How Many Hours of Video Can 64GB Hold?

What 64 GB really is

A 64 GB card is the entry point of the SDXC standard, which the SD Association defines as over 32 GB up to 2 TB, formatted exFAT. Those boundaries come from the SD Association capacity overview.

Your computer will report this card as roughly 59.6 GiB, because the operating system divides by 1024 three times and keeps writing GB on the screen. Both numbers describe the same 64,000,000,000 bytes. This page works in decimal bytes throughout, because that is the unit the card is sold in and the unit Apple and Blackmagic publish their own data rates against.

exFAT removes the 4 GB file limit, so a long take stays in one file. That is the practical reason a 64 GB card behaves differently from a 32 GB one beyond simply being bigger.

What this capacity is good for

A sensible second card. Enough for a morning of 4K on a consumer camera, not enough for a day of it.

The division, done on this card

One division produces every figure above, and doing it once by hand is the fastest way to stop trusting calculators blindly, this one included.

Use a delivery rate rather than a camera rate, because this is the capacity people most often fill with finished files. 64 GB is 64,000,000,000 bytes, so 512,000,000,000 bits. A 4K export at the YouTube target of 40 Mbps spends 40,000,000 bits a second. That is 3 h 33 min of finished 4K on one card.

Run the same division with camera footage instead and it collapses to 2 h 41 min at consumer 4K 30, or 9 min 39 s at ProRes 422 HQ UHD 30p. Same card, same arithmetic, three answers, because the only thing that changed is the denominator.

What one hour costs on 64 GB

Turn the tables around. On a job you plan in hours, so the useful figure is what one hour takes out of the card.

• One hour of consumer 1080p 30, at 24.8 Mbps, is 11.2 GB, which is 17 percent of it.
• One hour of consumer 4K 30, at 53 Mbps, is 23.9 GB, which is 37 percent of it.
• One hour of a 4K delivery file at the YouTube target of 40 Mbps is 18 GB, which is 28 percent of it.
• One hour of Blackmagic RAW 12:1 at 6K DCI 24 fps is 215 GB, which is 3.4 times the whole card.
• One hour of ProRes 422 HQ at UHD 30p is 397.8 GB, which is 6.2 times the whole card.

Two of these cards hold the same hours as one 128 GB card. What they also give you is a moment in the day when one of them is out of the camera and can be copied, which is worth more than the capacity.

One card or two, which is a real decision at this size

Sixty four gigabytes is the first capacity where you stop asking whether the day fits and start asking how you want to divide it. Two of these hold the same footage as one 128 GB card, and cost roughly the same, so the choice is not about money. It is about what happens when one of them fails.

A card that dies takes everything on it. Split the day across two and you lose half a day instead of a day, and you have a copied card in a different pocket by lunch. Keep it on one and you have fewer card changes, no chance of putting the wrong card back in, and one thing to keep track of instead of two. Both arguments are honest. Which one wins depends entirely on whether the thing you are shooting can be shot again.

My own rule after fourteen years of commercials is narrow enough to state: if the client, the talent and the location have to be assembled again to reshoot it, the day gets split. If it is a product on a table in a studio I control, one card is fine.

The first card with no file size limit

This is the capacity where the SD Association moves you from SDHC and FAT32 to SDXC and exFAT, and the 4 GB single file ceiling disappears. A 1 h 0 min take at 53 Mbps arrives as one file of about 23.85 GB instead of a numbered series. If you record long form, talks, ceremonies, performances, that difference is worth more than the extra capacity.

It also changes how you check a copy. With one file per take you can compare file counts and sizes at a glance. With a split series you have to know how many parts to expect, and that is exactly the sort of thing nobody knows at eleven at night.

How many hours of video can 64GB hold?

It depends on the data rate. At consumer 4K 30 fps, using GoPro published figures, 64 GB holds about 2 h 41 min. At 1080p 30 it holds about 5 h 43 min. At ProRes 422 HQ UHD 30p, which Apple publishes as 884 Mbps, it holds about 9 min 39 s.

How many hours of 4K video can 64GB hold?

At a consumer 4K bitrate of about 53 Mbps, roughly 2 h 41 min. At the higher bitrate setting the same camera cuts that to about 1 h 22 min. Professional codecs are far heavier: ProRes 422 HQ at UHD 30p gives about 9 min 39 s.

How long can you record 4K on 64GB?

The card holds about 2 h 41 min of consumer 4K at 30 fps, but holding it and recording it in one unbroken take are different things. Heat, battery life and per clip limits stop most cameras long before the media is full. Plan around the shooting day rather than around one long take.

How many hours of 1080p video can 64GB hold?

At the 24.8 Mbps that GoPro published times imply for 1080p 30, about 5 h 43 min. A finished delivery file is much lighter: at the YouTube 1080p upload target of 8 Mbps, 64 GB holds about 17 h 46 min. Camera footage and delivery files are different animals and the gap between them is the whole reason a single answer to this question does not exist.

Is one 64 GB card better than two 32 GB cards?

They hold the same footage. The difference is what a failure costs you and how often you change media. Two cards halve what a single failure destroys and give you a copied card in your pocket by the middle of the day. One card means fewer changes and one thing to track. If the shoot cannot be repeated, split it.

Does a 64 GB card still split recordings into 4 GB files?

No. The SD Association specifies SDXC with exFAT, and exFAT has no practical single file limit, so a long take stays as one file. This is the first capacity where that is true. Cards of 32 GB and below are specified with FAT32, which stops at 4 GB per file.

How long can a 64 GB card record on a phone or an action camera?

Only your own device can answer that, because most phone makers do not publish a megabytes per minute figure. Record ten seconds in the exact mode you use, divide the file size in megabytes by the seconds, multiply by eight, and type the result into the box near the top of this page. For a GoPro HERO13 Black the maker does publish times, and scaled to this card they give about 2 h 41 min at 4K 30 standard.