Upload time & size

Before you hit upload at midnight.

How big will the file be, and how long will it take on your connection? Compare YouTube’s recommended H.264 bitrate with your own export settings and with ProRes, or drop in the export itself for its exact time.

Fills in the fields below from your export and gives its exact upload time. Only its header is read.

Length (h:mm:ss)

Picture

Frame rate HDR

Your upload speed (Mb/s)

The upload figure from a speed test, not download.

Your export’s video bitrate (Mb/s, optional)

At YouTube’s recommended bitrate: 629 MB, about 4 min to upload

Upload size and time by format
Export as	Total rate	Size	Upload time
H.264 at YouTube’s recommendation8 Mb/s video (SDR 1080p, 24–30 fps) + 384 kb/s AAC	8.4 Mb/s	629 MB	4 min
Apple ProRes 422 LTwith 24-bit stereo PCM	87.3 Mb/s	6.55 GB	44 min
Apple ProRes 422with 24-bit stereo PCM	124.3 Mb/s	9.32 GB	1 h 02 min
Apple ProRes 422 HQwith 24-bit stereo PCM	186.3 Mb/s	14.0 GB	1 h 33 min

ProRes 422 HQ is 22× the size of YouTube’s recommended H.264, and takes that much longer to upload. YouTube re-encodes every upload and doesn’t say a larger master looks better afterwards; what it publishes is the H.264 recommendation.

Times assume your full upload speed for the whole upload; real uploads often run slower, so allow extra. Limits from YouTube Help: Upload videos longer than 15 minutes, checked 2026-10-13.

YouTube’s limits

A single upload can be up to 256 GB or 12 hours long, whichever comes first. Until your account is verified (YouTube asks for a phone number), uploads are limited to 15 minutes.

Bits and bytes

Connection speeds are in megabits per second; file sizes are in megabytes and gigabytes. There are eight bits in a byte, so a 20 Mb/s upload moves 2.5 MB a second: about 9 GB an hour. And it’s the upload speed that matters, which on most home connections is a fraction of the download speed.