# Wasted space inside tags
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/wasted-space-inside-tags/46891
**Category:** General Discussion
**Created:** [October 29, 2019, 1:34pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/wasted-space-inside-tags/46891 "2019-10-29T13:34:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Torn](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Torn)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2019, 1:34pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/wasted-space-inside-tags/46891/1 "2019-10-29T13:34:18Z")
I've noticed Mp3tag leaves padding inside tags, understandably for the purpose of faster editing later on, as the whole file won't have to be rewritten. However, it seems to be quite impossible to get rid of this null byte padded space. Even when the whole file is rewritten (i.e. when removing cover art), the padding remains there.
It would be lovely if there were either a setting or a button to not have this padding. Personally, the extra processing time is negligible.
Secondly, I noticed a difference in saving cover art between ID3v2.4 UTF8 and v2.3 UTF16. I have no idea what the reason behind this is, nor if it's intended, but ID3v2.4 UTF8 actually changes the image data. Specifically, many null bytes inside the image are duplicated. Surprisingly, this does not seem to alter the image, and extracting the image returns the one without those duplicated bytes.
I was using a 219KB jpeg, which had about 2KB worth of duplicated null bytes.
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### Author:  [@LyricsLover](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/LyricsLover)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2019, 2:43pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/wasted-space-inside-tags/46891/2 "2019-10-29T14:43:17Z")
> [@Torn](#):
>
> Personally, the extra processing time is negligible.
Just my 2 cent:
Personally, the saved harddisc space is negligible... 😉
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### Author:  [@ohrenkino](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/ohrenkino)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2019, 5:55pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/wasted-space-inside-tags/46891/3 "2019-10-29T17:55:50Z")
Some time ago, there was this discussion about this topic:
> [@Optional zero padding on ID3v2 tags?](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/optional-zero-padding-on-id3v2-tags/16337):
>
> When saving an ID3v2 tag, a 2048 bytes padding is added to the tag, if not existent. I understand this is useful when tags may have future updates... but what if my tags won't be updated anymore? It's just wasting space. So, as a suggestion, we could have an option to have zero padding with ID3v2 tags. With this option checked, we would have no padding added to new tags, and modified tags would have their padding trimmed to zero.
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### Author:  [@Torn](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Torn)
#### Post date: [October 29, 2019, 7:19pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/wasted-space-inside-tags/46891/4 "2019-10-29T19:19:35Z")
In the case of some FLAC files I had tagged with Mp3tag a while ago, removing the padding with metaflac yielded at least 8KB per file, with an average of 100KB per file over 50 files. I'm assuming there were some large blocks of padding on some files that had not been cleared, even if the padding Mp3tag itself inserts when you previously had no data is smaller.