If you shoot or capture 4K footage, storage math sneaks up on you fast. A single afternoon of recording can eat more space than a whole folder of games. The trick is knowing your bitrate, because file size is almost entirely a function of how many megabits per second your camera or capture card writes, not the resolution label on the box.
The core formula
File size per hour is simply bitrate multiplied by time. One hour is 3,600 seconds, and 8 megabits equal 1 megabyte. So a clip recorded at 100 Mbps works out to roughly (100 / 8) x 3,600 = 45,000 MB, or about 45 GB per hour. Double the bitrate and you double the storage. That one relationship explains every number below.
Typical 4K bitrates and what they cost
| Source / codec | Approx bitrate | Storage per hour |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming 4K (Netflix-style H.265) | 15-25 Mbps | 7-11 GB |
| Console/PC gameplay capture (H.264) | 60-80 Mbps | 27-36 GB |
| Mirrorless camera 4K30 (H.264) | 100-150 Mbps | 45-68 GB |
| 4K60 10-bit (H.265) | 150-200 Mbps | 68-90 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ 4K | ~880 Mbps | ~395 GB |
| ProRes RAW / cinema RAW | 1,500-2,500 Mbps | 675 GB-1.1 TB |
Why the same “4K” varies so wildly
Two files can both say 3840×2160 and differ by 20x in size. Compression is the reason. Consumer cameras use long-GOP H.264 or H.265, which throws away redundant data between frames and keeps files small. Editing-friendly formats like ProRes or DNxHR are intraframe, meaning every frame is stored whole, so they are far larger but much easier to scrub and color-grade. If you edit heavy 4K, plan for the intraframe size even if your camera records compressed, because you may transcode to proxies or optimized media.
Frame rate and bit depth add up
Jumping from 30 to 60 fps roughly doubles data. Moving from 8-bit to 10-bit color adds another 20-30%. High-motion content such as gameplay or sports also pushes variable-bitrate codecs toward their ceiling, so a “100 Mbps” setting can average higher during chaotic scenes.
Sizing your drive
For casual gameplay capture at 60-80 Mbps, a 2 TB drive holds roughly 55-70 hours, which is plenty for a hobbyist. Serious camera work in ProRes changes everything: at ~400 GB per hour, a 2 TB drive is full after five hours. Editors who shoot RAW routinely run 8 TB internal drives plus offload to larger NAS archives.
Speed matters as much as capacity
For editing 4K without dropped frames, sustained sequential throughput is the number to watch. A SATA SSD (~550 MB/s) handles a couple of compressed 4K streams comfortably. Multi-cam ProRes timelines want NVMe at 2,000 MB/s or more, or a fast external over USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps, ~1,000 MB/s) at minimum. A slow mechanical drive at 150 MB/s is fine for archiving finished projects but painful for scrubbing.
Planning a two-tier workflow
Serious shooters rarely rely on one drive. The efficient pattern is a fast working tier plus a cheap archive tier. Ingest fresh footage onto a 2-4 TB NVMe or fast external SSD where you edit, then move finished projects to bulk hard drives or a NAS once you export. This keeps your expensive fast storage from clogging with old clips while your archive scales cheaply. Budget roughly 1.5x your raw footage size for the working tier, because editing generates render caches, proxies, and exports that inflate the project folder well beyond the original clips.
Do not forget proxies and caches
If your system struggles with full-resolution 4K, most editors generate proxy files, lower-resolution stand-ins that are far smaller and smoother to scrub. Proxies for an hour of 4K might add only 5-10 GB, a tiny cost for much better timeline performance. Render caches, on the other hand, can balloon to tens of gigabytes on complex timelines, so point them at a scratch drive with room to spare rather than your system disk.
FAQ
Does 4K really need four times the storage of 1080p?
Roughly, yes, at the same codec and quality target 4K carries about four times the pixels, so bitrates and file sizes scale similarly. In practice the multiplier is often 3-4x because efficient H.265 encoding claws back some of the difference.
Should I archive footage on SSD or hard drive?
For long-term cold archive, high-capacity hard drives (8-20 TB) cost far less per terabyte and are the sensible choice. Keep an active-project SSD for the footage you are currently editing, then move finished work to spinning disks or a NAS with redundancy.
Bottom line
Estimate storage from bitrate, not resolution: divide Mbps by 8 and multiply by 3,600 to get MB per hour. Compressed 4K gameplay lands near 30-70 GB per hour, while ProRes and RAW can demand 400 GB to over 1 TB. Buy capacity for how you record and archive, and buy speed for how you edit.
