Video storage calculator

Plan footage storage for a shoot with different camera groups, multiple copies and a capacity allowance. Estimate upload time using your measured connection speed.

No accountRuns in your browserUse your own recording rates

Plan your footage

Use expected recorded hours, not the length of the shoot day.

YOUR STORAGE PLAN

LOCAL

Estimated capacity

Estimates assume the entered average bitrate applies throughout each recording. Actual file sizes and transfer speeds vary.

METHOD & PRACTICAL USE

How to estimate your footage storage

For each group, multiply its total average bitrate in megabits per second by recorded seconds and camera count, then divide by 8,000 to get decimal gigabytes (GB). Add the groups, multiply by complete copies, then add the chosen percentage as extra capacity.

For example, two cameras each recording 4 hours at 100 Mbps produce approximately 360 GB of originals. Two complete copies need 720 GB; adding 15% makes the planning total 828 GB. That total is across all copies, not the required size of each individual drive.

What to include in the bitrate

Use a measured or manufacturer-specified average for your exact camera and recording mode. Include audio and other streams if they are not already part of the bitrate. Variable-bitrate footage changes with the scene, so a short test recording is more useful than a generic codec label. Add proxies, transcodes, project files and exports separately or allow for them in extra capacity.

GB, GiB and backup copies

Storage vendors usually label drives using decimal GB (1 GB = 1 billion bytes); many operating systems show binary GiB (1 GiB = 1,073,741,824 bytes). The calculator shows both for originals. A copy count is capacity arithmetic, not a backup strategy or a guarantee that your files are protected: verify copies and store them appropriately.

How upload time is estimated

Upload time is based on one original set divided by your measured upload speed. It is an ideal minimum: network congestion, protocol overhead, interruptions and competing traffic can make the real transfer slower. The estimate does not include download time or separately generated proxies.

Need to include drives or cloud storage in a quote? Add your own expected costs to the video production budget calculator.

For background on camera data rates, see Apple’s ProRes data-rate guidance. Recording rates vary by camera and settings.