Understand Gigabytes with the Reference to Megabytes

Do you think it is easy to know how many megabytes are in a gigabyte? Maybe you also wonder if a megabyte is bigger than a gigabyte. The ambiguity behind this question is intricate to solve or even understand. Generally speaking, the value conversion of MB to GB has not been unified from decades ago to now, which leads to a mess in that experts and non-professionals have different understandings of this problem. If you want to know exactly how many megabytes are in a gigabyte, please keep reading this article, and you'll get your puzzle entirely solved.

Part 1: How Many Megabytes in a Gigabyte

Let's be open; there are two answers to how many megabytes are in a gigabyte - 1000 MB and 1024 MB. Which one is correct? You should know the development of this conflict.

Microsoft and SI

In 1960, CGMP proclaimed SI as the international system of units, which regulates that 1GB equals 1000 MB in base 10. If you want to convert bytes to megabytes, the ratio is also 1: 0.001. However, Microsoft didn't follow this system because the CPU bit is designed based on binary, so Microsoft regulates that 1GB equals 1024MB in the Windows operation system. By now, you should figure that the value conversion of MB to GB is 1000MB: 1GB.

What Is Microsoft Doing Now?

The conflict on how many megabytes in a gigabyte should be solved. Maybe there's not much difference between 1000MB and 1024MB, but the capacity techniques are growing fast; today, 1TB is commonplace. How can you define the conversion of 1TB to GBs? Is it 1000GB or 1024GB? The gap is expanding.

Now, Microsoft has accepted the SI. You can see it from the Calculator app on Windows 11/10. It converts GB to MB in base 10.

However, it still takes a very long time to unify the conversion of MB to GB. You may think that 1 gigabyte equals 1024 megabytes, especially when you want to know the size of a file, such as a UHD movie. That video is usually sized in the baseline of several gigabytes. Therefore, the answer to how many megabytes are in a gigabyte will finally be unified.

Part 2: How Many MBs and GBs Common Files Are

It would help to learn the average sizes of some common file types. It will help you manage the storage space of your phone or computer. Then, please check the examples of some common sizes.

1. Text File

A text file, such as Word, TXT, etc., is very small. One letter is a bit, and 8 bits are one byte, so 1KB generally refers to 8000 letters in a text file. If you want to convert a byte to a megabyte, the size will be 0.000001 megabytes. When you write a long paper sized 1MB, you can figure out that it roughly contains 8,000,000 letters.

2. Audio File

Maybe you think an audio file like an MP3 song is only less than 1MB. That's right, the songs we can get are almost compressed. A raw file in studios or editing rooms is dozens of megabytes. Even if you increase the audio quality to the highest in a free music player, the size is still outnumbered by the raw file. However,if you download many songs of the highest quality, it will accumulate and take up a great proportion of your storage space. If you have over 100 songs in your collection, you can convert the MB to GB, and you'll find it has already been bigger than 2GB.

3. Image Files

An image file can't take much storage space. However, some images are smaller than 1MB, while others take several megabytes. What makes the difference is their resolutions. 1080 pixels in height is the most common resolution of photos you can see, and their sizes are only hundreds of kilobytes. But if a photo has over 2000 pixels in height, its size will soar to several megabytes, even if the format is HEIC/HEIF. If you convert HEIC to JPG, the size will double.

4. Video Files

If you want to collect movies of high quality, you should pay great attention to storage consumption. Today, 4K/UHD videos are commonplace. How much will a 4K video take? It's nearly 10 megabytes per second on a middle-low-end camera like a phone camera. If you download a 4K movie, which should be recorded with a high-end camera, its size can be over 20 megabytes per second. If you translate MB to GB, an entire 4K movie is over 20GB.

Bonus: Compress Videos to Save More Megabytes

As a high-quality video takes up so much storage space, why don't you compress the video to save more megabytes? Tipard Video Converter Ultimate can compress or convert a video while retaining high quality. Moreover, you can adjust videos with amazing editing features, such as color correction, noise remover, 3D maker, etc.

• 1. Compress 4K videos and maintain original high quality.
• 2. Change the file size to a certain number of megabytes.
• 3. Convert videos in batches to shrink their sizes quickly.
• 4. Preview the output video before you export it.

Step 1: Launch Tipard Video Converter Ultimate and click the Toolbox button on the top menu bar. Then, click the Video Compressor button.

Step 2: Click the Add button to add a video. Then, you can adjust the file size by dragging the slider left or right. You can also input a certain number of megabytes. Click the Preview button; you'll see the video still keeps a high quality unless you reduce it by too many megabytes. Finally, click the Compress button.

Part 3: FAQs of How Many Megabytes in a Gigabyte

Conclusion

This article answers how many megabytes are in a gigabyte. Remember that though 1GB officially equals 1000MB, it's not a mistake if you think it's 1024MB. One is in base 2, the other in base 10. However, the definition will be unified one day, for the increasing storage expands the gap between the 2 unit systems. Also, if you have problems with the huge video files on your digital devices, please resort to Tipard Video Converter Ultimate to compress the videos while maintaining a high video quality.