Because video is typically compressed during encoding when you render to final output, you can’t just multiply the amount of memory required for a single frame by the frame rate and composition duration to determine the amount of disk space required to store your final output movie. However, such a calculation can give you a rough idea of the maximum storage space you may need. For example, one second (approximately 30 frames) of uncompressed standard-definition 8-bpc video requires approximately 40 MB. A feature-length movie at that data rate would require more than 200 GB to store. Even with DV compression, which reduces file size to 3.6 MB per second of video, this storage requirement translates to more than 20 GB for a typical feature-length movie.

It is not unusual for a feature-film project—with its higher color bit depth, greater frame size, and much lower compression ratios—to require terabytes of storage for footage and rendered output movies.