Video Production Calculations
The arithmetic behind bitrate, storage, RAID and tape, camera cards, time-lapse, slow motion and color, with every formula worked through an example you can check.
1 GB = 8,000 Mb
Storage (GB) = Mbps × seconds ÷ 8,000
24 ÷ 120 = 20%
Speed % = timeline FPS ÷ capture FPS × 100
Mired = 10⁶ ÷ K
Shift = target mireds − source mireds
8 × 16 TB → 96 TB
RAID 6 usable = (drives − 2) × drive size
16 TB = 14.55 TiB
TiB = bytes ÷ 1,099,511,627,776 (2⁴⁰)
7,200 s ÷ 240 = 30 s
Interval = event duration ÷ frames needed
Calculation Guides
Slow Motion Calculations
Slow-motion factor and speed from capture and timeline frame rates, running time, ramps, and shutter at high frame rates.
Key Calculations:
Storage Planning Calculations
Gigabytes per hour from bitrate, footage from shooting ratio, backups, RAID capacity and transfer times.
Key Calculations:
Bitrate Calculations
Work out bitrate from file size and duration, and the streaming bitrates platforms ask for.
Key Calculations:
Color Grading Calculations
Gamut coverage from the primaries, HDR-to-SDR reference levels, mired shifts, bit depth and 3D LUT sizes.
Key Calculations:
RAID Capacity and Rebuild Risk
Usable space at RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10, drives for a target size, rebuild time and the odds of a read error mid-rebuild.
Key Calculations:
TB vs TiB
Why a 16 TB drive shows 14.55, how to convert between decimal and binary units, and which tools count which way.
Key Calculations:
LTO Tape Archiving
LTO-7 to LTO-10 capacity and speed, drive compatibility, tapes per project, write time, LTFS and checksums.
Key Calculations:
Camera Card Speeds
CFexpress, CFast and SD: sustained write classes, matching a codec bitrate to a card, record time and offload time.
Key Calculations:
Time-Lapse Calculations
Interval, frame count and speed-up from event and clip length, exposure inside the interval, and storage per sequence.
Key Calculations:
Hyperlapse and Day-to-Night
Distance per frame and crop margin for a hyperlapse; twilight timing and exposure ramps for a day-to-night shot.
Key Calculations:
Calculation Categories
Time & Motion
- Slow-motion factor and speed %
- Running time and frame counts
- Speed ramps
- Shutter angle and exposure
- Time-lapse interval and frame count
- Hyperlapse steps and day-to-night ramps
Storage & Data
- Bitrate from file size, and back
- Footage from shooting ratio
- RAID capacity and rebuild time
- TB vs TiB
- LTO tapes and write time
- Camera card speed and record time
- Transfer times
Color & Quality
- Gamut coverage
- HDR and SDR reference levels
- Mired shifts
- Bit depth and LUT size
Units to Get Right
Data and Storage
- Bits and bytes: 1 MB/s = 8 Mbps
- Decimal and binary: 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes, 1 GiB = 1,073,741,824
- A 16 TB drive is 14.55 TiB, so it looks smaller where the system counts in binary
Frame Rates and Color
- 23.976 is 24 × 1000/1001: 120 fps on a 23.976 timeline is 5.005x, not 5x
- Gamut percentages differ between CIE 1931 xy and CIE 1976 u'v': name the diagram
- 8-bit video range runs 16–235, so 220 luma code values rather than 256