All five ProRes flavors at every common resolution and frame rate. Bookmark this and stop guessing.
ProRes is the codec equivalent of choosing a stock from a film rental house. Same name on the can, but Proxy and 4444 are completely different products with completely different costs and use cases. Editors who pick the wrong flavor end up either with files too big for the drive or too compressed for the colorist.
Here is the full picture, in numbers and use cases.
The Five ProRes Flavors
Apple ships five quality tiers of ProRes. They share a codec family but they are not interchangeable.
ProRes Proxy. The smallest. Designed for offline editing and screening copies. Good enough to cut against, not good enough to deliver from. Roughly 45 Mbps at 1080p24.
ProRes 422 LT. A step up. Used for broadcast deliverables when full 422 is overkill. Roughly 102 Mbps at 1080p24.
ProRes 422. The standard finish codec. The default ProRes for online editing, color, and most deliverables. Roughly 147 Mbps at 1080p24.
ProRes 422 HQ. Higher bitrate version of 422 for grading, VFX, and any pipeline where you do not want compression artifacts to compound. Roughly 220 Mbps at 1080p24.
ProRes 4444. Full 4:4:4 chroma sampling plus an alpha channel. Built for visual effects work, motion graphics with transparency, and the highest-quality finishing. Roughly 330 Mbps at 1080p24.
(There is also ProRes RAW, which is a different beast: a camera-raw codec for cinema cameras. Not in this comparison.)
Per-Hour File Size Table
Each flavor at every common resolution and frame rate. Numbers are approximate (within ~5 percent) and represent average sustained bitrate.
1080p24
| Flavor | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| ProRes Proxy | 50 MB | 3 GB |
| ProRes 422 LT | 110 MB | 6.6 GB |
| ProRes 422 | 160 MB | 9.6 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ | 240 MB | 14.4 GB |
| ProRes 4444 | 360 MB | 21.6 GB |
1080p60
| Flavor | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| ProRes Proxy | 125 MB | 7.5 GB |
| ProRes 422 LT | 280 MB | 16.5 GB |
| ProRes 422 | 400 MB | 24 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ | 595 MB | 36 GB |
| ProRes 4444 | 900 MB | 54 GB |
4K24
| Flavor | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| ProRes Proxy | 200 MB | 12 GB |
| ProRes 422 LT | 410 MB | 25 GB |
| ProRes 422 | 590 MB | 35 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ | 880 MB | 53 GB |
| ProRes 4444 | 1320 MB | 79 GB |
4K60
| Flavor | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| ProRes Proxy | 500 MB | 30 GB |
| ProRes 422 LT | 1020 MB | 61 GB |
| ProRes 422 | 1480 MB | 89 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ | 2200 MB | 132 GB |
| ProRes 4444 | 3300 MB | 198 GB |
8K24
| Flavor | Per minute | Per hour |
|---|---|---|
| ProRes Proxy | 800 MB | 48 GB |
| ProRes 422 LT | 1640 MB | 98 GB |
| ProRes 422 | 2360 MB | 142 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ | 3520 MB | 211 GB |
| ProRes 4444 | 5280 MB | 317 GB |
Frame rate scales linearly. 1080p30 is roughly 1080p24 times 1.25. 4K48 is roughly 4K24 times 2.
The "Good Enough for What" Guide
Picking the right flavor is mostly about matching the codec to the job stage. Pick too low and you cannot do the work. Pick too high and you waste storage and render time.
ProRes Proxy. Editing offline. Screening copies for clients who need to review on a laptop. Backup viewing copies. Never use for finish or grade.
ProRes 422 LT. Broadcast deliverables when the spec calls for ProRes but file size matters. News, interviews, talking-head content. Good for content that does not need heavy color or VFX.
ProRes 422. The default finishing codec. Standard color grade, standard finish, standard delivery. If you are not sure which one to pick, this is usually the right answer.
ProRes 422 HQ. Heavy color grading, VFX-bound shots, anywhere you might transcode or re-render and do not want compression artifacts to stack. Also the most common camera-recorded ProRes (FX3, FX6, etc.).
ProRes 4444. Visual effects work that requires alpha channels (composites, mattes, motion graphics with transparency). Highest-end finishing where storage is not a concern. Overkill for most live-action delivery.
How to Estimate Without a Table
A quick formula for any ProRes file size:
```
File size (MB) = bitrate (Mbps) × duration (seconds) ÷ 8
```
For an hour of ProRes 422 HQ at 1080p24 (220 Mbps):
220 × 3600 ÷ 8 = 99,000 MB ÷ 8 = ~12.4 GB
(Slightly off from the 14.4 GB above because the official Apple bitrate spec is an average and the real-world average is a bit higher with overhead.)
Multiply by frame-rate ratio for higher rates. 1080p60 = 1080p24 × 2.5. 4K = 1080p × ~4. The math compounds quickly, which is why 4K60 ProRes 4444 hits 200 GB per hour fast.
ProRes vs H.265: When the Trade-Off Tips
Most editors today have a choice: keep camera-original H.265 throughout, or transcode to ProRes for editing.
Camera H.265 at 4K is about 7-22 GB per hour depending on bitrate. ProRes 422 HQ at 4K is 53 GB per hour. The ProRes version is 2-7x larger.
Modern Macs (M-series, especially) handle 4K H.265 timeline playback fine for most use cases. The transcode-to-ProRes step is mostly necessary for: heavy color grading, complex multicam, anything older than M1, or pipelines where the colorist or VFX team needs ProRes for their tools.
If you are cutting on a recent Mac and you are not doing heavy finishing, you can often skip the transcode and save the storage. For a fuller breakdown of per-codec sizes, see the 4K storage breakdown.
Plan Your Project
For project-level estimates including ProRes proxies plus camera originals plus cache and exports, the storage calculator can give you a planning number based on your shoot scenario. Useful when deciding what size SSD to buy or whether your current project drive has room for the next job.
Before You Buy More Storage
A common pattern: editors transcode everything to ProRes 422 HQ "to be safe," then wonder why their drives fill up so fast. Half the time the original H.265 would have worked fine on the timeline.
Clip Sweeper scans your Premiere projects and shows you which clips actually made it onto a timeline. On a typical drive, the unused 30-50 percent is the same proportion whether you shot ProRes or H.265. Cleaning the dead weight tends to be a bigger win than the codec choice itself.