Storage arithmetic
How much storage does a video editing project need?
Originals, proxies, renders and exports, added up.
A 10-minute film shot at a 20:1 ratio in UHD ProRes 422 HQ at 30p needs about 1.83 TB: 1,327 GB of camera originals, plus proxies, renders, exports and a margin. The camera originals set the size, so start from Apple's gigabytes-per-hour figure for your format and multiply by the hours you expect to shoot.
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By uncompressed.io · Updated September 2026
The short answer
Size the camera originals first,
then add what the edit creates.
Project storage = hours shot × the format’s GB per hour, plus proxies, renders and exports. Hours shot = finished minutes × shooting ratio ÷ 60. The originals are nearly always the largest line.
3.3 h
Footage shot
10 finished minutes at 20:1
398 GB
Per hour of UHD 422 HQ
Apple's 30p target rate
1,327 GB
Camera originals
3.33 h × 398 GB
1.83 TB
Whole project
With proxies, renders, exports and margin
All figures here are decimal gigabytes (1 GB = 1,000 MB), which is how Apple’s per-hour figures work out: 45 Mbps for one hour is about 20 GB. Plan quotas may be counted in binary units. This page sizes a whole project. For converting any bitrate to a file size, see how much storage 4K video takes.
A worked project
One 10-minute film,
line by line.
The job: a 10-minute film, recorded in ProRes 422 HQ at 3840 x 2160, 30p. Edited with ProRes 422 Proxy files at 1920 x 1080, rendered in full 3 times, delivered as a ProRes 422 HQ master and a 100 Mbps viewing export. Here is the arithmetic at a 20:1 shooting ratio.
Hours shot
10 finished minutes × 20 = 200 minutes. 200 ÷ 60 = 3.33 hours of footage.
Camera originals
3.33 hours × 398 GB an hour (Apple, UHD 30p ProRes 422 HQ) = 1,327 GB.
Proxies
3.33 hours × 20 GB an hour (Apple, 1920 x 1080 ProRes 422 Proxy) = 67 GB. A 50 percent proxy of a UHD frame is 1920 x 1080.
Renders
One pass of the 10-minute timeline in 422 HQ: 10 ÷ 60 × 398 = 66 GB. Kept for 3 passes: 199 GB.
Exports
The 422 HQ master is another 66 GB. The viewing export is 100 Mbps × 600 seconds ÷ 8,000 = 7.5 GB.
Margin and total
ProRes lines: 1,659 GB, plus 10 percent for Apple's variable bit rate ceiling = 1,825 GB. Add the viewing export: 1,832 GB, about 1.83 TB.
Rates from Apple's ProRes white paper (April 2022): 398 GB an hour for 3840 x 2160 ProRes 422 HQ at 30p and 20 GB an hour for 1920 x 1080 ProRes 422 Proxy at 30p. Apple's rates are targets; actual files vary with image content. The proxy line is an estimate from Apple's 1080 figure. Render and export lines assume a 10-minute timeline; the 100 Mbps viewing export is an example bitrate, not a recommendation.
If you optimize instead of proxying
Change the format
Camera originals by format,
at the same 20:1 ratio.
Swap in the row that matches your camera setting. The ratio stays at 20:1, 3.33 hours of footage for a 10-minute film.
Apple ProRes white paper (April 2022), Target Data Rates appendix. UHD is 3840 x 2160; 1080 is 1920 x 1080. ProRes 4444 is without alpha. Apple notes that data rates vary with codec type, image content, frame size and frame rate. Camera RAW formats are not covered here: use your camera maker's published rates.
Where each line lives
Most of it stays local,
and only a small part needs to be online.
Local disks
Originals, proxies and renders: 1,592 GB in the 20:1 example. The edit reads these constantly, so they belong on fast drives attached to the machine doing the work. uncompressed.io is not working storage and should not be used as one.
Ready to stream
The viewing export, 7.5 GB here. This is the file a client plays, so it stays online while the project is live. Lite includes 100 GB of this kind of space.
Archive
The 66 GB master, and any selects you want off site. Hot capacity is released after the archive copy is verified and the library change is saved. Archived films must be restored before streaming, embedding or review.
In the example, 74 GB of a 1.83 TB project needs to be online at delivery. A finished edit can be archived straight from DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro as one pack per timeline (the clips the timeline uses, whole, the project file and the master) into the cold archive of any paid plan, and every file in the pack is restorable on its own. Restoring requires available hot capacity and uses a monthly allowance of twice your archive capacity. Transfer time depends on file size and the transfer path; no fixed completion time is guaranteed.
A RAID protects against a failed drive, not against deletion or a lost building. Keep a separate copy of any file you could not shoot again, and size that copy with the same arithmetic.
Questions
Frequently asked
What shooting ratio should I plan for?
Use your own. The ratio is minutes recorded for each finished minute, and it varies more between jobs than any published average can capture. The most reliable input is the card totals from your last job of the same kind, divided by its finished length. The table on this page shows 10:1, 20:1 and 30:1 so you can see how directly the total follows that one number.
Proxies or optimized media: which uses less space?
Proxies. Apple says proxy files take up considerably less storage than optimized files. In Final Cut Pro, optimized media is ProRes 422 (265 GB an hour at UHD 30p in Apple's table), while proxies are ProRes 422 Proxy or H.264 at 12.5 to 100 percent of the original frame size. At 1920 x 1080, ProRes 422 Proxy is 20 GB an hour.
Does transcoding replace my camera files?
No. Apple states that Final Cut Pro always retains the original media when it transcodes. Proxies and optimized files are added on top of the originals, so budget them as extra space, not as a substitute.
Why add a margin to the ProRes figures?
Apple's rates are targets. ProRes is variable bit rate, and Apple's white paper puts the maximum bits per frame at roughly 10 percent above the target. A 10 percent margin on the ProRes lines covers that ceiling. It does not cover a longer shoot than planned, so revisit the ratio first.
Do my camera originals need to go to the cloud?
Not for editing. An edit runs from local disks. Online storage is for the files people watch and the finished files you archive. If you want an off-site copy of originals as well, size it with the same arithmetic and keep it separate from the working drive.
Keep the edit local, put the finished files online
Lite includes 100 GB ready to stream and 100 GB archive from USD 9/month; Pro includes 500 GB and 500 GB from USD 39/month. Max includes 1 TB hot and 2 TB archive; Studio includes 1 TB hot and 7 TB archive.
Sources
- 1.Apple ProRes White Paper, April 2022: Target Data Rates appendix (GB per hour by format and frame rate) and variable bit rate note (fetched 17 September 2026)
- 2.Apple Support: About Apple ProRes (data rates at 1920 x 1080 and 29.97 fps) (fetched 17 September 2026)
- 3.Final Cut Pro User Guide: Create optimized and proxy files (fetched 17 September 2026)
- 4.uncompressed.io plans and storage