Recording · Storage planning

Video Recording Storage Calculator

Estimate recording file size from video bitrate, audio bitrate, and duration—or calculate how long a known amount of storage can hold at that aggregate bitrate.

Interactive calculation

Enter bitrate and recording time

Use the bitrate your recorder targets or reports. Defaults are examples, not quality recommendations.

Estimated file size

22.64 GB

21.09 GiB · 50.32 Mbps aggregate

Recording capacity

4h 24m 58s

Math

Bitrate × time gives data size

The calculator adds video Mbps and audio Kbps after converting them to bits per second, multiplies by seconds, then divides by eight to convert bits to bytes. Decimal GB uses 1,000,000,000 bytes; binary GiB uses 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Boundary

An estimate, not a measured recording

A constant or known average bitrate makes storage planning straightforward. Variable-bitrate and quality-target recording can vary with scene complexity and encoder behavior; container overhead also exists. The result models the bitrate you enter rather than predicting encoder quality or exact final file size.

Recording context

Why bitrate-based estimates have limits

OBS documents quality-based recording modes such as CQP, CRF, and ICQ where higher-quality targets can produce larger files and bitrate varies with content. OBS also supports multiple recording audio tracks, so audio bitrate belongs in aggregate storage math.

This tool deliberately does not recommend a bitrate, codec, resolution, frame rate, or OBS preset. Supply a bitrate from your own recording configuration or measurement when you need capacity planning.

  1. 01 · OBS Project

    Advanced Recording Settings Guide
  2. 02 · OBS Project

    Advanced Recording and Multi-Track Audio