Raw video looks great until you look at your drives. The Nikon ZR records R3D NE, and in 6K 50p one hour of footage takes about 1.4 terabytes. The Sony A1, shooting 8K in XAVC HS, needs 118 GB for the same hour.
So I put the two cameras side by side on the same wall and measured every setting I actually use: 8K and 6K, then 4K at 100p, 50p and 25p. On the Nikon side I also recompressed every file with Blue Compressor at Q2 and Q3, to see how close raw can get to the Sony’s codecs.
The short answer
- 4K 25p: Nikon ZR raw at Q3 takes 47 GB per hour. The Sony A1 in XAVC S takes 64, in All-Intra 108. The original R3D takes 312.
- 4K 50p full frame: Nikon ZR at Q3 takes 88 GB per hour, slightly less than the Sony’s XAVC S (91). Sony XAVC HS is still the smallest at 44.
- 4K 100p and 6K 50p: even after compression, the Nikon raw files stay two to three and a half times bigger than the Sony’s 4K 100p and 8K files. 6K 25p at Q3 (130 GB per hour) is close to the Sony’s 8K (118).
- A 1 TB drive holds about 21 hours of Nikon ZR 4K 25p at Q3, against 3 hours of the original R3D and about 16 hours of Sony XAVC S.
How I measured it
Comparing file sizes clip by clip is misleading, because a longer clip is always bigger. So every number here is a rate, worked out from the exact duration of each clip:
- Nikon ZR: file size divided by the clip’s exact duration. I counted the frames with REDline, for example 543 frames at 50p = 10.86 seconds.
- Sony A1: the total bitrate stored in the file’s metadata. Sony MP4 files are padded in fixed chunks: in my test an 8K HEVC clip and a 4K All-Intra clip weighed the same to within 2 KB, so the size of a short Sony clip is not reliable.
- GB per hour = Mb/s × 3600 ÷ 8 ÷ 1000, with 1 GB = 1000 MB. Audio is included in every figure.
Both cameras recorded the same wooden world map, so the image on screen is comparable too. In the video each setting is shown at 400% zoom with its numbers on screen. The Sony was recording S-Log3 4:2:2 10-bit; the Nikon was recording R3D NE.
What is Blue Compressor?
Blue Compressor is a free, open-source tool for Nikon raw video (R3D NE and N-RAW). It re-encodes the raw data inside the file with a coarser quantization and leaves the metadata, timecode and audio untouched. The result is still a normal R3D raw clip that opens in the same software as the original. In this test I used Q2 (Archival, the default) and Q3 (High). In my first Blue Compressor test I looked at image quality at 400% zoom; this one is about storage.
The numbers
4K 25p
| Camera | Codec / version | Resolution | Bitrate | GB per hour | Hours per 1 TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sony A1 | XAVC S (AVC 4:2:2 10-bit) | 3840×2160 | 142 Mb/s | 64 | 15.7 |
| Sony A1 | XAVC S-I (All-Intra 4:2:2 10-bit) | 3840×2160 | 240 Mb/s | 108 | 9.2 |
| Nikon ZR, full frame | R3D NE original | 4032×2268 | 693 Mb/s | 312 | 3.2 |
| Nikon ZR, full frame | Blue Compressor Q2 | 4032×2268 | 126 Mb/s | 56 | 17.7 |
| Nikon ZR, full frame | Blue Compressor Q3 | 4032×2268 | 104 Mb/s | 47 | 21.3 |
4K 50p
| Camera | Codec / version | Resolution | Bitrate | GB per hour | Hours per 1 TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sony A1 | XAVC HS (HEVC 4:2:2 10-bit) | 3840×2160 | 99 Mb/s | 44 | 22.5 |
| Sony A1 | XAVC S (AVC 4:2:2 10-bit) | 3840×2160 | 202 Mb/s | 91 | 11.0 |
| Sony A1 | XAVC S-I (All-Intra 4:2:2 10-bit) | 3840×2160 | 479 Mb/s | 216 | 4.6 |
| Nikon ZR, full frame | R3D NE original | 4032×2268 | 1,383 Mb/s | 622 | 1.6 |
| Nikon ZR, full frame | Blue Compressor Q2 | 4032×2268 | 233 Mb/s | 105 | 9.5 |
| Nikon ZR, full frame | Blue Compressor Q3 | 4032×2268 | 195 Mb/s | 88 | 11.4 |
| Nikon ZR, APS-C | R3D NE original | 3984×2240 | 1,351 Mb/s | 608 | 1.6 |
| Nikon ZR, APS-C | Blue Compressor Q2 | 3984×2240 | 533 Mb/s | 240 | 4.2 |
| Nikon ZR, APS-C | Blue Compressor Q3 | 3984×2240 | 362 Mb/s | 163 | 6.1 |
One thing surprised me: the original files are almost the same size in full frame and in APS-C (622 and 608 GB per hour), but after Blue Compressor the full frame files end up about half the size of the APS-C ones (88 against 163 GB per hour at Q3). If you shoot 4K 50p on the ZR and care about storage, full frame is the mode to use.
4K 100p
| Camera | Codec / version | Resolution | Bitrate | GB per hour | Hours per 1 TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sony A1 | XAVC HS (HEVC 4:2:2 10-bit) | 3840×2160 | 283 Mb/s | 127 | 7.9 |
| Sony A1 | XAVC S (AVC 4:2:2 10-bit) | 3840×2160 | 282 Mb/s | 127 | 7.9 |
| Nikon ZR, APS-C | R3D NE original | 3984×2240 | 2,699 Mb/s | 1,215 | 0.8 |
| Nikon ZR, APS-C | Blue Compressor Q2 | 3984×2240 | 929 Mb/s | 418 | 2.4 |
| Nikon ZR, APS-C | Blue Compressor Q3 | 3984×2240 | 594 Mb/s | 267 | 3.7 |
8K and 6K
| Camera | Codec / version | Resolution | Bitrate | GB per hour | Hours per 1 TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sony A1, 8K 25p | XAVC HS (HEVC 4:2:2 10-bit) | 7680×4320 | 263 Mb/s | 118 | 8.5 |
| Nikon ZR, 6K 50p | R3D NE original | 6048×3402 | 3,104 Mb/s | 1,397 | 0.7 |
| Nikon ZR, 6K 50p | Blue Compressor Q2 | 6048×3402 | 899 Mb/s | 405 | 2.5 |
| Nikon ZR, 6K 50p | Blue Compressor Q3 | 6048×3402 | 556 Mb/s | 250 | 4.0 |
| Nikon ZR, 6K 25p | R3D NE original | 6048×3402 | 1,554 Mb/s | 699 | 1.4 |
| Nikon ZR, 6K 25p | Blue Compressor Q2 | 6048×3402 | 461 Mb/s | 208 | 4.8 |
| Nikon ZR, 6K 25p | Blue Compressor Q3 | 6048×3402 | 288 Mb/s | 130 | 7.7 |
What a full shoot day looks like
As a wedding filmmaker I think in days, not in hours. Here is what 8 hours of 4K 25p footage would take:
- Nikon ZR, original R3D NE: 2.5 TB
- Sony A1, XAVC S-I All-Intra: 0.87 TB
- Sony A1, XAVC S: 0.51 TB
- Nikon ZR, Blue Compressor Q2: 0.45 TB
- Nikon ZR, Blue Compressor Q3: 0.38 TB
In other words, in 4K 25p a day of Nikon raw after Blue Compressor takes less space on my drives than a day of Sony XAVC S.
Things to keep in mind
- Your cards still need the full size. Blue Compressor works after the shoot. The camera still records the original R3D, so card capacity and offload time do not change. The savings are on your editing drives, your backups and your archive.
- Your savings will vary. Blue Compressor quantizes relative to what the camera recorded, and the result depends on the scene. A static, well-lit wall compresses well; noise, fast motion and high ISO will give bigger files.
- Same wall, different files. This is a storage test. The Sony was recording S-Log3 4:2:2 10-bit and the Nikon raw, so the two are not identical in what they keep. Look at the 400% zooms in the video and judge the image for yourself.
- Blue Compressor is still an early beta. Keep your original files until you have checked the compressed versions in your own workflow.
My take
For most of my work, 4K 25p and 50p in full frame, Nikon ZR raw plus Blue Compressor Q3 gives me raw files in the same storage range as the Sony’s everyday codec, and sometimes below it. At 4K 100p and 6K 50p, raw is still expensive, even compressed. There I would only shoot raw when I really need it.
All the numbers are in the video above, with every setting at 400% zoom so you can compare the image as well as the file size.
Alex Sofo is a wedding and commercial filmmaker. See more work at alexsofoweddingfilms.com.