$$c_{\text{video}} \approx (f \times \tau_{\text{frame}}) + \tau_{\text{audio}}$$

Equation 1 · Model Evaluation

Where Multimodal Frontier Models Actually Differ, Beyond the Marketing

This equation gives an approximation: it relates the quantities while allowing an approximation.

The documented token economics make the architectural claim concrete rather than rhetorical. Gemini’s video pricing bundles the visual and audio streams into one per-second cost: $c_{\text{video}} \approx (f \times \tau_{\text{frame}}) + \tau_{\text{audio}}$. where, at default resolution, the sampling rate f is one frame per second, each frame costs $\tau_{\text{frame}}$ $\approx$ 258 tokens, and the audio track costs $\tau_{\text{audio}}$ $\approx$ 32 tokens per second — giving $c_{\text{video}}$ $\approx$ 290 tokens per second, close to the approximately 300 tokens per second Google documents directly for default-resolution video [ 5 ] . The formula is unremarkable arithmetic, but what it exposes is the real assumption underneath the “native” claim: a single…

Meanings in this article

• $f$: the sampling rate.

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