Work out how long a card lasts, or how much storage a shoot needs. Codec, resolution and frame rate aware. Free, instant, no sign-up.
RAW compression varies with what is in frame. Treat this as a planning estimate, not a guarantee.
| Card | Duration |
|---|
There is no single answer, because recording time is set by data rate, not card size. The same 256 GB card runs for hours in ProRes 422 Proxy and barely half an hour in ProRes 4444 XQ. Three things decide that data rate: codec, resolution and frame rate.
The calculator above takes those three, works out how many bytes land on the card each second, and tells you how long it lasts. It also runs the other way: give it your shooting days, hours per day and camera count, and it works out how much storage the job needs.
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The biggest factor. There is roughly a fivefold gap between ProRes 422 HQ and ProRes 422 Proxy, and RAW widens it further because sensor data is written more directly.
Data rate scales with pixel count. UHD holds four times the pixels of HD, so in the same codec it takes roughly four times the space.
Twice the frames per second means twice the data. If you are planning slow motion at 50 fps, do not budget your cards at 25 fps.
Manufacturers count 1 GB as a billion bytes; the operating system counts 1,073,741,824. Formatting takes a further slice. In practice about 95% of the label is writable, and the tool assumes that by default.
Footage never lives in one place on a professional shoot. Two copies is the common minimum, three once you count the archive. Multiply your shoot size by the copy count when budgeting drives; forgetting this is the most common planning mistake.
The calculation counts the video stream only. Audio, timecode and file headers add a small amount on top, so do not plan to fill a card to the last byte.
| Codec | Target data rate | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| ProRes 422 Proxy | 45 Mbps | about 20 GB |
| ProRes 422 LT | 102 Mbps | about 46 GB |
| ProRes 422 | 147 Mbps | about 66 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ | 220 Mbps | about 99 GB |
| ProRes 4444 | 330 Mbps | about 149 GB |
| ProRes 4444 XQ | 500 Mbps | about 225 GB |
These are Apple's published target data rates, and the calculator's model is derived from them. At other resolutions and frame rates the figures scale with pixel throughput.
Enter the codec your camera records, plus resolution and frame rate. If your camera is not listed, type the bitrate in manually.
Got a card in hand? The card to duration tab tells you how long it lasts. Planning a shoot? The duration to storage tab works out the drives you need.
When sizing storage, set how many copies you keep. The result shows both the footage on its own and the total including copies.
The copy button puts your settings and the answer on the clipboard as one line, handy for passing to the crew or dropping into notes.
ProRes and DNxHR target a data rate: whatever is in frame, roughly the same number of bytes gets written each second. That makes the maths exact.
RAW behaves differently. Compressed RAW formats vary with image content, and a plain sky does not fill a frame the way a leafy tree does. For those formats the tool divides sensor data by the compression ratio to produce an estimate. It is good enough for planning, but leave headroom if you intend to fill cards to the edge.
If you are speccing gear for a shoot in Istanbul, browse our camera rental range or ask us about recorders and media.
For fixed target rate codecs such as ProRes and DNxHR the result is very close to reality. For RAW formats it is an estimate, because compression varies with image content.
A manufacturer's 256 GB means 256 billion bytes, and formatting takes part of that. The 95% default matches what we see in practice, but you can set it to 100% if you prefer.
No, the calculation counts the video stream only. If you are recording many audio channels, add a few percent.
Choose "enter bitrate manually" from the codec list and type the Mbps figure from your camera's specifications. Resolution and frame rate are ignored in that mode.
Two on set is the usual minimum: one working drive and one separate backup. Three once you add a post delivery archive. You can set this in the tool and size your drives accordingly.
No. Everything runs in your browser; the values you enter never reach a server and are not stored.
Yes. No sign-up, no email and no payment.