Most digital signage playlists need well under 1 GB of storage. A menu board of images and one promo clip is about 25 MB, and a retail loop of ten 15-second 1080p videos is about 170 MB. You need several GB only for long video: more than about an hour of 1080p per screen, or 4K video played at 4K.
How big signage content is
Video size is simple math: bitrate (megabits per second) × seconds ÷ 8 = megabytes. The figures below use YouTube's recommended upload bitrates: 8 Mbps for 1080p and 35 to 45 Mbps for 4K at 30 frames per second. That is good quality on a TV, and many signage exports use less.
| Content | Typical size | The math |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p image (1920 × 1080), JPEG | 0.5 to 1 MB | 2.1 megapixels, about 6 MB raw, JPEG shrinks it 6 to 12 times |
| 1080p image, PNG | 0.3 to 2 MB for a designed slide, 3 to 5 MB for a photo | PNG compresses flat colour well, photos badly |
| 4K image (3840 × 2160), JPEG | 2 to 4 MB | 8.3 megapixels, about 25 MB raw |
| 15-second 1080p video | 15 MB | 8 Mbps × 15 s ÷ 8 |
| 30-second 1080p video | 30 MB | 8 Mbps × 30 s ÷ 8 |
| 1 minute of 1080p video | 60 MB | 8 Mbps × 60 s ÷ 8 |
| 30-second 4K video | 131 MB | 35 Mbps × 30 s ÷ 8 |
| 1 minute of 4K video | 263 to 338 MB | 35 to 45 Mbps × 60 s ÷ 8 |
| PDF menu | 0.5 to 5 MB | Text and vector art are small, photos add the bulk |
| Web page or app (weather, news, dashboard) | Close to zero | Streamed live, only small parts are cached |
One minute of 4K video takes as much space as four to six minutes of 1080p. On a 1080p TV, the extra pixels are never seen.
What fits in 1, 6 and 10 GB
Using the sizes above (1 GB = 1,000 MB):
| Content | 1 GB | 6 GB | 10 GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1080p JPEG images (1 MB) | 1,000 | 6,000 | 10,000 |
| 15-second 1080p videos (15 MB) | 66 | 400 | 666 |
| 30-second 1080p videos (30 MB) | 33 | 200 | 333 |
| Minutes of 1080p video (60 MB each) | 16 | 100 | 166 |
| 30-second 4K videos (131 MB) | 7 | 45 | 76 |
Typical playlists and their size
- Menu board: 8 menu images and one 15-second promo video. About 25 MB.
- Retail promo loop: 10 product videos of 15 seconds and 20 images. About 170 MB.
- Office or lobby screen: 30 images, a 2-minute brand video, weather and news apps. About 150 MB.
- Gym or waiting room: 30 minutes of 1080p video. About 1.8 GB.
- Hotel or venue loop in 4K: 30 minutes of 4K video at 35 Mbps. About 7.9 GB.
Count every playlist scheduled to the screen, not only the one playing now. Most players download all of them ahead of time, so a breakfast, lunch and dinner menu add up.
When you need more storage
- 4K video played at 4K. It takes four to six times the space of 1080p. Worth it only on a 4K screen viewed up close.
- More than about an hour of video per screen. One hour of 1080p is about 3.6 GB.
- Many dayparts or campaigns scheduled to one screen, each with its own videos.
- Sites with poor or no internet, where everything must play from the device for days.
A video exported straight from a camera or editing app is often far heavier than it needs to be. Export at the screen's resolution (1920 × 1080 for most TVs) with H.264 before you buy a bigger player.
How players use their storage
- The system takes a share first. The operating system and apps use part of the listed storage. A "16 GB" device has less than that for content.
- The signage app caps its cache. Most apps keep content to a part of the free space, so updates, logs and the system still have room.
- Content plays from the device. The player downloads each file ahead of time and plays the local copy, so playback does not depend on the internet.
- When storage runs short, new content arrives late or in part, files that did not fit play only while online, and updates can fail. See Amazon Signage Stick storage full for the fix.
Storage on common signage players
- Amazon Signage Stick: 16 GB, no consumer apps competing for it.
- Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd gen): 16 GB. Fire TV Stick 4K (2nd gen) and the other Fire TV Sticks: 8 GB.
- Walmart onn 4K Streaming Device (Google TV): 8 GB.
- Raspberry Pi 5: none built in. It runs from the microSD card you buy, or an NVMe SSD through an M.2 adapter.
On a consumer streamer, installed apps share the same space as your content.
Where Brix fits
The Amazon Signage Stick has more than enough storage for most signage, and the numbers from Brix's own fleet show it:
- About 12 GB usable. A Signage Stick reports about 12 GB of usable storage, and a typical Stick in Brix's own fleet has about 10.7 GB free.
- Up to half for content. Brix lets content use up to half of a player's storage. On a Stick that is about 6 GB: 200 thirty-second 1080p videos, 6,000 images, or 100 minutes of 1080p video. The menu board, retail and lobby playlists above use less than 3% of it.
- Lighter files, automatically. Brix converts any video above 1080p, 30 frames per second or 16 Mbps to 1080p H.264 within those limits, and resizes images larger than 2560 pixels. A 30-second clip is never more than 60 MB, so even at that ceiling about 50 minutes of video fits in 6 GB.
- Upload limits: 2 GB per video and 250 MB per image.
- Cache full, said plainly. If a screen's content does not fit, its panel reads Cache full. The screen keeps playing and streams the files that did not fit. See offline playback.
When the Stick is not the right player: a loop of long 4K video for a 4K screen, or hours of video per screen. A Windows player or an Android box with more storage suits that better.
Start a free trial and see how much of your playlist fits on one Stick.