Color bit depth calculator
Enter the bits per colour channel and the chroma subsampling. You get the number of levels and colours, and for a frame size and frame rate the uncompressed size of one frame and the data rate of the raw video.
Runs in your browser: nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
How to use it
- Enter the bits per channel (8 for most screens and files, 10 for HDR video, 12 or 16 for cinema and editing).
- Choose the chroma subsampling, and tick alpha if the format stores transparency.
- Enter the frame size and frame rate to see the uncompressed sizes.
How it works
Levels per channel = 2ⁿ; colours = 2³ⁿ. Bits per pixel = n × samples per pixel (3 for 4:4:4, 2 for 4:2:2, 1.5 for 4:2:0) + n for an alpha channel. One frame = width × height × bits per pixel ÷ 8 bytes. The data rate is frame bits × frame rate, and per minute that is multiplied by 60.
Worked example
8-bit 4:2:0 Full HD at 30 fps: 8 × 1.5 = 12 bits per pixel; 1920 × 1080 × 12 = 24,883,200 bits = 3.11 MB per frame; × 30 = 746.5 Mbit/s, or 5.6 GB per minute. The same frame in 10-bit 4:2:2 4K at 60 fps is 20 bits per pixel, 20.736 MB per frame and 9,953.28 Mbit/s.
Tips
- Banding in smooth gradients is a sign that 8 bits are not enough for that content; the colour banding test shows it on your screen.
- An alpha channel adds a full-resolution plane, even with subsampled colour.
- Compressed bitrates are estimated with the video bitrate calculator.
Frequently asked questions
How many colours is 8-bit, 10-bit and 12-bit?
8 bits per channel give 256 levels and 256³ = 16,777,216 colours. 10 bits give 1,024 levels and 1,073,741,824 colours (about 1.07 billion), and 12 bits give 4,096 levels and 68,719,476,736 colours.
What does 4:2:0 mean?
Video is stored as brightness plus two colour-difference channels. 4:4:4 keeps all three at full resolution, 4:2:2 halves the colour channels horizontally, and 4:2:0 halves them both horizontally and vertically, so a pixel carries 1.5 samples instead of 3.
Why are the data rates so high?
They are for raw, uncompressed video. Codecs such as H.264, HEVC or AV1 reduce this by hundreds of times; use the figure to size capture links, raw recording or memory, not compressed files.
Is a megabyte 1,000,000 or 1,048,576 bytes here?
1,000,000 bytes (and a gigabyte 10⁹), as used for data rates and disk sizes.