4K Video File Size per Minute: iPhone, GoPro and Drone

Most pages that answer this question give you a single round figure for "4K" and move on. That single figure is only right for one device in one mode. The useful version is the formula, a table of bitrates taken from the people who make the cameras and the platforms, and a way to read your own file so you stop guessing.

How do you turn a bitrate into megabytes per minute?

A bitrate is bits per second. A file is bytes. To get from one to the other you divide by eight (eight bits to a byte) and multiply by the seconds you care about:

MB per minute = Mbps ÷ 8 × 60

Because 60 ÷ 8 is 7.5, the shortcut is simply Mbps × 7.5. For gigabytes per hour, multiply the megabits per second by 0.45. Two things to keep straight:

• Bitrate is in megabits (Mb, lowercase b). Storage is in megabytes (MB, capital B). Mixing them up is a factor-of-eight error, and it is the most common reason a back-of-envelope estimate lands wildly off.
• These are decimal megabytes, the way cards and drives are sold. Your operating system may show smaller numbers because it counts in 1,024s, and the file system keeps a little for itself.

The formula gives you the video stream. Audio adds a small amount on top: YouTube's own guidance for stereo is 384 kbps, which is under 3 MB a minute, so for estimates it rounds away. If you want the longer treatment of size equals bitrate times duration, the arithmetic of video compression walks through it with CRF.

One caveat before the tables. Most cameras use variable bitrate. A shot of a still wall costs far fewer bits than a shot of leaves in the wind, so a spec sheet's number is usually a ceiling or a target, not a promise for every second. Treat every figure below as the expected upper end for that mode.

What bitrate does 4K actually record at?

Here is the table, with every bitrate taken from a first-party page: YouTube's published upload recommendations, DJI's spec page for the Mini 4 Pro, and Apple's ProRes documentation. The right-hand columns are our arithmetic from the formula above.

Source and mode	Bitrate	MB per minute	GB per hour
YouTube 4K SDR upload, 24 to 30 fps (low end)	35 Mbps	262.5	15.75
YouTube 4K SDR upload, 24 to 30 fps (high end)	45 Mbps	337.5	20.25
YouTube 4K SDR upload, 48 to 60 fps (low end)	53 Mbps	397.5	23.85
YouTube 4K SDR upload, 48 to 60 fps (high end)	68 Mbps	510	30.6
YouTube 4K HDR upload, 24 to 30 fps (high end)	56 Mbps	420	25.2
YouTube 4K HDR upload, 48 to 60 fps (high end)	85 Mbps	637.5	38.25
DJI Mini 4 Pro, maximum 4K bitrate (H.264 or H.265)	150 Mbps	1,125	67.5
Apple ProRes 422 Proxy, 3840 x 2160 at 30p	182 Mbps	1,365	81.9
Apple ProRes 422, 3840 x 2160 at 30p	589 Mbps	4,417.5	265.05
Apple ProRes 422 HQ, 3840 x 2160 at 30p	884 Mbps	6,630	397.8
Apple ProRes 422 HQ, 3840 x 2160 at 60p	1,768 Mbps	13,260	795.6

Sources: YouTube's recommended upload encoding settings for the upload rows, the DJI Mini 4 Pro specifications for the drone row (the page lists a max video bitrate of 150 Mbps for H.264 and H.265 and 4K at up to 60 fps), and the target data rate tables in Apple's ProRes white paper for the ProRes rows. Figures were read from those pages on 2026-10-02. Check them again if you are planning around a specific number, because manufacturers revise specs.

Two honest notes on what this table is and is not. The YouTube rows are what YouTube recommends you upload, which is also a decent picture of what a well-compressed 4K file looks like, but your camera may record at a higher rate than it. And the ProRes rows are Apple's published target data rates for the codec, which is why they are exact multiples of each other. A real ProRes recording from a phone or a mirrorless camera is a ProRes file of that family, so the order of magnitude carries over. What it does not tell you is the bitrate of the HEVC or H.264 clip your phone makes by default.

How much does an iPhone record per minute of 4K?

This is the question most readers arrive with, and the clean answer is that Apple’s current iPhone documentation does not give a per-minute figure for standard recording. It describes the formats (High Efficiency, which is HEVC, and Most Compatible, which is H.264) without a size chart, and the ProRes page lists which resolutions each storage tier supports and the write speed an external drive needs.

That drive requirement is worth reading, because it confirms the table above from the other direction. Apple's ProRes page says an external drive needs to write at least 220 MB per second for 4K60 ProRes. Our table puts ProRes 422 HQ at 4K60 at 13,260 MB a minute, which is 221 MB a second. Same number, reached from the bitrate.

For the HEVC and H.264 clips most people shoot, here is how to get the real answer for your own phone in a minute:

1. Record exactly 60 seconds in the mode you use (4K at 30, then 4K at 60).
2. Open the file's details. On a Mac, Get Info shows the size; QuickTime's Movie Inspector shows the data rate. On Windows, the file's properties show size, and the Details tab shows the bit rate for most MP4 and MOV files.
3. Multiply the Mbps you see by 7.5 to confirm it matches the size.

Do that once for each mode and you have a number that is true for your device, your lighting and your habits, which beats any table, including ours. Shoot a quiet indoor scene and a busy outdoor one if you want the spread, because variable bitrate means the busy one will be noticeably larger.

Does 60 fps double the file size?

It depends on the codec, and that is the interesting part.

A compressed format like HEVC or H.264 does not store 60 separate pictures a second. It stores some frames in full and encodes the rest as changes from their neighbours. At twice the frame rate, consecutive frames are more alike, so the extra frames are cheap. YouTube's own upload guidance shows this: the 4K SDR range goes from 35 to 45 Mbps at standard frame rates to 53 to 68 Mbps at high frame rates. Work out the ratio and it is about 1.5 times, not 2.

An intraframe format like ProRes treats every frame on its own, so the cost scales directly with frame count. Apple's table shows exactly that: ProRes 422 HQ is 884 Mbps at 30p and 1,768 Mbps at 60p. Doubling the frame rate doubles the file.

Cameras add a third wrinkle. A device with a fixed bitrate ceiling, like the drone above at 150 Mbps, can hit that same ceiling at 30 fps and at 60 fps. The 60 fps clip is not bigger per minute, it is simply spending the same budget on twice as many frames, so each one gets less. If you shoot 60 fps and see no size increase, that is why, and the cost shows up as slightly softer detail in fast motion instead.

The practical rule: for phone and camera HEVC, plan on roughly half again as much space at 60 fps. For ProRes, plan on double.

How much space do GoPro and drone footage take?

Drones are the easiest case because the spec sheet gives you the ceiling. The DJI Mini 4 Pro's listed maximum is 150 Mbps, so its worst case is 150 × 7.5 = 1,125 MB a minute, or 67.5 GB an hour. In easy scenes it will come in lower. That is more than three times the 337.5 MB a minute of a 45 Mbps file, which is the surprise people hit on the first flight day: the card fills up far faster than 4K "should" allow.

Here is what that means for storage in practice, using the ceiling as the planning figure and decimal gigabytes:

Card	At 45 Mbps (337.5 MB/min)	At 150 Mbps (1,125 MB/min)	ProRes 422 HQ 4K30 (6,630 MB/min)
64 GB	about 190 minutes	about 57 minutes	about 9.7 minutes
128 GB	about 379 minutes	about 114 minutes	about 19 minutes
256 GB	about 758 minutes	about 228 minutes	about 39 minutes
512 GB	about 1,517 minutes	about 455 minutes	about 77 minutes

Divide the card's capacity in megabytes by the MB per minute: 128 GB is 128,000 MB, and 128,000 ÷ 1,125 is 113.8 minutes. Real capacity is a little lower after formatting, so treat these as the generous end.

On GoPro and other action cameras: their bitrate options vary by model and menu setting (standard and high-bitrate modes, different codecs, different frame rates), and the manufacturer's current spec pages did not load for automated verification when this was written, so there is no GoPro row in the table above. The method does not change. Find the bitrate for the exact mode in your camera's menu or spec sheet, multiply by 7.5, and you have the size. If the number is not published, do the 60-second test above.

How much do you save by exporting at 1080p?

A lot, and the difference is easy to put numbers on. YouTube's recommended 1080p upload is 8 Mbps at standard frame rates and 12 Mbps at high frame rates. Against the 4K figures above:

Output	Bitrate	MB per minute
1080p, 24 to 30 fps	8 Mbps	60
1080p, 48 to 60 fps	12 Mbps	90
4K SDR, 24 to 30 fps (high end)	45 Mbps	337.5
4K SDR, 48 to 60 fps (high end)	68 Mbps	510

So a 4K export at the recommended rate is roughly 4 to 6 times the size of the 1080p version of the same clip. Taken from a camera that records at the drone's 150 Mbps ceiling down to a 12 Mbps 1080p file, the saving is a factor of 12.5.

Why you would do it: a 10-minute 4K clip at 45 Mbps is about 3.4 GB, which will not fit an email, a free messaging tier or most chat uploads, and which a phone screen cannot show any better than the 1080p version. For anything shared on a phone, 1080p is the sensible final size. Keep the original 4K file if you might crop in later or want the headroom for grading.

Two ways to do that in a browser without uploading anything. Resize it to 1080 if the problem is the pixel count, since it targets height and only scales down. Or run it through the compressor if the problem is the bitrate, since the file size follows the bitrate whatever the resolution. Our bitrate versus resolution comparison covers which of the two to reach for first.

One limit worth stating plainly: the free tier takes files up to 200 MB, and video exports carry a small corner watermark. At 45 Mbps that is about 35 seconds of 4K, and at the drone's ceiling it is under 11 seconds, so long 4K clips need a trim first or Pro, which removes the cap and the mark. The file is read into your browser's memory and processed on your own machine, which is the reason the cap exists.

What does the codec change?

HEVC (H.265) is a newer, more efficient codec than H.264: for similar picture quality it needs a lower bitrate, and a lower bitrate is a smaller file. How much lower depends on the scene and the encoder, so no single percentage is safe to promise. Our H.264 versus H.265 guide covers where HEVC saves space and where it causes playback trouble.

What matters for storage planning is that the codec is only one of three dials. Bitrate is the one that sets the size. The codec decides how good the picture looks at a given bitrate. The frame rate decides how that bitrate is spent. A camera with HEVC set to a high bitrate can easily produce a bigger file than a camera with H.264 at a low one.

FAQ

How many minutes of 4K fit on 128 GB?

At YouTube's recommended 45 Mbps ceiling for 4K30, about 379 minutes. At the drone's 150 Mbps ceiling, about 114 minutes. In ProRes 422 HQ at 4K30, about 19 minutes. Divide 128,000 MB by the MB per minute for your own bitrate, and allow a margin for formatting.

Is ProRes worth the storage?

For editing and grading, often yes: it is built to decode quickly and survive repeated re-encoding without visible loss. For footage you will only trim and share, no. The cost is large and measurable: Apple's own tables put ProRes 422 HQ 4K30 at 884 Mbps, roughly 20 times the 45 Mbps YouTube recommends for a 4K upload. If you cannot name the editing reason for it, record in HEVC.

Does HEVC really halve the file size?

Not as a rule. HEVC needs a lower bitrate than H.264 for similar quality, but the saving varies with the scene and the encoder, so expect a real reduction rather than a guaranteed 50 percent. The reliable way to know is to record the same minute both ways and compare the files.

How big is a 10-minute 4K video?

Ten times the per-minute figure. At 45 Mbps that is 3,375 MB, about 3.4 GB. At 68 Mbps for 60 fps, 5,100 MB. At a 150 Mbps drone ceiling, 11,250 MB, about 11 GB. In ProRes 422 HQ 4K30, 66,300 MB, about 66 GB.

The short version

Find the bitrate, multiply by 7.5, and you have the megabytes per minute. If you cannot find the bitrate, record a minute and look at the file. For a 4K clip that is too big to share, shrink it to a shareable 1080p file right in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and you can see the size before you send it anywhere.