB for the Guitar, Bass and Drums.

The VGS file which contains the actual song data is 26.5MB, this contains 6 tracks, each with an L/R (For stereo) so that means each of the 6 tracks is ~4.5MB and there are 2 tracks to an instrument which for RB would be ~36MB

The only thing I am unsure about is the track for the vocals which will be in a different format from the others, but I am guessing will be a similar size.

I am not sure what the compression rate is like when it is put into a single archive, but that is (according to my calculations) 36MB for the raw data.

[blue_dragonzero]

Assuming 128kbps bitrate (good quality without being excessive), a 4 minute song (approximately average) and 5 tracks (drum, guitar, bass, vocal, and background) you would end up with 18.75 MiB of audio.
5 * (4 minutes) * (128 (kb / s)) = 18.75 megabytes (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=fGN&q=5*4+minutes*128kb%2Fs+in+MB&btnG=Search)
So, you should be able to fit 50 songs onto one GB of memory.

Again, if you can afford 50 songs at $1+, you can afford a the $10 of flash memory to hold any overflow.

Which brings up another question, will there be a DRM to prevent you from moving songs off/on to/from your console and external memory?

I believe gh2 DLC has this. BTW thanks for the math! I don't want to think until the dreaded 1st day back tomarrow.

[karlkaza]

I wouldn't be concerend.
1000 songs is like 3 to 4 GB

[blue_dragonzero]

I wouldn't be concerend.
1000 songs is like 3 to 4 GB

I for one, am not worried about running out of space--I'm worried about running out of money.

[ThePaska]

I for one, am not worried about running out of space--I'm worried about running out of money.

Now that I have been re-assured that these songs wont take up that much space, I too am only worried about my cashflow, as long as I have money it is going towards all things Rock Band.

[Bakkster_Man]

I for one, am not worried about running out of space--I'm worried about running out of money.


Now that I have been re-assured that these songs wont take up that much space, I too am only worried about my cashflow, as long as I have money it is going towards all things Rock Band.

Well, I don't think anyone is honestly planning on buying ALL the DLC. They're not all going to be songs you like, for one. Beyond that, I think people will match the price point with how much they have to like the artist to buy their songs. Like, I'll pay more for the Who or Foo Fighters than for Nirvana or Metallica. That's just me. So I'd probably only buy Who and FF songs at $2, also buy Nirvana at $1.50, and will buy everything but Metallica for $1.

You need to make sure you're balancing your spending on DLC with if it's really worth it to you. Don't go spending money you don't have on RB songs.

If you REALLY need more DLC money, do like the rockers do: bologna sandwiches - bread (please don't do this, eat real meals)

[TheWolf619]

I plan to get it for the PS3 so, if space actually becomes an issue, I'll just get a larger HDD. :p

[AVC808]

If you REALLY need more DLC money, do like the rockers do: bologna sandwiches - bread (please don't do this, eat real meals)

or poor college kids on loans and dorming. cup noodles. the good ol days...