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How Big Is a 4K Video per Hour & How to Compress 4K to Smaller Size

Get clear about the size of a 4K video before you record 4K video at 30fps/60fps with your iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, GoPro Hero 11, or DJI Drone. Best solution to fast compress 4K video file to smaller size with best quality.

It is possible that you get here just out of curiosity and it doesn't matter to you how big a 4K video file would be. But I guess people who really care about 4K file size should mostly be those who intend to record, download or play 4K videos however using a device with limited storage.

It is true that we are almost in the 4K era. You can save 4K movie online, watch 4K stream on Netflix, or record 4K video with mobile phone or action cam. Even over-the-air TV broadcasting is already on its way. However, the bulky size of 4k video remains a problem, despite having been cut in half with the use of advanced HEVC codec. Some of us may still have to make do with 1080p, and that's why a 4k video converter is needed to help fast downsize 4k video, or lower the resolution from 4K to 1080p. How big is a 1-hour 4K video? Don't worry, here in the article, you will learn what's the size of 4K video and how to reduce 4k video size for easier storage and sharing.

4K Video Is too Large? Time to Reduce the Size of 4K Video File

Try Winxvideo AI - the best 4K video converter and compressor!

  • Downscale 4K to 1080p/720p/2K or upconvert 1080p to 4K UHD, 720p to 1080p with high quality.
  • Resize 4K video by changing bit rate, scaling resolution, tweaking frame rate, trimming the video length or cropping frame size.
  • Convert and compress all kinds of 4K video, be it MP4, MOV, AVI, H.265/HEVC, MKV, etc.
  • Intel QSV, Nvidia CUDA/NVENC, and AMD hardware acceleration tech helps to accelerate 4K video processing dramatically.

Part 1. How Big Is a 1-minute 4K video File?

The size of a 4K video encoded in HEVC is much smaller than it is recorded in H.264, simply because HEVC codec saves nearly half by higher compression efficiency when compare to H.264, within the same graphic quality. That means we could benefit a whole lot from the compression.

In addition to the codec and compression, file size of 4K video can vary greatly, depending on bitrate, color depth, frame rate, and camera choice taken by the recorder. The higher the frame rate and bitrate, the more data it will use. Based on the configurations we listed below, it is easy to calculate how much storage space a 4K movie video will take upon different devices.

Estimated 4K Video File Size per Minute Recorded by iPhone/Samsung/GoPro/Canon


iPhone 14/Pro/Plus


Samsung Galaxy S22/Ultra


Canon XA75


GoPro HERO 11

Capacity: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB

Capacity: 128GB, 512GB, 512GB, 1TB

Capacity: 64GB, 256GB, 512GB

SD card: 32/64/128GB

4K Recording Mode:

4K at 24/25/30/60fps

4K HDR at 60fps

4K ProRes at 30fps

4K Recording Mode:

4K at 60fps

Hyperlapse 4K at 30fps

4K Recording Mode:

4K at 24fps

4K at 30fps

4K Recording Mode:
4K at up to 120fps

4k video size per minute:

4k H.264 at 30fps = 350MB

4K HEVC at 60fps = 400MB

4K Prores 10bit HDR = 6GB

4K file size per minute:
4K at 30fps = 360MB
4K at 60fps = 525MB

4K file size per minute:

4k XF-AVC at 24/30fps = 1.2GB

4k MP4 at 24/30fps = 1.12GB

4K file size per minute:
4K HEVC at 120fps = 750MB

4K H.264 at 25/30fps = 416MB

How many GB is a 4k video? How big is a 1 hour 4K video? Read on and see what conclusion we can draw from the above table.

1. Common Smartphones

iPhone 14/Pro/Plus allows 4K video recording at up to 60fps both on front and rear cameras. It means that 4K 60fps will be the choice for an increasing of users. But shooting one hour of 4K 60fps video consumes around 24 GB of memory. This makes iPhone 128GB easily out of storage when taking a 5-hour 4k video in HEVC, let alone the ProRes format. Specifically, a less than one hour 4K Prore footage could use up all the memory of a 256GB model iPhone.

Samsung Galaxy S22 supports recording 4K in HDR10 mode of HEVC codec, which brings crisper and sharper image of 4K UHD video, but also takes more storage space. A 1-minute 4K H.264 video shot by Samsung Galaxy S22 and Google Pixel 6 takes up around 360MB. Moreover, there is a 10-minute limit for 4K video recording with Samsung Galaxy phones, probably in consideration of the big file size of 4K. So technically, you can download a 120 minutes feature length 4K movie on Samsung Galaxy S22, but it won't let you record 4K or 8K video longer than 10 minutes.

2. Action Cams

GoPro HERO 11 allows users to shoot 4K footages maximumly at 100Mbps with Protune on, producing a whopping 750MB 4K video per minute. 4K video taken by Insta360 One RS can also reaches up to 700MB in size. This means a 40-minute 4K video can easily max out your 32GB card storage. DJI Action 2 will shoot a 4k 120fps video at around 130Mbps. It is estimated that a 1-hour 4K video will be around 57GB in size.

3. DSLR and Mirrorless Cameras

A 4K video clip recorded by professional cameras like Canon or Sony is mostly bigger than that by mobile phones. Bitrate can reaches between 120-200Mbps. That's why you can see a one minute 4K video taken by DSLR or mirrorless cameras like Canon EOS R5C, Panasonic AU-EVA1, Sony FX3, Nikon D7500, Fujifilm X-S10, Nikon Z9, etc can take up over 1-2GB in size.

Particularly, the size of 4K video in Prores 422, 4444 or RAW recorded by cinema cameras like Blackmagic, ARRI, or RED can even reach up to 6-20GB per minute.

How Many Hours of 4K Video can Your 128GB Smartphone or SD card Hold?

Next we will show you how much 4k video can your smartphone or SD card hold? Here we take 128GB memory space for example.

Common Devices

Estimated size of 4k video per hour

Estimated hours of 4K video that will exhaust the 128GB storage space

Smartphones

iPhone 14 (HEVC/H.264)

Google Pixel (H.264)

Samsung S22 (H.264)

20-30GB

4-6 hours

Action Cams

GoPro Hero 11 (HEVC/H.264)

Insta360 One RS (H.264)

40-50GB

2-3 hours

DSLR and Mirrorless Cameras

Sony FX3(XAVC S-I H.264)

Panasonic AU-EVA1(422 Long GOP)

Panasonic Lumix S1H (422 Long GOP)

Canon EOS R5C(422 Long GOP)

Nikon D7500(MP4 H.264)

Fujifilm X-S10 (MPEG H.264)

60-80GB

1.5-2 hours

Cameras Shooting 4K in Raw

iPhone 14 (Propres)

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4k(ProRes422 HQ)

Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro (24fps)(RAW 8:1)

ARRI Alexa Mini LF(ProRes 422)

ARRI Alexa LF(ARRIRAW)

 

360-1000GB

5 to 20 minutes

Part 2. How to Do When the Size of 4K Video File Is Too Large?

4K is four times as many pixels in total as FHD 1080p, which leads to file size increases accordingly. If you still stick with 128 or 256GB storage space, up to 6-hour 4K video would eat up all the space, leaving your mobile freezing or crashing. Of course you can simply delete those 4K files to revive your phone. Also it is a good idea to transfer 4K videos to PC, cloud or external hard drive for saving and playing on PC/TV. But if playing 4K on iPhone/Android mobile on the go is what you want, compressing a 4K video file would be the best way.

As is mentioned above, video file size depends on the length of video, bitrate, FPS (frames per second), codec, color depth, etc. Changing any one of them would help resize your video files in 4K. In this regard, a top 4K video compressor is a necessity to facilitate the whole process, saving you the time and trouble to calculate settings.

There is a caveat: handling 4K video compressing/resizing, be it 4K HEVC, 4K H.264, 4K MKV, 4K MP4 video, etc. may be very slow without Hardware Acceleration.

Fortunately, Winxvideo AI which fully supports Intel QSV, NVIDIA CUDA/NVENC, and AMD hardware acceleration tech would be a greate helper in resizing large 4K videos. It can fully utilize computer GPU hardware acceleration to speed up the large 4K video decoding, processing, encoding, thus, let the CPU of your computer free from huge burden. And most importantly, it enables you to compress 4K video by up to 90% without losing quality.

  • Convert iPhone, Samsung, Gopro, drone 4K videos to 2K, 1080P, 720P and more with best quality.
  • Convert 4K H.264 to 4K HEVC/H.265 or vise versa, re-encode 4K MKV to 4K MP4 at lightning speed.
  • Convert 4K video to MPEG4, AVI, WMV, MOV, FLV, 3GP etc. for playing on different devices/video players.
  • Resize 4K video at No.1 fast video processing speed with smaller output file size and high quality.

[Guide] Compress or Resize Big 4K Video Files in Three Ways

Way 1. How to Resize 4K by converting 4K H.264 to 4K HEVC

As we said before, HEVC codec, being the successor to H.264, utilizes a much more efficient compression algorithm and is the main codec used to compress 4K/8K UHD videos. So it is easy to resize a big 4K H.264 video file. Just convert 4K H.264 to 4K H.265 (HEVC).

Step 1. Download and install Winxvideo AI, then open it and select Video Converter.

Winxvideo AI

Step 2. Load your 4K H.264 file by clicking "+Video".

Resize 4K by Converting 4K H264 to 4K HEVC

Step 3. Click Target Format to access "Output Profile" window, then go to General Profile and select HEVC Video (MP4 file format with hevc/h.265 + aac, resolution: 4096x2160).

Step 4. Since decoding, processing, encoding 4K, HEVC/H.265 videos may be slow, this 4K video converter adds unique hardware acceleration support for 4K, HEVC, H.264, or any other large video conversion to deliver an ultrafast speed. Optionally tick Intel or NVIDIA hardware transcoder option to quicken the process.

Step 5. Browse to choose a destination folder and click RUN to fast convert 4K H.264 to 4K HEVC with hardware acceleration on.

Way 2. How to Resize 4K by converting 4K 60fps to 4K 30fps

Is there really a big difference on file size between 4K 60fps and 4K 30 fps? The answer is yes. Here is how we do the test. Go to youtube.com, choose a 4K video from the results, and play the video. Click the gear icon at the bottom right corner, choose Quality, and then you can switch to 2160p 60fps. Seemingly, there is only 60fps option. But if you copy and paste the video url to the video download function part of WinX 4K MP4 resizer, you will see there are two outputs options under the same resolution, format and codec, but in different file size. Actually, one of them is 4K 60fps while the other is 4K 30fps. So it is true that you can change 4K video file size by adjusting frame rate.

Step 1. Open the WinX 4K video resizer, click "+Video" to get 4K 60fps loaded and then "OK" to get back to the main interface.

Step 2. This time click the Codec Option icon to access parameter adjusting panel.

Codec option

Step 3. Move to "Video Codec Options" -> "Frame Rate (FPS) " -> select 30 from the dropdown list and RUN to fast resize 4K video file with hardware acceleration.

Note: Changing frame rate to resize 4K video is not appropriate for all, for example extreme sports videos. Besides, we only recommend converting 4K 60fps to 4K 30fps instead of 24fps or 29.97, which may lead to distorted output image.

Resize 4K by Changing Frame Rate

Way 3. How to Compress 4K video by converting 4K to 1080p

"I used to record everything in 4k because it looks sharper and has more detail but it was so much work on my video editing program and took up so much space, that I switch to recording on a basic 1080p setting." Downscaling 4K to 2K or 1080p is a good way to cut down 4K file size, if it's ok with you.

Step 1. Launch the software, load your 4K video file through button "+Video".

Step 2. Get into the same video audio parameter center by clicking the "Codec Option" icon.

Step 3. Choose 1920x1080 from the dropdown list of "Resolution" under "Video Codec Options" and press button "RUN" to compress 4K video to smaller at fastest speed with hardware acceleration.

=>Suggested reading - Change video resolution

Resize 4K by Lowering Video Resolution

Video Tutorial: 3 Ways to Compress 4K Video Files Size without Losing Quality

If you can't play 4K videos on PC/mac or still have question on 4K video file size compressing? Please feel free to Email Us >>

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

author - Brent Archer

Brent Archer

Brent Archer is an experienced editor who loves all things related to social. He has spent more than a decade writing instructional contents related to social media, streaming services and video related topics all over the internet for Digiarty. Outside the social, he is addicted to Google I/O, Apple WWDC and other tech news to keep him informed.

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