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ProRes storage per hour
From Apple's published target data rates. One hour of recording, one camera, in decimal gigabytes as drive makers count them.
| Codec | HD 24p | UHD 24p | UHD 30p | 4K DCI 24p |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ProRes 422 LT | 37 GB | 148 GB | 184 GB | 158 GB |
| ProRes 422 | 53 GB | 212 GB | 265 GB | 226 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ | 79 GB | 318 GB | 398 GB | 339 GB |
| ProRes 4444 | 119 GB | 477 GB | 597 GB | 509 GB |
Higher frame rates scale almost exactly: 60p is about two and a half times 24p, so slow motion fills drives fast. The 4444 figures are without an alpha channel. Audio adds very little: a stereo pair at 24-bit, 48 kHz is about 1 GB an hour.
Worked example
The sample is the Coastal Realty brand film: two cameras in ProRes 422 HQ at UHD 23.976, each rolling for about two hours of a ten-hour day.
| Step | Sum | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Data rate | Apple's table | 707 Mbps |
| One hour | 707 × 3,600 ÷ 8 ÷ 1,000 | 318 GB |
| One camera, two hours | 318 GB × 2 | 636 GB |
| Two cameras | 1.27 TB | |
| Two copies | 2.55 TB | |
| Cards, 512 GB | 636 GB ÷ (512 × 0.95) | 2 a camera |
| Copying the day at 400 MB/s | 1.27 TB ÷ 400 MB/s | 54 min |
So the producer packs at least two 512 GB cards a camera plus a spare, and two drives with room for 1.3 TB each. Copying takes about an hour of someone's time at wrap, so put it on the schedule. A card copied in a dark parking lot is how footage goes missing.
Cameras that do not record ProRes
Choose My camera's own data rate and type the figure from your camera's manual or spec sheet for the codec, resolution and frame rate you shoot. Camera makers publish these for their own codecs, such as H.265, XAVC and the RAW formats, and the rates differ a lot between settings, so look up the exact one.
The assumptions, out loud
- Sizes are decimal: 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes, as on the drive's box. Your computer may show a slightly smaller number for the same drive.
- A card is planned at 95% of its label, leaving room for the file system and a margin.
- The copy time is the data divided by the copy speed. Copying to several drives at once runs at the slowest drive's speed, and checking each copy adds time.
- Every figure must be a plain number. A minus sign, a word or an impossible figure is named under the form and left out of the sum.
How Cutvey does this
Cutvey Offload is Cutvey's Mac app for copying camera cards: it copies to every drive you choose, checks every byte and tells you when a card is safe to erase. A Cutvey plan includes Offload on a number of Macs, from one on Solo. Cutvey apps has the details, and the equipment checklist has a media section to pack from.