Dashcam storage calculator
Work out how many hours of video an SD card or hard disk holds before loop recording starts overwriting. Pick the storage, the cameras and the codec.
Footage kept before loop recording overwrites it
66.1hours
About 6.6 days of driving at 10 hours a day.
Standard quality uses the bitrates in our recorders' storage reference; high quality is the top quality level. Event clips locked by the G-sensor are kept outside the loop. Your device's quality setting changes the result.
Recording time by card size
| Setup | 32 GB | 64 GB | 128 GB | 256 GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 camera, 1080p | 16.5 h | 33.1 h | 66.1 h | 132.3 h |
| 2 cameras, 1080p + 720p | 9.4 h | 18.9 h | 37.8 h | 75.6 h |
| 2 cameras, 2K + 720p | 6.6 h | 13.2 h | 26.5 h | 52.9 h |
| 4 cameras, 1080p | 4.1 h | 8.3 h | 16.5 h | 33.1 h |
| 4 cameras, 720p | 5.5 h | 11.0 h | 22.0 h | 44.1 h |
How it's calculated
Hours = usable capacity ÷ (total bitrate × 3,600). We count 93% of the nominal capacity as usable, which leaves room for the file system and locked event clips, and convert gigabytes to megabits (× 8,000).
Standard quality uses the bitrates in our recorders' storage reference, per camera: CIF 0.5 Mbps, D1 2 Mbps, 720p 3 Mbps and 1080p 4 Mbps. 2K (2560 × 1440) is not in that reference, so we scale it from 1080p by pixel count (7 Mbps).
High quality is the top of the recorder's eight quality levels: 4 Mbps at 720p and 8 Mbps at 1080p in the WD02 specification.
H.265 was designed to need about half the bitrate of H.264 for the same picture quality, so the calculator halves the bitrate when you choose it. The D9, D2, S202, WD10, WD11 and WD12 record H.265; the other models record H.264.
Planning the SIM card as well? Use the 4G data calculator.