Depends entirely on codec and resolution. The answer ranges from about 11 hours of 8K R3D to roughly 150 hours of streaming-bitrate H.265. That is a 13x spread, which is why "I shoot to 1 TB cards" is meaningless on its own.
This is the kind of decision you make at 6am while loading the car, not the kind you want to be Googling on set when the camera is rolling. Bookmark the table.
Loading cards for a shoot is like loading mags for a film camera. You do not just grab a stack. You count the runtime per mag against the day's call sheet and pad for safety. Modern SSD cards are bigger than film mags, but the math is the same.
The Recording-Time Table
Each common camera format, with how long 1 TB will hold before it fills.
| Codec | Bitrate | Hours on 1 TB |
|---|---|---|
| H.265 4K (60 Mbps streaming) | ~7 MB/s | ~33 hours (industry: 33 hr at conservative bitrate; up to 150 at lowest) |
| H.265 4K (200 Mbps cinema) | ~25 MB/s | ~12 hours |
| H.264 4K (100 Mbps consumer) | ~13 MB/s | ~22 hours |
| XAVC-I 4K (Sony FX3/FX6) | ~50 MB/s | ~5.5 hours |
| ProRes 422 HQ 4K | ~15 MB/s | ~19 hours |
| ProRes 4444 4K | ~22 MB/s | ~12.5 hours |
| BRAW Q5 6K | ~13 MB/s | ~21 hours |
| BRAW Q3 6K | ~22 MB/s | ~12.5 hours |
| BRAW Q1 6K | ~37 MB/s | ~7.5 hours |
| R3D HQ 4K | ~12 MB/s | ~24 hours |
| R3D HQ 6K | ~18 MB/s | ~15 hours |
| R3D HQ 8K | ~25 MB/s | ~11 hours |
| ARRIRAW 4.5K | ~83 MB/s | ~3.3 hours |
| ARRI ProRes 4444 4K (Alexa 35) | ~22 MB/s | ~12.5 hours |
Frame rate matters. Double the frame rate, double the data rate, halve the recording time. A 1 TB drive at 8K R3D HQ 24fps holds 11 hours; at 60fps it is closer to 4.5 hours.
Why Your Camera Fills the Card Faster Than Expected
Three reasons the actual on-card runtime is often shorter than the spec sheet suggests.
Bitrate spikes during high-motion. Variable-bitrate codecs (H.265, BRAW, REDCODE) compress less when the scene has more motion or detail. A static interview at 60 Mbps H.265 is genuinely 60 Mbps. A handheld run-and-gun chase scene at the same setting can spike to 100+ Mbps. Over a long shoot, real-world averages run 15-30 percent above the nominal spec.
Multi-channel audio adds up. Most narrative shoots run 4-8 audio channels (lavs, boom, ambience). At 24-bit 48kHz that is roughly 8 MB per minute per channel. Eight channels of audio over a long shoot can be 50-100 GB on its own.
Raw vs compressed. ARRIRAW and uncompressed RAW formats do not compress at all, which means there is no spike behavior, but the baseline is so high it does not matter. ARRIRAW at 4.5K is 300 GB per hour regardless of what is happening in frame.
Camera firmware overhead. The camera writes metadata, audio, proxy streams, color science data, and timecode alongside the video. On a 60-minute clip, this overhead can add 5-10 percent to the file size you would calculate from the video bitrate alone.
For card sizing, plan for the high end of these ranges. Run out of space mid-take and you end the day early.
The 80 Percent Rule for On-Set SSDs
Never plan to fill an SSD past 80 percent during a shoot. Two reasons.
Write speeds collapse near full. When an SSD crosses about 80 percent capacity, the controller has fewer free blocks for garbage collection and write amplification kicks in. You can lose 30 percent of your write speed in the last 20 percent of capacity. On a high-bitrate codec, that throttling can cause dropped frames mid-take.
You need headroom for the offload. Most on-set workflows offload to a laptop or DIT cart at the end of the day. If your card is 100 percent full, you need exactly enough space on the destination drive. If your card is 80 percent full, you have buffer. Cards do not always offload cleanly. Sometimes you need to copy twice, or hold a backup on-card while the primary verifies.
So the working rule: when you calculate "1 TB holds X hours," use 800 GB as your real working capacity. If your shoot needs 8 hours of XAVC-I 4K (about 1.5 TB at full bitrate), that is two 1 TB cards minimum, not one.
By Shoot Type: How Many Hours Fits
Same numbers, organized by typical shoot scenario.
| Shoot type | Camera/codec | 1 TB holds |
|---|---|---|
| Wedding (single shooter, FX3) | XAVC-I 4K | ~5 hours = half a wedding |
| Wedding (RED Komodo) | R3D HQ 6K | ~15 hours = 1.5 weddings |
| YouTube vlog | H.265 4K 60 Mbps | ~33 hours = months of content |
| Documentary interview | ProRes 422 HQ 4K | ~19 hours = 8-10 sit-downs |
| Run-and-gun doc | XAVC-I 4K | ~5 hours = a long shoot day |
| Commercial (BMPCC 6K) | BRAW Q5 6K | ~21 hours = a full job |
| Commercial (RED) | R3D HQ 8K | ~11 hours = a full shoot day |
| Cinema (ARRI Alexa 35) | ProRes 4444 4K | ~12 hours = a long shoot day |
| Cinema (ARRI ARRIRAW) | ARRIRAW 4.5K | ~3 hours = lunch-to-wrap on a quiet day |
The big jump is between compressed and raw cinema formats. ARRIRAW eats cards like nothing else in common use, which is why ARRIRAW shoots run multiple cards per setup and a full DIT workflow.
How Many Cards Should You Bring?
A working rule of thumb: bring enough card capacity for 1.5x the day's shoot time at the highest bitrate you might use.
For an 8-hour day shooting XAVC-I 4K, that is 12 hours of capacity at the actual codec's data rate. At ~50 MB/s that is roughly 2.2 TB of capacity, so three 1 TB cards minimum (allowing for the 80 percent fill rule).
For a wedding shooter with a RED Komodo, 8 hours of R3D HQ 6K at the working capacity is roughly 1.5 TB needed, so two 1 TB cards or a single 2 TB.
For a commercial DP shooting ARRIRAW for a one-day job, 6-8 hours times 1.5 means 9-12 TB of card capacity, which is why ARRIRAW shoots typically have 1 TB or 2 TB cards rotating constantly with active offload throughout the day.
For figuring out total project storage including the post-production overhead (proxies, exports, cache), the storage calculator can give you a per-job number to plan your cards plus your edit drive together.
Quick Conversions
Three rough anchors for on-set mental math:
- 1 TB ≈ 11 hours of 8K R3D HQ. Useful for high-end cinema work.
- 1 TB ≈ 19 hours of 4K ProRes 422 HQ. Standard finishing codec from most cine cameras.
- 1 TB ≈ 33 hours of 4K H.265 streaming bitrate. Useful for vloggers and run-and-gun.
Cross-check against the table above for anything else.
For SSD picks that hold up to sustained on-set writes (not all do), see the external SSD buyer guide for the current set of drives that earn their keep.
Before You Buy More Cards
The card situation is solved. The longer-term storage situation usually is not. Cards offload onto a project drive, the project drive fills up, and now you are back to the same "I need more storage" problem in a different form. Clip Sweeper scans your Premiere projects and shows you exactly which clips made it onto a timeline. On a typical drive, the offloaded footage you never used is 30-50 percent of the total. Knowing exactly what is dead weight is usually a bigger win than another 4 TB of project drive.