4K video
Also known as: 4K recording, ultra HD video, 4K footage
4K video is footage with roughly four times the pixels of 1080p HD, which makes it sharper but much larger — a minute of 4K can take up several hundred megabytes. On phones it is often the single biggest consumer of storage.
- Roughly four times the pixels of 1080p HD
- A minute of 4K can be several hundred MB
- Often the biggest single user of phone storage
Why 4K eats storage
4K (Ultra HD) packs about four times as many pixels per frame as Full HD, so it needs a far higher bitrate to look clean. The result is that a single minute of 4K footage can run to several hundred megabytes — and higher frame rates like 4K at 60 fps grow larger still.
Because video is recorded continuously, even a few clips can dwarf an entire photo library. A handful of 4K videos is frequently the reason a phone’s storage fills up faster than expected.
Managing 4K footage
On iPhone you can trade size for sharpness in Settings > Camera > Record Video, choosing a lower resolution or frame rate for everyday clips and reserving 4K for footage that needs it. Compressing existing 4K videos is another way to recover large amounts of space without deleting the moment.