Data & backup planner

How much space does ProRes 4444 take?

ProRes 4444 stores a constant amount per frame (5.53 MB at UHD), so the rate scales exactly with pixels and frame rate. UHD at 25 fps: 498 GB per hour.

ProRes 4444 in ProRes 4444, 25 fps, 3 h a day for 4 days: 5.97 TB of footage, 17.9 TB with three copies. Change cameras, hours and days below.
Copies of every card
Copies run in parallel; the slowest drive sets the pace.
CameraCodecResolutionfpsh/dayRate
    Footage per day
    —
    Footage, whole shoot
    —
    Incl. all copies
    —
    Drives needed
    —
    Offload per day
    —
    Left after wrap
    —
    Put cards and drives on the equipment list

    Runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere.

    ProRes 4444: GB per hour

    Rates as in Apple’s ProRes white paper (April 2022). Real files land slightly below: ProRes only spends bits where the picture needs them, so a static interview comes in under the target, a handheld night street close to it.

    ProRes 4444: GB per hour by resolution and frame rate
    Resolution24 fps25 fps30 fps50 fps60 fps
    HD 1920 × 1080119 GB124 GB149 GB249 GB299 GB
    UHD 3840 × 2160478 GB498 GB597 GB995 GB1.19 TB
    4K DCI 4096 × 2160510 GB531 GB637 GB1.06 TB1.27 TB

    How long a card lasts

    Minutes of recording per card (UHD 25 fps). The last column is the time a DIT needs to copy that card once to an NVMe SSD at a sustained 850 MB/s, plus a verification pass.

    ProRes 4444: recording time per card
    CardRecording timeOffload + verify
    256 GB31 min10 min
    512 GB1 h 2 min20 min
    1 TB2 h 1 min39 min
    2 TB4 h 1 min1 h 18 min

    ProRes 4444 next to its siblings

    The same hour of footage in every variant of the family (UHD, 25 fps). The step to the next quality level is usually the cheaper decision than it looks: drives cost less than a reshoot, but every step also lengthens the offload.

    ProRes 4444 compared with related codecs
    CodecGB per hourvs. ProRes 4444Offload of 1 h at 850 MB/s
    ProRes 422 Proxy68.0 GB−86 %1 min
    ProRes 422 LT154 GB−69 %3 min
    ProRes 422221 GB−56 %4 min
    ProRes 422 HQ332 GB−33 %7 min
    ProRes 4444498 GB—10 min
    ProRes 4444 XQ747 GB+50 %15 min

    Cameras that record ProRes 4444

    In our camera list: ARRI Alexa 35, ARRI Alexa Mini LF, ARRI Alexa Mini, ARRI Amira. The tool above has each of them as a preset, with the codecs and frame rates the body actually offers.

    Frequently asked

    How much storage does one hour of ProRes 4444 need?

    In UHD at 25 fps: 498 GB. At 50 fps exactly double.

    Why does my card show less space than its label?

    Cards are labelled in decimal units (1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes); some operating systems count in binary units and show about 931 GB for a 1 TB card. The numbers on this page are decimal, like the label.