Calculating Upload Times For Your Videos

(My Original Blog Post: http://jamesburchill.com/1105/calculating-upload-times-for-your-videos/)
db_statusIt’s been a while since I had to do weird math with odd numbers like bits and bytes. So you can imagine how much fun I had trying to figure out the time it will take to upload some of my new video materials to the server.

But do you think I could remember the basic math I needed to trot out the numbers - nope. I drew a total brain cramp. And no matter how hard I tried the numbers kept making no sense.

After a few attempts I thought “gosh darn it…” OK, my language was a tad more colourful… and decided “to heck with it, I’ll use Google” and find someone online who had written about this wonderful formula I so desperately needed.

Long story short, didn’t find a person, I found a machine! GOOGLE CALCULATOR

Google is officially starting to freak me out with this tool. I mean come on! Who knew the Big G could take in the file size, divide by the transfer rate (in kilobits per second) and then spit up a number converted natively into minutes!

Try it yourself. First figure out your connection speeds. I used http://ping.fm/xbpQG

But if you don’t like that one simply Google “internet speed test.” Once your test is complete, use the UPLOAD number and type it into the search box like this: 100 MB / 512 kbps

This was my example to find out how long a 100MB video file will take to transfer to my server with an upload speed of 512kbps.

So I discovered for a typical Cable connection you can upload about 100 MB of stuff in approx 27 minutes - give or take a few :-)

Correspondingly… the download speed is annoyingly faster. Must get more monkeys.